David Bowie - In Bertolt Brecht's Baal - EP (1982)

Baal is an EP by English musician David Bowie, comprising recordings of songs written for Bertolt Brecht’s play Baal. It is sometimes referred to as David Bowie in Bertolt Brecht's Baal, as credited on the sleeve. The EP was Bowie's final release of new material for RCA Records; he signed with EMI Records for his next album. 

In August 1981, Bowie had begun rehearsals to appear in the BBC version of Baal. The lyrics to the songs were all translated by Ralph Manheim and John Willett. Bowie did not think of the television play as a success on broadcast due to its cinematography, but had grown to appreciate it by 1983. Dominic Muldowney provided all new musical settings, except for "The Drowned Girl", which was a setting by Kurt Weill done originally for Das Berliner Requiem. In September 1981, Bowie and Tony Visconti returned to the Hansa studios in Berlin to re-record the five songs Baal performed in the play.

"Baal's Hymn" is a combination of the vignettes spread throughout the play and establishes Baal's amoral character. "Remembering Marie A." concerns Baal's reminiscences of a past conquest, where he can remember a cloud drifting overhead but not the face of the girl he was with. 

"Ballad of the Adventurers" is Baal's aggressive lament to the death of his mother. 

"The Drowned Girl" relates the suicide of one of Baal's conquests – a video clip for this song was shot by David Mallet at the same time as the one for "Wild is the Wind". 

"The Dirty Song" is a short number, with Baal humiliating his lover Sophie

Baal was not one of Bertolt Brecht's most appealing visions. The tale of a dissolute itinerant wretch whose natural talent for composing amoral ditties was mere accompaniment to his life of debauchery, it was the saga, according to David Bowie, of the original Super Punk -- which is doubtless what attracted him to it, when he was offered the title role in a 1982 BBC TV play.

Bowie perform five songs during the course of the play, each of which coupled Brecht's original lyric (as translated by John Willett) to a contemporary Dominic Muldowney arrangement. 

Recording in the same Hansa studios in Berlin where Brecht's own future partner, Kurt Weill, once worked, Bowie and producer Tony Visconti also borrowed Weill's favorite recording set-up -- a German theater band, one player per instrument, all arranged in a semi-circle. 

(Bowie would recreate this set-up for the video accompanying his next UK single, "Wild Is The Wind".") RCA originally intended releasing the Baal soundtrack as part of a new Bowie album -- the star's continued reluctance to record anything more than dilettante side bars, however, left them with no option but to pare their plans down to a single EP, released in Britain on the Friday before the play's March 2, 1982, transmission. 

The result was an uncompromising collection, considerably truer to Brecht than many outsiders expected, with its closest relatives within Bowie's own catalog being his occasional assaults on the Jacques Brel songbook -- early live favorites "Next" and "My Death," and the 1973 b-side "Amsterdam"." But even with that comparison, one is grasping; quite frankly, Baal served up a side of Bowie that he had often claimed existed, but which even his closest friends had seldom seen. 

Side A

1.  Baal's Hymn (Der Choral vom großen Baal)  (uncredited, Muldowney) - 4:02 

2.  Remembering Marie A. (Erinnerung an die Marie A.) (traditional, adapt. Brecht, trans. Willett                 traditional, adapt. Franz Servatius Bruinier, arr. Muldowney) - 2:07 

Side B

1.  Ballad of the Adventurers (Die Ballade von den Abenteurern) - 2:01 

2.  The Drowned Girl (Vom ertrunkenen Mädchen) (Kurt Weill, arr. Muldowney) - 2:26 

3.  The Dirty Song  (Ludwig Prestel, arr. Muldowney) - 0:38 

All lyrics are written by Bertolt Brecht and translated by John Willett; all music is composed by Dominic Muldowney, except were noted.

Personnel

• David Bowie – vocals, guitar, production
• Tony Visconti – bass, production
• uncredited session musicians – other instruments
• Eduard Meyer – engineering

Design

• Andrew Christian – art direction
• Partridge Rushton – design and artwork
• John Timbers (Radio Times) – photography
• uncredited photographer – Bertolt Brecht portrait (from In Life, In Pictures, In Text)
• Frans Masereel – woodcut illustration (from The Radical Imagination)

Notes

Released:  13 February 1982 

Recorded:  September 1981 Studio Hansa by the Wall, Berlin 

Genre:  Pop

Length:  11:14 

Label - RCA Records