"`Heroes`"[a] is a song by the English musician David Bowie from his 12th studio album of the same name. Co-written by Bowie and Brian Eno and co-produced by Bowie and Tony Visconti, the song was recorded in mid-1977 at Hansa Studio 2 in West Berlin. The backing track was recorded fully before lyrics were written; Bowie and Eno added synthesiser overdubs while Robert Fripp contributed guitar. To record the vocal, Visconti devised a "multi-latch" system, wherein three microphones were placed at different distances from Bowie and would open when he sang loud enough. Like other album tracks, he improvised lyrics while standing at the microphone.

An art rock song that builds throughout its run time, "`Heroes`" concerns two lovers, one from East Berlin and the other from the West. Under constant fear of death, they dream they are free, swimming with dolphins. Bowie placed the title in quotation marks as an expression of irony on the otherwise romantic or triumphant words and music. Directly inspired by Bowie witnessing a kiss between Visconti and singer Antonia Maass next to the Berlin Wall, other inspirations included a painting by Otto Mueller and a short story by Alberto Denti di Pirajno.

Released in edited form by RCA Records on 23 September 1977 as the album`s lead single, initial reviews for the song were mostly positive, with some welcoming it as a classic addition to the artist`s catalogue. Bowie heavily promoted the song with a music video and sang it on numerous television programmes, including Marc Bolan`s Marc and Bing Crosby`s Christmas special Merrie Olde Christmas. Bowie also released German and French-language versions of "`Heroes`", titled "`Helden`" and "`Héros`", respectively. Despite its large promotion, the song only peaked at number 24 on the UK Singles Chart and failed to chart at all on the US Billboard Hot 100, but reached the top 20 in multiple European countries and Australia.

Over time, the song has grown substantially in reputation and is considered by many to be one of Bowie`s finest songs, as well as one of the greatest songs of all time. His biographers pan the single edit for diminishing the song`s power. Following Bowie`s death in 2016, the song reached a new peak of number 12 in the UK. The song remained a staple throughout his concert tours and live performances and is Bowie`s second-most covered song after "Rebel Rebel" (1974). A version of "`Heroes`" by the Wallflowers recorded for Godzilla: The Album was positively received and charted in the US and Canada in 1998. Another version by the series 7 finalists of The X Factor was a UK number one in 2010. The song has also been used predominantly in advertising over the years and has appeared in several television series and films.

Writing and recording

Backing track

Bowie composed the song with multi-instrumentalist Brian Eno (pictured in 2008), who had the word heroes in mind for the initial chord sequence.

After completing his work co-producing Iggy Pop`s Lust for Life (1977) and various promotional events, David Bowie spent a few weeks devising ideas and concepts with multi-instrumentalist Brian Eno for his next studio album.[1] One idea was using the same G–D chord sequence he had used for Pop`s "Success".[2][3] Eno wanted to call it "Heroes", as the sequence "sounded grand and heroic", and "I had that very word – heroes – in my mind."[4][5] According to biographer Chris O`Leary, the word also paid reference to German krautrock band Neu!`s "Hero" (1975).[4] Recording for the album took place entirely in West Berlin between July and August 1977 at Hansa Studio 2, a former concert hall converted into a recording studio that had been used by Gestapo officers during World War II as a ballroom and was located about 500 yards from the Berlin Wall. The song was co-produced by Bowie and Tony Visconti, with contributions from Eno.[1][6][7]

The backing track began with Bowie on piano and, returning from Station to Station (1976), the core band of Carlos Alomar on rhythm guitar, George Murray on bass and Dennis Davis on drums.[8] The band used the initial chord progression, creating a groove that built into a crescendo, lasting eight minutes. Alomar devised the underlying riff while Murray and Davis provided the "hypnotic pulse".[9][8] Although he had fed Davis`s drums through his Eventide H910 Harmonizer on Low (1977), Visconti used it sparingly on the album "Heroes", only during the mixing stage, and as such, the drum sound is mostly atmospheric to the room. He ran Murray`s bass through a flanger.[4]

According to Visconti, the recording sat for a week before overdubs commenced. Eno brought in his EMS Synthi AKS, a synthesiser built in a briefcase, using its joystick, oscillator knobs and noise filter to create a "shuddering, chattering effect [that] slowly builds up and gets more and more obvious towards the end".[8] Bowie also added Chamberlin and high-pitched lines on his ARP Solina synthesiser.[4] The guitarist Robert Fripp, then on hiatus from his group King Crimson, was recruited at Eno`s suggestion.[7] Receiving little guidance from Bowie, he cut three takes all based on feedback loops.[4][9] For each take, Fripp marked different spots on the studio floor with tape and played a different note in each spot, such as A at four feet from his amp and G at three feet, all while his guitar was fed through Eno`s EMS Synthi.[4][8]

