"Heroes" by DAVID BOWIE

In Berlin, David Bowie found that his most compelling character was himself, and in a defiantly experimental period, created a worldwide anthem.

We can beat them, just for one day

Hansa Studio 2, a converted old concert hall that the Gestapo used as ballroom in WWII, sat a half block from The Berlin Wall. "Every afternoon I'd sit down at [a] desk and see three Russian Red Guards looking at us with binoculars,” David Bowie’s longtime collaborator and veteran producer Tony Visconti said of recording there. Bowie had moved to Berlin to escape California’s glitz and rivers of cocaine that led to the “darkest days” of his life. He was also close to broke since a bad management deal sapped the profits from his string of hit records, and Berlin was rich in culture but cheap to live. One day during their Hansa sessions, Visconti left the studio to allow Bowie to work on some lyrics and allow himself to see the woman with whom he’d fallen deeply in love. It was from those same windows through which they could see guards in their gun tower that Bowie saw Visconti and German singer Antonia Maass¹ in the shadow of the Wall, where the two, in the words of the song he wrote on the spot, “kissed as though nothing could fall.” 

“Heroes'' was the only album in what would be called the Berlin Trilogy recorded entirely in Berlin. What most connects those three albums, Low, “Heroes”, and Lodger, is their experimental, spontaneous approach — most of the albums’ songs are their first takes, with lyrics and vocals completed after. They also bear the mark of Brian Eno as a collaborator. Eno was an art school minimalist composer who found himself on the pop charts with Roxy Music before becoming an ambient music pioneer. His synthesizers and approach to composition give his songs with Bowie their texture. He also brought his Oblique Strategies, which Bowie called “art pranks” but also likened to the tarot and I Ching, that spurred creativity with actions like telling the Lodger band to all switch instruments on the song “Boys Keep Swinging.” What you hear on these records, along with a thrilling new set of influences, is an even more thrilling sense of freedom. 

“Heroes,” the song, endures because freedom itself is fragile. “Heroes,” the song, endures because freedom itself is fragile. A simple act of love near the foremost symbol of the Cold War is a human scale depiction of political oppression. The longing in the lyrics is for a freedom that’s heartbreakingly basic, for two people to just be who they are to each other, without threat, “just for one day.”

We can be “Heroes”

We're nothing, and nothing will help us

Maybe we're lying, then you better not stay

But we could be safer, just for one day

The song has a remarkable mutability, an ability to sound and feel different on different listens. While we could pan for nuggets of influence, the song doesn’t really sound like anything else, which allows a listener to regard each experience of it as their own. There’s no frame of reference for Robert Fripp’s guitar, for example — you feel it as much as hear it — perhaps because the King Crimson guitarist hadn’t really picked the instrument in the three years since the band’s dissolution. Fripp recalled Bowie saying over the phone, “we tried playing guitars ourselves; it’s not working. Do you think you can come and play some burning rock and roll guitar?” Fripp arrived at the studio at 11pm straight from the airport and played over the album’s recorded tracks with no rehearsal. As with much of “Heroes”, what we hear are his first takes, in this case altered by Eno — the guitar sounds less like a Les Paul than sheet metal and downed electrical wires — and layered into the mix by Visconti’s steady hand.  

The song’s distinctiveness is also thanks to how the local influences in Berlin, German bands as varied as Faust, Kraftwerk², and Neu!, filtered through Bowie and his collaborators. These bands had pulled free of the gravity of American and British ideas of popular music, taking the concert hall minimalism of Phillip Glass³ and Steve Reich and making it rock or feeding it through synths for an ice-cold electronic funk. Minimalism succeeds by making repetition captivating rather than boring so that small changes become monumental. That’s how “Heroes” can go on for six minutes and never seem like a long song. 

The subtle changes rippling over the surface of “Heroes” also set the stage for what makes the song so anthemic, and that’s Bowie’s vocal. His vocals of the period could have a cool detachment, and that’s how he begins the song. This could be simply what fit a more generally ambient sound, but by this point Bowie had also forgone playing characters: Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, The Thin White Duke, and Halloween Jack — all gone. Who we hear is David. As his vocals escalate to desperate heights by song’s end, it’s incredibly human and affecting. 

