{"id":612909,"date":"2026-04-17T12:36:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T12:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/612909\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T12:36:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T12:36:13","slug":"heroes-by-david-bowie-the-story-behind-the-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/612909\/","title":{"rendered":"Heroes by David Bowie: The Story Behind The Song"},"content":{"rendered":"

One afternoon in July 1977, David Bowie<\/a> was looking out of the window of Hansa Studio in Berlin when he noticed a couple kissing near the Berlin Wall.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always said it was a couple of lovers by the Wall that prompted the idea for Heroes,\u201d Bowie told Classic Rock in 2015, explaining its meaning. \u201cActually, it was [Bowie producer] Tony Visconti<\/a> and his girlfriend. Tony was married at the time, so I couldn\u2019t talk about it. But I can now say that the lovers were Tony and a German girl [Antonia Maass] that he\u2019d met while we were in Berlin. I think possibly his 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The basic track had already been started by Bowie and Brian Eno<\/a> in the weeks before, with Visconti behind the mixing desk. Their working method during Bowie\u2019s so-called \u2018Berlin period\u2019 was to build layered tracks that would later inspire lyric and melody, like making the frame before the picture. And using Eno\u2019s \u2018oblique strategies\u2019 cards (aphorisms that encouraged lateral thinking), they would often give themselves creative dilemmas within that frame.<\/p>\n

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\u201cMaybe I\u2019d write out five or six chords,\u201d Bowie told us, \u201cthen discipline myself to write something only with those five or six chords involved. So that particular dogma would dictate how the song is going to come out, rather than me and my sense of emotional self.\u201d<\/p>\n

David Bowie – “Heroes” (Official Video) [HD] – YouTube
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On a broader level, living in Berlin itself was an oblique strategy for Bowie. As he said at the time: \u201cI find that I have to put myself in those situations to produce any reasonably good writing. I\u2019ve still got that same thing about when I get to a country\u2026 I have to put myself on a dangerous level, whether emotionally or mentally or physically, and it resolves in things like that: living in Berlin, leading what is quite a spartan life for a person of my means, and in forcing myself to live according to the restrictions of that city.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bowie threw his restricted chord progression out to the band, and they ran with it, building an eight-minute groove into a triumphant crescendo. The underlying riff of Heroes came from guitarist Carlos Alomar, with the hypnotic pulse provided by bassist George Murray and drummer Dennis Davis. \u201cWith such great musicians, the notes were never in doubt,\u201d Bowie later said. \u201cWe looked at \u2018feel\u2019 as being the priority.\u201d<\/p>\n

From the start, Eno described the music as \u201cgrand and heroic\u201d, and said he had \u201cthat very word, \u2018heroes\u2019, in mind.\u201d After the basic track was done, he overdubbed shuddering atmospherics by twiddling knobs on his EMS Synthi, a mini-synthesiser built into a briefcase.<\/p>\n

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The final touch was added by guitarist Robert Fripp. What the King Crimson<\/a> leader later called \u201chairy rock\u2019n\u2019roll\u201d was more a soaring series of aria-like feedback loops. Fripp marked with adhesive tape the spots on the studio floor where he could lock into certain singing tones. For a guitarist known for playing while seated, it\u2019s interesting that one of his most enduring performances came from stepping and swaying.<\/p>\n

The finished track sat for weeks. There have been rumours that Heroes was intended as an instrumental (hence Fripp\u2019s wall-to-wall soloing). But Bowie says he was just waiting for the right meaning, the right lyrical spark, which eventually came from the lovers by the Wall.<\/p>\n

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The interior of the Hansa-Tonstudios recording studio in Berlin, where David Bowie recorded Heroes (Image credit: Jens Kalaene\/DPA\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Delivered in one of his greatest vocal performances, the us-against-the-world theme of his lyric was full of odd poetic touches, like the lines about the dolphins. As Bowie said, he often used a William Burroughs-inspired cut-up method of writing, taking random text from a book or magazine and reshuffling it.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI\u2019ll use that idea to provoke a new set of images for me,\u201d he explained, \u201cor a new way of looking at a subject. I still find it incredibly useful as a writer\u2019s tool. And I\u2019m amazed these days at the amount of cut-up sites that are now on the internet. It\u2019s quite phenomenal. There are at least ten, and two or three of them are excellent. I\u2019ve used them too. I\u2019ve put a bunch of pieces of text into the thing, then hit the \u2018cut-up\u2019 button and it slices it up for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Heroes was released as a single in September 1977. It only reached No.24 in the UK, and didn\u2019t chart at all in the US. But the emotional power of the song would continue to resonate, as it became one of Bowie\u2019s theme songs, along with the likes of Space Oddity<\/a> and Changes. Its most memorable moment would come 10 years later, when he performed it live at the Platz der Republik Festival, right across from the studio in Berlin where it was conceived.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll never forget that,\u201d he recalled. \u201cIt was one of the most emotional performances I\u2019ve ever done. I was in tears. They\u2019d backed up the stage to the Wall itself so that it was acting as our backdrop. We kind of heard that a few of the East Berliners might actually get the chance to hear the thing, but we didn\u2019t realise in what numbers they would.<\/p>\n

“And there were thousands on the other side that had come close to the wall. So it was like a double concert, where the Wall was the division. And we would hear them cheering and singing along from the other side. God, even now I get choked up. It was breaking my heart. I\u2019d never done anything like that in my life. And I guess I never will again.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we did Heroes it really felt anthemic, almost like a prayer,\u201d Bowie continued. \u201cI\u2019ve never felt it like that again. However well we did it later, it was almost like walking through it compared to that night because it meant so much more. That\u2019s the town where it was written, and that\u2019s the particular situation that it was written about. It was just extraordinary.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2002 we did it in Berlin again. This time, what was so fantastic \u2013 it was in the Max Schmeling Hall, which holds about ten to fifteen thousand \u2013 is that half the audience had been in East Berlin that time way before. So now I was face-to-face with the people I had been singing it to all those years ago. And we were all singing it together. Again, it was powerful. Things like that really give you a sense of what a song and performance can do.\u201d<\/p>\n

This feature originally appeared in Classic Rock 217, published in October 2015.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One afternoon in July 1977, David Bowie was looking out of the window of Hansa Studio in Berlin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":612910,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,136],"class_list":["post-612909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}