When mixing the backing track, Visconti merged Fripp`s takes onto one track, creating what he called "a dreamy, wailing quality".[4] He buried Davis`s kick drum, finding it "seemed to plod" the track and becoming "more energetic without it", and elevated Murray`s bassline, which Alomar augmented on guitar in a higher register.[4][8][10] An intended horn section was replaced with a synthesised brass line by the Chamberlin, while the bassline replaced the originally planned string section. With percussion, Visconti added tambourine and struck an empty tape canister with a drumstick as a placement for a cowbell.[4][10]

Vocals

Co-producer Tony Visconti (pictured in 2007) devised the "multi-latch" system used to record the lead vocal and sang backing vocals.

Similar to Low, Bowie neglected to write lyrics until all but he and Visconti had departed.[6] As such, the backing track for "`Heroes`" sat untouched for many weeks and for a time was rumoured it would remain an instrumental.[5][9] On one day, Bowie requested Visconti leave him alone in the studio to focus on writing lyrics.[10] As he stared outside the studio window, he witnessed Visconti and singer Antonia Maass kiss in close proximity to the Berlin Wall, which he used as the basis for the lyric.[11][7] Bowie initially claimed that the lyric was based on an anonymous young couple, but Visconti, who was married to Mary Hopkin at the time, contended that Bowie was protecting him and his affair with Maass. Bowie later confirmed the story in 2003, over two decades after Visconti and Hopkin`s eventual divorce: "Tony was married at the time, and I could never say who it was. I think possibly the marriage was in the last few months, and it was very touching because I could see that Tony was very much in love with this girl, and it was that relationship which sort of motivated the song."[5] Additionally, he improvised lyrics while standing at the microphone after witnessing Pop use the same method during the making of The Idiot (1977) and Lust for Life.[2][12]

To record the lead vocal, Visconti devised a "multi-latch" system that would utilise the ambience of Hansa to full effect.[2][13] Three Neumann microphones were used to capture the vocal: the first, a valve U 47, was set up nine inches from Bowie; the second, a U 87, was set up 20 feet away; and the third, another U 87, about 50 feet away. The two farther mics were routed through a noise gate, a volume controlling device that would turn them on as Bowie`s voice reached them.[4][5][8][2] Visconti explained: "If he sang a little louder, the next microphone would open up with the gate, and that would make sort of this big splash of reverb, and then if he really sang loud, the back microphone would open up, and it would just open up this enormous sound."[5] Bowie recorded three takes, the last of which mostly appears in the final song, and was completed in about two hours. Bowie and Visconti immediately recorded the backing vocals afterwards, harmonising in thirds and fifths below the lead vocal.[5][4] The final mix was done at Mountain Studios in Montreux, Switzerland, a studio that would become one of Bowie`s mainstays. An engineer at Mountain, David Richards, would also become one of his regulars.[6]

Composition

Music

The song features guitar lines from Robert Fripp (pictured in 2007).

"`Heroes`" utilizes a D–G chord progression[14] and contains five verses, some longer than others, and an outro.[2][4] Primarily in D major, the verses move from D to G major, along with C major on "nothing will keep us together" and a foray into A minor and E minor on "beat them" and "forever". The song is mainly in the D mixolydian mode, wherein the A major dominant chord is replaced with A minor, swapping from the parallel minor D minor back to the tonic D major.[4]

Richard Buskin of Sound on Sound described the song as a "highly experimental piece of art rock".[8] Biographer David Buckley likens it to a Wall of Sound production, a forceful and noisy arrangement of guitars, percussion and synthesisers.[15] Author James E. Perone finds the song a "great example of contemporary pop music", balancing early-1970s progressive rock on the synthesisers to the "avant-garde tone color manipulations" from Eno.[16] According to Bowie, the track was "a combination of Brian`s piano technique and [mine] which are both dastardly", turning into a reworking of the Velvet Underground`s "I`m Waiting for the Man" (1967), a song long admired by the artist.[4]

