David Bowie – “Heroes”

“Heroes” was released 43 years ago today by RCA Records and is arguably Bowie’s artistic zenith. The only album to be recorded entirely in Berlin, “Heroes” is stylistically similar in structure to Low, although has a fuller and more chaotic overall sound, and significantly more muscular and expressive. To celebrate the occasion, The Press is ranking the songs from this Bowie masterpiece.

Recorded in an ornate former Gestapo Ballroom (Berlin’s Hansa studios) which had been used to record symphonies during World War II, “Heroes” (1977) is part two in the ‘Berlin trilogy’, although ironically was the only album written and recorded entirely there, apart from the Bowie-produced Iggy Pop proto-punk classic Lust for Life.

Back in 1977, the Hansa Studio was an imposing figure; the rear aspect of the studio overlooked the Berlin Wall and it’s mixing room overlooked the turrets packed with armed guards. The Hansa building was one of about four in the whole district that wasn’t flattened by bombs. It is well documented that Bowie found inspiration for the lyrics to the masterful title track when he observed Tony Visconti – album producer – and backing vocalist Antonia Maas, kissing by the wall.

Bowie was studying art and immersing himself in the Euro-expressionist, synth-based music of the early 70s such as Kraftwerk and Neu!, at this point in his career the singer was extricating himself from the drug and party scene of his former home in Los Angeles. After a series of controversial public appearances where he was barely coherent, The Thin White Duke realised that he needed to separate himself from the dangerous rock and roll lifestyle he was immersed in and all of the perils and dreadful hangers-on associated with mid-70s Hollywood celebrity. It just wasn’t this proper British artist’s scene.

Infatuated with the electronic music emerging in Germany at the time, Bowie ultimately moved to Europe, collaborated with Brian Eno and Iggy Pop, and lived in relative anonymity in the Schöneberg district of Berlin while making the tour de force that is “Heroes”. Berlin was the first time in years that he had felt a joy of life and a great feeling of release and healing and the impeccable surprise single in 2013, ‘Where Are We Now?’, reflected on his years in Berlin with some poignancy.

Sitting in the Dschungel On Nürnberger Straße
A man lost in time Near KaDeWe
Just walking the dead

Bowie’s 1977 was a busy and productive year for the star. He released Low in January, produced Iggy Pop’s The Idiot and Lust For Life (released in March and August respectively), toured as Iggy’s keyboard player with the Hunt brothers and Low guitarist Ricky Gardiner, starred in an albeit horrendous film directed by David Hemmings and starring (sort of) alongside Marlene Dietrich called Just A Gigolo, and narrated Peter And The Wolf for his son in his spare time.

Like Low, the instrumentals on Side Two are sparse, inventive and majestic, and “Heroes” Side One consists of some of Bowie’s best ever songs. Bowie was simply in career-best form as a lyricist and recording artist. Highly influenced by Iggy’s improvisational style, most of this was written in the studio and first take stuff on-mike. It should be said that Bowie was in career-best form as a vocalist. The subsequent Low/”Heroes” tour confirms that fact. Listen to 1978’s underrated live outing Stage, the band was a fine ensemble, again perhaps his best ever, and his increasing baritone utterly commanding.

This is when Bowie had perfected the icy gaze and still had an air of menace about him before he turned all smiley and tanned in the 80s.

10. Neuköln: Named after a district in Berlin, Neuköln recalls the sombre reflection of Low on one hand, but on the other is Bowie enthusiastically throttling his saxophone over a dramatic Eastern-European soundscape, painting a vivid image of a bleak post-war Germany. Closes with a finale spiralling sax wail.

9. Sense of Doubt: Thoroughly foreboding, this song represents fear and is based around a doom-y descending set of four piano notes accompanied by a dramatic organ. There’s something sinister creaking around in the background, and a lovely windswept beginning and end adds to the mystery and atmosphere of the piece. This is when Eno and Bowie were experimenting with the Oblique Strategies cards, a random aid to the creative process, which they used entirely for this track.

8. The Secret Life of Arabia: Unlike Low, “Heroes” finishes on a positive note with a hint of things to come in the Eastern sounds of Lodger. The melodic and jubilant The Secret Life of Arabia returns to the funk sounds and is blessed relief after the torment of Neuköln. It’s the album footnote with Bowie coming out the other end still intact.

7. V-2 Schneider: A tribute to the late Florian Schneider from Kraftwerk, Bowie acknowledged him a huge influence on him during his Berlin period. The horn section was accidentally turned around to the offbeat in the recording process and they stuck with it.

6. Sons of the Silent Age: This track was written well before going into the studio, unlike everything else on this record. An operatic vocal performance and some strangled sax from Bowie, he sings of Sam Therapy and King Dice with a breathtaking vocal performance. Unspeakable things happened to this perfectly majestic number on the 1987 Glass Spider tour.

5. Moss Garden: Bowie’s koto, a traditional Japanese stringed instrument, plays over Eno’s gorgeously tranquil atmospherics which ebb and flow as little dogs bark off in the distance. Earlier in the album Bowie had exclaimed he is under Japanese influence, and the exquisite Moss Garden is evidence of that.

4. Beauty and the Beast: A lurching synth-funk grind with a menacing double-tracked lead vocal (with a late-arriving bridge predating Ashes to Ashes’ self-examinational prose), Bowie’s new vocal style here is strikingly expressive (especially when compared to the monotone of Low), and Eno’s synthetic flute solo and Robert Fripp’s first-take lead guitar work are highlights. The intro to this song is a dead-ringer of Roxy Music’s ‘The Thrill of it All’.

3. Blackout: Written about Bowie’s own personal meltdown at the time (or more probable the NY blackout of ’77), Blackout veers spectacularly between a full on crescendo and a threatening tendency for low-key detachment, I’ll kiss you in the rain. A fitting chaotic rush of freak-out synths and triple-tracked Frippatronic guitar treatments boil over in a wonderful spoken word climax: “While the streets block off, getting some skin exppposure to the blackout”.

2. Joe the Lion: A bar-room epic, lyrically random and effortlessly brilliant, ex-King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp came out of retirement and flew in for a couple of days, to record his blistering guitar treatments for the album, often without hearing the initial track. Joe the Lion is one of those. Bowie’s yelping vocals were recorded on-mike as he wrote the lyrics : “….it’s Monday…slither down the greasy pipe…so far so good no one saw you….hobble over any freeway….you will be like you dreeeaaaams tonight!!”, an incredible moment and a career highlight in itself. As exhilarating as Bowie music gets.

1. “Heroes”: Undoubtedly the finest song in the Bowie canon, this is essentially an experimental piece of art-rock which sounds like no other song. “Heroes” possesses a hypnotic shudder (created by Eno’s synth playing) and producer Tony Visconti’s filter sweeps generating a superb oscillating effect that slowly builds and becomes more and more powerful towards the end as the vocals soar (there is no kick-drum whatsoever). A pure lyric of individual connection in adverse times (he wrote the lyrics during a break in recording looking out the windows of Hansa Studios at a strolling Visconti and backing singer Antonia Maass indulging in some covert smooching), complemented by some majestic reverb-drenched vocal histrionics, recorded using several gated microphones rigged-up down the corridor, capturing a great deal of natural reverb and in turn, a wall of sound. The chord changes are multi-layered and anthemic, the Fripp guitar loop spot-on, and the epic 6-minute album version definitive. Tony Visconti goes into detail on the fascinating recording process of the title track and explains how he captured Fripp’s guitar takes to shape the defining sound of the track.