"Heroes" by David Bowie: The making of the soaring Berlin masterpiece

23 July 2024, 11:59 | Updated: 25 July 2024, 12:14

How David Bowie captured a story of doomed romance and turned it into an enduring classic.

Even with his decade-long break, there were few artists who had such a brilliant, sustained career as David Bowie.

From his mod beginnings to the glam era, plastic soul, dance-pop, drum 'n' bass, jazz and beyond, Bowie dipped his toe in countless genres.

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And his slightly glacial, experimental, self-consciously pretentious work on the "Berlin trilogy" of albums (Low, "Heroes" and Lodger) is perhaps his most critically acclaimed works.

At the centre of all that was "Heroes", the title track of the only one of those albums actually completely recorded in the then-divided city (Low was mainly recorded in France, Lodger was laid down in Switzerland and New York).

But how much do you know about DB's epic masterpiece? Read on for all you'd like to know.

Who wrote "Heroes"?

David Bowie - Heroes (Official Video)

As well as being a masterful performer, David Bowie was one hell of a songwriter, and wrote or co-wrote most of his incredible back catalogue.

On the "Heroes" album, he wrote six of the songs all by himself, and co-wrote the remaining four. "Heroes" is one of those four, and it was co-written with Brian Eno.

Eno had left Roxy Music in 1973 after three albums, and by the time "Heroes" was released had not only released four solo albums, but also collaborated with Robert Fripp and Kevin Ayers.

He had contributed to the playing of Bowie's previous album Low, and had earned a previous co-write credit on 'Warszawa'.

Who produced "Heroes" and who plays what on the record?

David Bowie - Heroes (Live Aid, 1985)

Brian Eno is an excellent producer who started in that role with various artists in the mid-1970s.

But Brian Eno didn't produce any of David Bowie's so-called "Berlin trilogy". That's right. All three of Low, "Heroes" and Lodger were produced by David Bowie with his longtime producer Tony Visconti.

We don't want to diminish Eno's role in Bowie's work but he didn't produce those albums.

It wasn't until 1995's excellent 1. Outside that Brian Eno actually co-produced a David Bowie album, working with the man himself and David Richards on that record.

As for who actually plays on "Heroes", obviously that's David there on lead and backing vocals.

He actually recorded his singing very late in the day, when much of the band had already left Berlin, and Visconti used some clever spacing tricks with a number of gated microphones to get the sound just right.

David also pitches in with some piano, and some technological widdling on an early synthesiser the ARP Solina String Ensemble and the Chamberlin, a precursor to the Mellotron. The Mellotron was essentially a keyboard attached to an early sampler that used little snippets of tape.

As co-writer, Eno also plays on the recording. He's there on the EMS VCS 3 synthesiser and added treatments to the guitar. Those guitars were provided by Robert Fripp (lead) and Carlos Alomar (rhythm). Alomar had been in the Bowie camp since as far back as 1975's Young Americans.

Rounding things out are George Murray on bass and Dennis Davis on drums – both veterans from the Low sessions.

As well as co-producing the song, Visconti pitched in too, on percussion ("a big metal ashtray," Visconti later said) and backing vocals.

What is "Heroes" actually about?

"Heroes" gets played all the time at sporting events, most memorably being Team GB's opening ceremony music at the London 2012 Summer Olympics.

But "Heroes" is far from an unambiguous song of triumph along the lines of Queen's terrace anthem 'We Are The Champions'.

The clue is right there in the title: It's not Heroes but "Heroes", with those quote marks indicating not emphasis (HEROES!) but instead a certain irony (We can be "Heroes" you're saying.... yeah, okay, sure?).

The lyrics tell the story of a couple ("I will be king/ And you, you will be queen") on either side of the Berlin wall ("I can remember/ Standing by the wall"), which was only around 150 metres from Hansa Studios where the song and album were recorded.

Heroes (2017 Remaster)

For years, Bowie would maintain that the couple in the song was based on a couple of randoms he spotted outside the studio.

"I thought of all the places to meet in BVerlin, why pick a bench underneath a guard turret on the Wall?" Bowie wondered. He riffed on the idea that the couple were feeling guilty about some sort of illicit affair.

