David Bowie
"Heroes"

THE REVIEW

The Concise Journey to Becoming "Heroes"

or "there's the Old Wave, there's the New Wave, and there's David Bowie"

Summary of the previous episode: After mixing the introspective "Low," Bowie decides to stay in Berlin to work on his electronic project and continue his path of inner healing.
The story started in the review dedicated to "Low" now continues with the second chapter of David Bowie and Brian Eno's Berlin saga. We are in May 1977, the streets of Berlin are still a bit cold, but a hint of spring starts to breeze into the musicians' lives. "Lust For Life" by Iggy Pop's friend is completed, Bowie calls back to Hansa By The Wall studios the old companions of delirium, joined by Robert Fripp of King Crimson, a great innovator and scientist of his instrument.

The contrast between darkness and the hope of survival creates in the author a kind of feeling of anger: this is the atmosphere felt on the first side of "Heroes." The creations are still far from song-form, "Beauty And The Beast" and the following "Joe The Lion" are sprinkled with absurd choruses, and the leader's voice is low, then high, the effect is hysterical and delirious, as are Eno and Robert Fripp's manipulations. From the first impact, it seems that the music returns to life, and to do so it becomes angry, determined, incomprehensible in its madness. The rhythms become even more intense and grounded in the second track, but with the title track, we soar high into the sky, reaching one of the most magnificent peaks of all Bowie's production and perhaps all of music ever. The track is epic, celebratory, lavish, but at the same time cold, cynical, essential. Brian and David manage to combine hope and nihilism in the lyrics and sounds of two lovers, two addicts, two soldiers. "Heroes" is the future of a couple kissing under a guard tower near the Wall, but it's also the feeling of Nothingness of an addict who knows they can't make it to tomorrow. When Bowie's voice jumps a few octaves higher, it creates a unique effect in rock history, and Eno and Visconti's choruses are truly chilling: we kissed as if nothing could happen and the shame was on the other side. The awareness that we are nothing, and nothing will help us falls into the dark "Sons of The Silent Age," where it seems we see many boys wandering at the Berlin Zoologischer Garten train station. It's time for a breath, as we then return to the crazy tones of the first two tracks with "Blackout"... every time I hear that get me to a doctor's I've been told someone's back in town the chips are down I just cut and blackout I'm under Japanese influence and my honor's at stake I am stunned by the naturalness with which the English artist spills his anxieties onto tape.

Bowie's therapy continues with a second instrumental side that can remind us of "Low," although the tones are more varied and less "metallic": in "V-2 Schneider" we have a very recognizable saxophone line, and "Sense Of Doubt" is vacuum-sealed darkness in the suburban night of Berlin. In "Moss Garden" for the first time in many years, the sounds come into the open air, becoming soft thanks to the refined koto arpeggio... but liberation is still very far and now Bowie is walking through the desolation of the "Neukoln" neighborhood, surrounded by claustrophobic sounds like gray buildings. The saxophone is a trembling sketch in the ambiguous air of this Berlin May, where the ethnic scents of "Secret Life Of Arabia" waft.
Everything in this album is legend, not just the music and its innovative scope, but also the cover by photographer Sukita, presenting a mature artist who renounces all masks and aims for the black and white essentiality of the pose taken from Heckel's "Roquairol" painting. From the booklet photos, we deduce that the character is becoming a person, and the alien a man: in "Heroes," Bowie is dazed and wrapped in his black leather and electronic jacket, running through Berlin's streets, occasionally stopping to catch his breath, lowering his head and running his hands through his hair. Then he resumes running on a desperate and furious climb...

from "Sons Of The Silent Age"
"Sons of the silent age
Make love only once
but dream and dream
They don't walk,
they just glide in and out of life
They never die,
they just go to sleep one day"

ps: as I already wrote in the review of "Low," for those interested in the behind-the-scenes of the Berlin work, I suggest reading "Trans Europe Excess," an article from the "Uncut" magazine, accessible at the following links from velvet goldmine :
uncut 1
uncut 2
uncut 3
uncut 4