Written by Bowie and Brian Eno, the song started out as an
instrumental and has echoes of the type of textured sound arrangements created
by Phil Spector and his wall of sound a decade earlier. Yet ‘Heroes’ is
thoroughly modern. Like lightning, it pulsates through the sky, whispering
truths as only lightning can. But there is something quite beautiful about the
black hole from whence ‘Heroes’ emanated.
The song started out with five musicians: Carlos Alomar – Guitar;
George Murray – Bass; Dennis Davis – Drums; David Bowie – Piano; and Brian
Eno – Synthesizer. There was no vocal because there was no melody; there was
no form, no structure. Indeed they didn’t know what the song was called.
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Bowie and Tony Visconti worked in a particular way in the
studio. Rather than approaching the song from a distinct set of criteria, they
preferred to work blind, to reach ‘something’ (whatever that something might
be) from a position of fluidity.
Every song on the ‘Heroes’ album began with a backing track. And it
was the collaborative aspect of ‘Heroes’ which informed its artistic essence.
Whether it be, the sublime guitar of Robert Fripp, brought in to add a celestial
magic to the recording, or Brian Eno’s melismatic contortions on the
synthesizer, or Visconti’s production, each element enhances the growing
sense of beauty within its reach.
And then there is Berlin. Looming large in the background,
the city whispers all its uncertainties and all its magic through each and
every note.
In 1976 Bowie, eager to escape the cocaine fuelled ‘dreams’
of 1970s America, left Los Angeles. He wanted to lose himself in the anonymity
of a society less obsessed by celebrity. He was ready to ditch the ‘Thin White Duke’
and re-invent himself.
Berlin was, during the years of the cold war, something of
an anomaly. Both of the west and of the east, it was as if it had lost its
traditional place, which was at the centre of Europe. Before World War II, it
was a centre of modernity. It was Brecht and Weill, Kollwitz and Kirchner, the
world of ‘Caberet’, the androgynous centre of a fluid world of sexuality. And
yet this was the milieu from which Naziism was born. And, in many respects, this
was what informed Bowie and Bowie’s art. Berlin was, in 1977, a paradox. It was
a world bursting with ideas, but it was also a world trapped in the past.
By 1977, Bowie had settled in Berlin. He had just finished
producing what is perhaps Iggy Pop’s finest Album (Lust for Life) and was ready
to immerse himself in his new project. He was, both emotionally and physically,
in a much better place than he had been a year or two previously. He was, in fact, in the perfect place to
produce what must be considered one of his greatest recordings.
‘Low’, was the first, and might be seen as the best of Bowie’s
so called ‘Berlin Trilogy’ (though personally I find the whole idea of a
‘Berlin Trilogy’ to be little more than a marketing conceit, and in fact of the
three albums in question only ‘Heroes’ was fully recorded in Berlin), but as an
individual song ‘Heroes’ must rank as among his finest.
Bowie was, at this stage, both isolated and connected. He
had distanced himself from the various focal points of the record industry –
Los Angeles, New York and London. But he had also immersed himself in the
avant-garde of Krautrock, of Kraftwerk and NEU! And all of this, the isolation,
the emergence of Krautrock, the influence of the Brücke Museum, the constellation of various talents
in the recording studio, came together, in a serendipitous moment, to create
something of rare splendour.
But it is
the lyrical beauty and the almost desperate vocals which makes ‘Heroes’ stand
apart. There is an ethereal quality to the lyrics, delicate and light but still
bathed in an afterglow of pathos. They rise and shine, lost but found in a
swirling cacophony of sound. The lyrics of ‘Heroes’ liberate. They are
liberating yet stand in the shadow of the Berlin Wall and all that that stands
and stood for.
There is
the romantic liberation of rising from this world, to be like dolphins, to be
heroes, just for one day, but still, there is the plain notion that it is just
for one day.
There are
echoes of Beckett, of Pozzo in ‘Waiting for Godot’, when he says,
Have
you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It's abominable!
When!
When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day
I went
blind, one day we'll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die,
the
same day, the same second, is that not enough for you?
There is no clearer description, in literature, of the
ephemeral nature of existence. But, unlike the seemingly dystopian nothingness
of Beckett, ‘Heroes’ inhabits a world of romance. It is in no way sentimental,
but it is quixotic and it is all the better for that. Indeed, the protagonists
of ‘Heroes’ always remind me of younger versions of the protagonists in the
Pogues ‘Fairy Tale of New York’.
Bowie’s best songs are those that deal with humanity and the
core decency which lies within us all; songs that juxtapose hope and despair. And
‘Heroes’ is no different, the lovers kiss in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, a
grotesque construct born of fear. But theirs is a moment of glory and defiance;
defiance in the face of bricks and barbed wire, defiance in the face of time.
The value of beauty and, indeed, the worth of existence, is
so often measured by its longevity as if beauty can somehow become lost if it
doesn’t or cannot last. But lives, and
the beauty that inhabits them, are defined by moments; moments of grandeur,
moments of splendour, moments when the prosaic fades into the distance.
Butterfly-like, beauty is often no more than a moment, a dizzy dancing moment.
‘Heroes’ captures this moment.
Visconti, whose kiss against the back drop of the Berlin
wall inspired the lyrics, gated the microphones so that the second and third
microphone only became active as Bowie raised his voice. This gating of the
microphones heightened the despair in Bowie’s vocals as the song reaches its strained
climax.
And ‘Heroes’ is all about this desperate hope. The sense
that somehow individuals can rise above the political machinations of their ‘perceived’ masters, that moments in our lives are bigger than we think, that
their importance is no less than we imagined, that the feelings and emotions of
one or two individuals is the equal of great movements in society, that the flutter
of a butterfly wing is the equal of an earthquake. Indeed, that it is an
earthquake of sorts.
‘Heroes’ is like a whisper in the dark, a whisper of frantic
hope and frantic despair. It presents a picture of two unknown lovers lost in a
moment of passion beneath the spectre of the Berlin wall; in many respects, it
represents failure, after all, their love is doomed. Yet at its core, there is
a moment of glory, a moment where two souls collided in wonder and this is the
essence of what we are. No more, no less.
(c. Brian Murray 2018)
(c. Brian Murray 2018)
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