But that was just to spare the blushes of his co-producer. David had actually been directly inspired by seeing Visconti having a snog with singer Antonia Maass by the wall.

Maass was a local jazz singer who they met in Berlin, who ended up providing backing vocals on the "Heroes" album.

David Bowie - Heroes

That was all well and good, but Tony was married at the time, having wed Welsh folk singer Mary Hopkin in 1971, so you can understand why David wasn't completely honest about it until after Tony and Mary divorced in 1981.

Both Bowie and Visconti later admitted that the song had been about Tony and Antonia... BUT Antonia later claimed that the now-accepted story was impossible, because "Heroes" had apparently been completed before she and Visconti started seeing each other.

Whatever the truth of it all Visconti went on to marry John Lennon's "Lost Weekend" partner, May Pang, before they divorced in 2000. He has been with singer Kirsteen Young for over 20 years.

(1983) David Bowie / Heroes

It's worth a quick mention of artist Clare Shenstone who had known Bowie for nearly ten years by that point, and apparently visited him in Berlin and walked by the Wall with him.

She claimed that he confessed to dreaming of her and she apparently told him in turn that she had dreamt of "swimming with dolphins".

There were other influences on the song: Otto Mueller's 1916 painting Lovers Between Garden Walls Bowie and Iggy Pop had seen in Berlin's Brücke museum.

In his wife Iman's 2001 memoir I Am Iman, he also revealed the influence of Alberto Denti di Piranjno's "magical and beautiful love story" A Grave For A Dolphin ("I wish you could swim / Like the dolphins").

There was even a smidgen of influence from the traditional folk song 'Lavender Blue' "(I will be king, dilly dilly, you will be queen"), which Bowie segued from into "Heroes" during his gloriously suave Serious Moonlight tour.

When was "Heroes" released and where did it get in the charts?

"Heroes" has "absolutely massive era-defining hit single" stomped all the way through it, right?

Well, not quite.

"Heroes" was released on September 23, 1977, a few weeks before its parent album and backed by another track from the record, 'V2-Schneider'.

David knew he had a hit, or something that should have been a hit, on his hands, and put in the hours playing or miming the song around the world, including on Marc Bolan's show Marc and Bing Crosby's Merrie Old Christmas – coincidentally shortly before both died.

David Bowie | “Heroes” | Standing Next To You [intro] | Live on the Marc Show | 7 September 1977

There was a snazzy music video, set to the single edit that sliced off the first two minutes of the song, meaning it starts bang in the middle before the third verse.

There were even alternate language versions sung in French ("Héros') and with help from Antonia Maass on the lyrics, German too ('Helden').

In the UK though, all this hard work was only good enough for number 24, while the song failed to chart altogether in the US. amazing.

Over the years though the song's stature has grown and grown and grown, with its stunning performance at Live Aid very much playing its part in making it one of Bowie's best-known, best-loved songs.

In 2016, after Bowie's tragic passing, "Heroes" was the highest of a large number of his songs that re-entered the charts, peaking at number 12.

With digital consumption of music overtaking bits of plastic, "Heroes" was finally certified Platinum in the UK in 2020.

Who has covered "Heroes"?

Peter Gabriel - Heroes (Live in Verona 2010)

"Heroes" is, alongside 'Rebel, Rebel', David Bowie's most covered song.

Some of the very biggest artists who have given it a go include Oasis, Nico, The Smashing Pumpkins, Peter Gabriel, Billy Preston, PJ Proby, Travis, The Wallflowers, Jon Bon Jovi, Katherine Jenkins, Arcade Fire, Hot Chip and The Feeling.

TV On The Radio covered the song in 2009 by David Bowie's own request for the War Child Heroes album

Heroes

Blondie's 1980 version featured the song's original guitarist Robert Fripp, with that take later popping up in David Bowie Songbook. Back with his own King Crimson, Fripp played it again in 2000.

Not a straight cover, but Phillip Glass's interpretation of "Heroes" opened his 1996 Symphony No. 4, which was based on the "Heroes" album. Aphex Twin later mashed up Glass's work with Bowie's original vocals.

And we (unfortunately) have to mention the 2010 cover by that year's X Factor finalists for Help For Heroes. A good cause, but a rubbish, sickly rendition.