Lyrics

"`Heroes`" tells the story of two lovers, one from East Berlin and one from West Berlin. Under constant risk of death, they dream of freedom, swimming with dolphins.[11] Like fellow album tracks "Beauty and the Beast" and "Joe the Lion", the song, at its core, represents two opposing forces: the couple`s love for each other, and a sense that the Berlin Wall will separate them.[16] Blurt magazine`s Robert Dean Lurie analyses it as a "clear nod" to the divided city of Berlin Bowie lived in at the time.[17] The first verse is from the point of view of the man who stresses unity, while the second describes the couple`s explicit love and affection for each other. Perone contends that the instrumental passages separating the third verse, wherein the narrator wishes his lover could "swim like the dolphins", represents a transition in the story.[16] The fourth verse is a reiteration of the first, albeit Bowie sings an octave higher and in a near-scream. In the fifth and final verse, the narrator recalls standing and kissing by the Wall while guards fired bullets above their heads. Perone states that this moment captures the sense the narrator`s love can "overcome anything" and, as dolphins can freely swim as they wish, the proclamation that "we can be heroes" "gets well beyond anything the listener might have anticipated at the start of the piece".[16]

Nicholas Pegg and Thomas Jerome Seabrook argue that "`Heroes`" is not the "feelgood anthem" it is often interpreted as.[5][10] According to Bowie, the quotation marks in the title were intended to express "a dimension of irony" on the otherwise romantic or triumphant words and music.[5][18][19] Describing the song, he stated it is about "facing reality and standing up to it", about achieving "a sense of compassion" and "deriving some joy from the very simple pleasure of being alive".[5] Likewise, Pegg contests the song contains underlying dark themes that juxtapose its uplifting chord sequence and delirious vocal, such as "you can be mean, and I`ll drink all the time", which is "hardly the most promisingly heroic statement", while the repeated announcement of "nothing will keep us together" asserts that time is short. Additionally, the pronouncement that the narrator wants the relationship to last "just for one day" harkens back to the dark lyrics of "The Bewlay Brothers" (1971) and represents a shift from the Nietzschean "supermen" themes of Bowie`s earlier works into the realm of heroism.[5][10] Regarding the themes, Lurie stated:[17]

"`Heroes`" is more akin to alchemy: We may be average and regular in the present moment, but we have the potential, at any time, for heroic thought and action – even if only for one day. The transformation can be brought about by an external event or through an internal change in perspective.

Although Bowie confirmed that the kiss between Visconti and Maass directly inspired the lyric, another source of inspiration included Otto Mueller`s 1916 painting Lovers Between Garden Walls, which Bowie and Pop saw at Berlin`s Brücke Museum. The painting depicts an embracing couple between two walls representing the brutality of World War I.[5] Bowie also revealed in the foreword of his wife Iman`s 2001 book I Am Iman that Alberto Denti di Pirajno`s 1956 short story A Grave for a Dolphin, which concerns a doomed love affair between an Italian soldier and a Somalian girl during World War II, provided inspiration.[5][10] According to Pegg, the destiny of the story`s female protagonist is linked with that of a dolphin she swims with, and when she dies, so does the dolphin. Bowie further explained: "I thought it a magical and beautiful love story and in part it had inspired my song `Heroes`."[5][10]

Bowie is also recounted to have used events in his own life for the lyrics, such as his then-marital issues, alcoholism and his inability to swim ("I wish I could swim").[b][5][10] Furthermore, O`Leary notes that the phrase "I will be king, you will be queen" is taken directly from the traditional English folk song "Lavender`s Blue".[c][4] In the late 2010s, a story on the Italian Bowie website Blackstar revealed that artist Clare Shenstone, who Bowie met in 1969, had visited him during the summer he recorded "`Heroes`". The two spent a day walking along the Wall, which started, in her words, "with David asking me if I dreamed about him because he dreamed about me. I told him I had just had a beautiful dream about swimming with dolphins."[4] Speaking on the BBC Radio 4’s Bowie in Berlin documentary in 2024, Shenstone claimed the song`s lyrics were directly inspired by the day the two spent together, saying the lyrics "like dolphins can swim" were referring to the dream she had and told Bowie about, while other parts of the lyrics like "and the guns, shot above our heads and we kissed, as though nothing could fall" were Bowie recalling moments from the day when the two were walking by the Wall and kissed there.[20]

Promotion and release

To promote "`Heroes`", Bowie appeared on television programmes hosted by Marc Bolan (left, in 1973) and Bing Crosby (right, in 1951).

After undertaking zero promotional events for Low, Bowie promoted "Heroes" extensively.[6] In early September 1977, he agreed to perform the title track on Marc Bolan`s Granada Television series Marc, which was recorded on 9 September and broadcast on 28 September,[21][22] following Bolan`s death from a car accident on 16 September.[21] This particular version, released as a