Berlin Trilogy There's New Wave. And there's David Bowie ..." After releasing ""Heroes"" in 1977, Bowie spent much of 1978 on the Isolar II world tour, bringing the music of the first two Berlin Trilogy albums to almost a million people during 70 concerts in 12 countries. By now he had broken his drug addiction; biographer David Buckley writes that Isolar II was "Bowie's first tour for five years in which he had probably not anaesthetised himself with copious quantities of cocaine before taking the stage. ... Without the oblivion that drugs had brought, he was now in a healthy enough mental
Berlin Trilogy condition to want to make friends." Recordings from the tour made up the live album "Stage", released the same year. It was around the time of "Lodger" (1979) that Bowie began framing his previous two albums as the beginning of a Berlin-centered trilogy concluding with "Lodger", largely as a marketing technique to support the unusual new album. "Lodger", the final piece in what Bowie called his "triptych", eschewed the minimalist, ambient nature of the other two, making a partial return to the drum- and guitar-based rock and pop of his pre-Berlin era. Recorded in Switzerland and New York, the result