Weeping Wall (instrumental)
1977 song performed by David Bowie
"Weeping Wall" is an instrumental piece by David Bowie from his album Low, released in 1977.
The track has been described by Bowie as intending to evoke the misery of the Berlin Wall, being a portrait piece like the other music on Side Two of Low. The principal melody is an adaptation of the tune "Scarborough Fair".
Bowie plays all instruments on the recording, the album's only solo track, including several percussion instruments and synthesizers. His voice is also present in a wordless chorus. Its minimalistic style has been seen as bearing the influence of composer Steve Reich. According to Reich, Bowie had attended the European premiere of Music for 18 Musicians at the National Gallery of Berlin in 1976. "And I think 'Weeping Wall' on Low is somewhat indebted to that," Reich has said. Bowie himself recalled seeing Music for 18 Musicians performed "live in downtown New York in the late 70s" and described it as "Balinese gamelan music cross-dressing as Minimalism... Astonishing."
While Brian Eno and NME editors Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray have suggested that "Weeping Wall" began life as part of Bowie's aborted soundtrack to The Man Who Fell to Earth, the composer himself maintained that the piece was composed especially for Low.
“Weeping Wall (instrumental)” enters the record as 1977 song performed by David Bowie. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Weeping, Wall and instrumental can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 25, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7979586. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1977 and 1976.
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This entry incorporates text from “Weeping Wall (instrumental)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.