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 on the album started before Bowie's own "Low", Pop's "The Idiot" is often referred to as the unofficial beginning of Bowie's Berlin period, though the two albums were recorded almost concurrently. The album "Low" (1977) was recorded as Bowie grappled with difficult personal issues, including a troubled marriage and drug dependence: "There's oodles of pain in the "Low" album. That was my first attempt to kick cocaine, so that was an awful lot of pain. And I moved to Berlin to do it. I moved out of the coke centre of the world ["i.e.", Los Angeles] into the smack centre