When he appeared in a live satellite link on the Russell Harty show on November 28th 1975, Bowie announced “I’m touring. I’m coming back to England to play some shows… and to be English again.” He also showed a film of himself performing ‘Golden Years’ on the American TV show ‘Soul Train’ which he admitted he’d sung while drunk. The plan for the tour was that his band should go to Jamaica over Christmas and the New Year to rehearse for the tour which was due to start in Vancouver on February 2nd 1976.
Problems started when he got there and discovered that his manager had apparently neglected to book any accommodation for the party there. Apparently the same manager had failed to secure the rights for Bowie to perform the soundtrack to the film ‘The Man Who Fell To Earth’ which was also to be released in February. From then on, Bowie decided to manage himself in all his business affairs, hiring relevant people for the job whenever necessary. He was also still involved in legal battles with Tony DeFries over his back catalogue since he had sacked him the previous summer. “I used to think an artist had to separate himself from business matters, but now I realise that you have more artistic freedom if you keep an eye on business” he said while on tour in America in 1976; “My office is a suitcase that stays in my room”.
As usual when touring, Bowie decided to use the same band that had just finished the album so Earl Slick was asked along. Having made his name with Bowie over the previous two years, Slick had made an album with his own band during the summer while Bowie was in New Mexico filming ‘The Man Who Fell To Earth’. Both his own album and ‘Station To Station’ were due to be released in the New Year and Slick and his management started pressing Bowie for extra prominence on the tour and even wanted RCA to pay Slick’s band while their leader was on tour. Bowie wanted none of this so he promptly fired Slick and engaged Stacey Heydon, an unkown Canadian guitarist, of whom nothing has been heard since.
For the album Bowie had used Bruce Springsteen’s pianist Roy Bittan but he was unable to join the tour so he employed Tony Kaye – formerly of Yes. The rehearsals in Jamaica also featured the musicians who were to tour the following year – Carlos Alomar, George Murray and Dennis Davis. Another idea was to have two backing singers onstage with Bowie but a story in Melody Maker of 31st January 1976 tells that the two (Ava Cherry and Claudia Lennear) were sacked because “both girls were disciples from Satan, sent to Earth in order that he might father one of their children, a child that would one day grow up to be the reincarnation of the devil himself”.
On finishing the European leg of his tour in May 1976, Bowie went to his new home in Switzerland for a short holiday but he was soon off to the Chateau D’Herouville in France to do some recording with Iggy Pop in July. By August they were in Munich to finish recording what was to become the ‘Idiot’ album and then went to Berlin to complete it.
For Bowie, Berlin was a city in which he could lose himself from the pressures of life in Los Angeles and the music business there. He spent most of his time there looking at art galleries, painting and trying to “find myself again. Pulling myself out of that was not quick … there was a flashback effect. For the first two or three years after I was living in Berlin, I would always have days when things were moving in the room. I really had to find myself again. It took me at least two years to shake off the depression. So I moved to Berlin and just went crazy.” Bowie went back to France to record the first part of ‘Low’ but soon returned to Berlin to make the instrumentals on the second side and he was to stay there until the spring of 1978.
One of Bowie’s few breaks away from Berlin in the autumn of 1976 was to go Paris to attend court in his proceedings against Michael Lippman. Another break of an accidental sort was when he collapsed in late 1976 in Berlin and was rushed to to the British Military Hospital – “He’d just overdone things and was suffering from too much drink” said a spokesman. The after-effects of this incident were to provide a song on the next album – also made in Berlin – ‘Blackout’.