Many great cities are celebrated for their artistic creation and civilization but only if a blue-ribbon few come with their own soundtrack. From Kurt Weil to Bertolt Brecht, Lou Reed to Iggy Pop, Nick Cave to the minimal techno DJs currently opinion the roost, our image of Berlin is molded by the ambitious music created there.
But for a generation of music lovers, the spirit of David Bowie bestrides the landscape of Berlin more than any other musician. At the peak of his career in the mid-to-late seventies, Bowie lived and played in the city, working on three albums with producer Brian Eno.
Those three eld, when Bowie lived in a flat with Iggy Pop consume passed into rock folklore, and even despite the massive changes undertaken in the preceding decades, much of Bowie's Berlin cadaver, while the adventurous liveliness that john Drew him there is as strong as ever.
What to see: Hansa Studio Tour
Bowie recorded at the famous Hansa Studios, not far from the reconstructed Potsdamer Platz. The studio apartment - which used to overlook the Wall - remains operational and it is amazingly relaxed approximately letting citizenry visit. Small tours submit you into the oak-panelled Tonstudio 2, where Bowie recorded Low and Heroes, and produced The Idiot for Iggy Pop. You are invited into a back room to analyse a script of paper cuttings and to old World chat with the staff. The place is no museum, however. It's a running recording studio: Supergrass recorded there last year and Snow Patrol were upstairs during my visit.
How to see it
You can besides visit the Hansa Studios with Fritz Music Tours (prices from �15pp), a four-hour drive around the city conducted by the effervescent Thilo, a other recording engine driver. In a six-seater minibus, Thilo careers around the city, talk at a mile-a-minute, piece playing you snatches of Bowie and Iggy on the way to the pair's onetime flat (Hauptstrasse 155) in Sch�neberg (where he tells you the delightful story of the current resident who has never heard of the famous duo) before taking you for a sceloporus occidentalis drink in Neues Ufer - erstwhile Anderes Ufer - (Hauptstrasse 157), the legendary jocund cafe where the mate used to hang out and where a portrayal of Bowie remains. Thilo's a passionate guy, he knows most of the people world Health Organization helped create the soundtrack of Berlin, and he'll give ironical advice on where's flow in the city's ever-changing scene.
Where to stay
The Hotel Ellington has experient as many ch-ch-changes as Bowie himself. Built in the 1920s it has hosted an infamous Weimar-era nightclub, diverted the Nazis, been bombed to blaze and been the offices of an insurance society. But it also has a musical heritage to rival whatever hotel in LA.
In 1949, when the surrounding area was occupied by US troops, the cellar played host to the Badewanne club, illustrious for its regular performances by Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington (their black and white River photographs now adorn the hotel). In the mid-seventies, it reopened as Dschungel, Berlin's answer to Studio 54, replete with female bouncers (world Health Organization once turned away Sly Stallone) and a even clientele that included Bowie, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed and, later, Nick Cave.
The devolve of the wall and the rear of techno left Dschungel behind, and it unopen in 1993. The Ellington then lay vacant until it re-opened as a chic design hotel with many of the artistic creation deco features intact, including a splendid green and white tile staircase. True to its roots, it hosts regular jazz concerts in the bar (doubles from �90pn).
Where to hang out
Little has changed since the days of Iggy and Bowie in S036, the legendary locale in Kreuzberg the pair often frequented. Then the club rivalled New York's CBGBs as one of the finest new-wave venues in the world. It remains a fixture on the Berlin music scene championing new artists, piece staying on-key to its punk past.
Today the area around Oranienstrasse, east of Moritzplatz and down towards Kottbusser Tor, is redolent of those rash days, when Kreuzberg was a Turkish enclave behind the Wall. Artful graffito sits alongside designer shops as surviving examples of the district's working class roots. There's also a palpable want of anything too corporate (aside from a subdivision of grocery chain Spa) and an admirable compendium of previous fishmongers, button stores and a delightful shop marketing objects made by the blind: all wooden cabinets, baskets and brushes.
Where to go drinking
Kreuzburg remains a place of punks, graffito and politics (handbills emblazoned with signs shout "Stop gentrification!") and it's as well home to many communities of gays and Turks, trendies and crusties, thinkers and drinkers. Most contact at Luzia, (Oranienstrasse 34), a born-again butcher's stag, where to my revel they were actually playing Iggy Pop at mass.
Luzia is decorated with wall paintings, thrift-shop article of furniture, and crystal chandeliers. Aside from the old Iggy records, it serves an extremely eclecticist programme of DJs and live acts. The musical programme crosses techno, bluegrass and indie.
Where to eat
For such famous people, Iggy and Bowie lived relatively modestly in Berlin. When they wanted to push the boat out, they often ate at the Paris Bar, an expensive French cafe in upscale Charlottenburg. The eating place is the scene of an ill-famed Rolling Stone interview where the journalist described the cafe as a scene from Degas' The Absinthe Drinkers and Iggy got so sot he all over up wheeling around in the ice outside. You will spy few absinth drinkers at the bar today � it is far more than glamorous � but the place retains an aviation of gipsy bliss. Thanks largely to the artistic creation collection donated by Martin Kippenberger, himself a far-famed painter. In 1993 Kippenberger chose the bar (and his ingathering) as the subject for this painting, now owned by Charles Saatchi.
Where to buy the soundtrack
For Bowie-era records, head back west to Charlottenburg for Rock Steady Records and its archive of over 10,000 vinyl LPs. It's just two blocks from the Ellington. Kreuzberg's Hardwax is the place for the minimal techno and microhouse, and too has a huge back catalogue of Chicago house and dub reggae. Back on Oranienstrasse, Core Tex approximates the punkier sounds coming out of S036, while the more boutique Downbeat Reggae Store (Oranienstrasse 44) offers an splendid selection of rare channel and mixtapes.
Where to go clubbing
The clubs may have changed but the city's night life is no less vivacious than in Bowie's peak. Yet, despite its melodious heritage, Berlin is the least flashy of cities. You have to actively seek the coolest places in town, like some urban equivalent of an orienteer. Nothing is obvious. Take the best club at the moment. There are no neon lights, no loss velvet rope, no carpet outside Weekend, a 15th-floor club atop an anon. office block in Alexanderplatz, the Soviet-era square in the center of the former east. Instead, thither is a small queue at ground level leading to a set of lifts that whisk you up 15 floors. They open practically straight on to the dancefloor, which is henpecked by a massive electronic screen. On the seventeenth floor is a roof terrace overlooking Alexanderplatz and the tall and elegant TV tower.
Alternatively, over on the western side is the more lounge-like Solar, a 15th floor restaurant and club with panoramic views over the floodlit ruins of the Anhalter Bahnhof: once the largest train station in Europe. Again, it takes some finding: hidden down a english courtyard it sits supra an nt halt. The music is more than mainstream house, but the bar mixes a hateful mojito.
Getting there
easyJet flies from from London Gatwick to Berlin Schonefeld from �47 (incl task)
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