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 company another three months to release it. It received considerable negative criticism upon its release—a release which RCA, anxious to maintain the established commercial momentum, did not welcome, and which Bowie's ex-manager, Tony Defries, who still maintained a significant financial interest in the singer's affairs, tried to prevent. Despite these forebodings, "Low" yielded the UK number three single "Sound and Vision", and its own performance surpassed that of "Station to Station" in the UK chart, where it reached number two. Echoing "Low"s minimalist, instrumental approach, the second of the trilogy, ""Heroes"" (1977), incorporated pop and rock to a greater extent,