Blackout (David Bowie song)

Infobox Song
Name = Blackout
Artist = David Bowie
Album = "Heroes"
Released = October 14 1977
track_no = 5
Recorded = Hansa Studio by the Wall, West Berlin
July-August 1977
Genre = Krautrock
Length = 3:50
Label = RCA Records
Writer = David Bowie
Producer = David Bowie, Tony Visconti
prev = "Sons of the Silent Age"
prev_no = 4
next = "V-2 Schneider"
next_no = 6

"Blackout" is a song written by David Bowie in 1977 for the album ""Heroes"". Author Nicholas Pegg described the track as "typical of the darkly exhilarating sonic schizophrenia of the "Heroes" album”,Nicholas Pegg (2000). "The Complete David Bowie": p.40] while biographer David Buckley remarked on "a backing verging on industrial".David Buckley (1999). "Strange Fascination - David Bowie: The Definitive Story": pp.320-321]

Regarding its lyrics and subject matter, Bowie himself has claimed that "Blackout did indeed refer to power cuts". [ [http://members.ol.com.au/rgriffin/GoldenYears/Heroes.html "UNCUT" interview (1999) cited at Bowie: Golden Years] . Retrieved 20 May 2007.] However "NME"'s Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray considered it to have "overtones of Bowie's personal blackout in Berlin (where he collapsed and was rushed to hospital)",Roy Carr & Charles Shaar Murray (1981). "Bowie: An Illustrated Record": p.92] noting the line "Get me to the doctor’s" and an atmosphere of "disorientation, fragmentation, panic". Nicholas Pegg surmised that, by the same token, the line "Someone's back in town, the chips are down" may have referred to his wife Angie, who had just arrived in Berlin around the same time.

Live versions

A live version recorded during the "Heroes" tour at the Philadelphia Spectrum in April 1978 was released on the album "Stage". This version was also released as a single by RCA in Japan in November 1978, backed with "Soul Love" from the same series of concerts.

Notes