“Heroes” charted a bit lower than its predecessor, Low, which was itself initially rejected by Bowie’s label, RCA, as being uncommercial. (Bowie mounted the rejection letter on his wall.) In the five years since Hunky Dory, Bowie had become one of the biggest rock stars in the world, and RCA wanted more of Young Americans’ Philly Soul than this German whatever-it-was, even suggesting that he move from Berlin to Philadelphia. What Bowie achieved with Low and “Heroes,” however, makes a chart-topping album seem ordinary. Stripped of their labels, the sound of these records would now categorize them as post-punk, but they were made while punk itself was still just then exploding. (RCA eventually got with the program and marketed Bowie with the slogan, “There's Old Wave. There's New Wave. And there's David Bowie.”) He was that far ahead of the pop culture curve and yet was able to use his star power to sing “Heroes” on the 1977 Bing Crosby Christmas special. And that’s another thing — even a commercial failure of a David Bowie record would still be heard by millions, so the ambient instrumentals that populated the second sides of Low and “Heroes” would be those millions’ introduction to avant-garde music. 

“Heroes” didn’t chart in the States and never broke into the Top 20 in the UK. This song recorded at Hansa, the studio with a view of The Wall and its Russian guards, grew to became a worldwide anthem, however First, there was Bowie’s performance of the song at Live Aid. Then, in 1987, at an outdoor Berlin concert on his Glass Spider tour, some of the speakers were turned toward the east side of The Wall. “It felt… almost like a prayer,” he told Rolling Stone in 2003, “I was in tears. There were thousands on the other side that had come close to the wall. So it was like a double concert where the wall was the division. And we could hear them cheering and singing from the other side. God, even now I get choked up. It was breaking my heart.” 

Two years later, The Wall would come down. East Berlin was free. 

Bowie & Berlin Playlist

Did I break convention and not list how many songs are on this playlist because I know that I’m going to keep adding to it and play with the track order? Yes. In the meantime, please enjoy “Heroes” and cuts from this fertile period in David Bowie’s career, plus some music that inspired it.

My Bowie Story

“Have you eaten?”

I was working on a story about the band opening on what would be Bowie’s last tour, The Polyphonic Spree. I’d followed the tour from Austin, Texas to Houston, and then on to New Orleans. I had been told that I wouldn’t get to interview Bowie for the piece, but I cashed in a favor with his publicist and got 5 minutes with him backstage. Those 5 minutes turned to 15 because David Bowie was so gracious and engaged. At the end, he asked if I’d eaten. I hadn’t and feared it was too obvious. But he continued, “the crew meal is good tonight. You should have some.”

Which is how I ate crawfish sitting next to bassist Gail Dorsey and guitarist Earl Slick like we were just more New Orleans tourists. 

I also once visited Tony Visconti in his studio. He brought me coffee.

Thank You, Kevin

This edition was inspired by reader Kevin, who requested I do a piece on a song that brings him comfort in tough times. It was a challenge I didn’t think I was up to — if you listen to the podcast, you can hear that my voice, hoarse from dramatic early spring changes in temperature certainly isn’t. But thank you, Kevin, for the challenge. There’s no point in doing only what know we can.

Please do comment

Please leave comments. I’m can’t promise that I’ll take every request, but your thoughts, and all the times you share The Best Song Ever (This Week) are what keep this newsletter going. I’ve reconnected with old friends from decades past and feel like I’m making new ones.

1. Maass translated the lyrics for “Helden,” the German release of the song. Bowie also did a French version, where he sounds less impassioned than consumed by existential ennui.

2. Kraftwerk’s Florian Schneider is namechecked on “Heroes” song “V2-Schneider.” Neu! had a song called “Hero” on their album Neu! 75.

3. Bowie and Eno met in 1970 at a Philip Glass concert. Glass later took Bowie and Eno’s work and created Heroes Symphony.