Lyrically Speaking: David Bowie celebrates the power of love in ‘Heroes’
Although it took him a few years to develop his outlook for the global market, David Bowie became one of his generation’s finest creative forces in the early 1970s. Following his promising work on ‘Space Oddity’ and Hunky Dory, the shapeshifting performer struck his first peak in the celestial concept album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.
Bowie maintained excellent form throughout the mid-1970s and reached another artistic peak with his celebrated Berlin Trilogy: Low, “Heroes” and Lodger. Far from Ziggy Stardust’s glam-era pomp, these albums were more experimental, employing state-of-the-art synth textures and production methods courtesy of Brian Eno and Tony Visconti.
The Berlin Trilogy was near-ubiquitously inspired by Bowie and Iggy Pop’s adventures in mainland Europe. As one might guess, they spent most of their time in the German capital, Berlin, which, at the time, was divided into two halves by the 155km Berlin Wall separating East and West Germany.
Inspired by the city’s politically enforced division, Bowie wrote the 1977 single ‘Heroes’, perhaps his most popular hit from the Berlin era. Instead of using a chorus, Bowie uses the motif and closing refrain, “We can be heroes,” which refers to the narrator and their lover.
With a discerning eye for artistic ambiguity, Bowie knew better than to spoon-feed his narrative, but in the knowledge of his surroundings at the time of writing, it is apparent which wall he refers to in the fifth verse.
Earlier in the song, “I wish you could swim/ Like the dolphins, like dolphins can swim,” suggests that the narrator pines for his lover, ostensibly trapped on the East German side of the wall, to enjoy the freedom of the high seas. Bowie then sings, “We can beat them, for ever and ever,” presumably referring to the Grenztruppen, who guarded the wall.
In the fifth verse, just before the closing refrain, Bowie sings, “I, I can remember/ Standing, by the wall/ And the guns, shot above our heads/ And we kissed, as though nothing could fall”. This development sees the couple defying the establishment in the name of love, risking their lives as the bullets fly.
The tale spun in ‘Heroes’ is, of course, a fantasy, but it was based on very real events. “One day, David announced that he had the lyrics written for ‘Heroes’, but he had to write a few more verses. And that day Antonia Maaß, who sang backing vocals on ‘Beauty and the Beast’, was in the studio,” Visconti recalled in a past interview with the BBC.
“David couldn’t concentrate with us in the studio, so he said [to Visconti and Maaß], ‘Would you two mind taking a walk?’ but it wasn’t a great place to walk around,” he continued. “So, we walked around the back of the studio, and we could see the control room and I guess we were visible too because Antonia and I shared a little kiss by the wall. We go back to the studio, and David is smiling. He had a sort of cat who ate the cream sort of smile, and I said, ‘What’s up?’ and he said well, we saw you kiss by the wall, and it made it into the song.”
When, in 1989, the people of Germany rose up to tear down the Berlin Wall in one of the most iconic moments in modern history, Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ became an enduring symbol of defiance and freedom. When Bowie died in 2016, the German government officially thanked the Starman for his contribution: “Good-bye, David Bowie. You are now among Heroes. Thank you for helping bring down the wall.”
Listen to David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ below.
