Dave Amitri on Heroes
Arriving at month 10 I really feel like I’m in a peak Bowie phase. His delve into experimental electronica is proving to be my favourite period. I’ve heard much about the Berlin Trilogy and while geographically it may be a Trilogy, musically I’m getting the sense that it really started with “Station To Station” which would make it a quadrilogy? The Associates theme looms large and as they are one of the most important bands of my life this 12 month project has really come to life and “Heroes” hasn’t let me down. Just to shake things up a bit there’ll be no references to other bands that I hear in this music. I’ll try and keep to a pure review format because I think I’ve exhausted those references and I want to avoid too much repetition. I’ve done a bit of reading as always and my favourite line so far is this…
The album was recorded sporadically from July to August 1977. The majority of the tracks were composed on the spot in the studio, the lyrics not being written until Bowie stood in front of the microphone
It’s impressive if true because what comes next is just a little bit special.
“Beauty and the Beast” starts with a bit of improv piano and drums then drops in a wah wah noise that would wake the dead. He’s got your attention already. Bowie then seemingly, finally completely in control of his vocals takes us through a power house of a song with ghostly “whooo’s” and edge of his range “my, mys” with female backing to lift it another level. There’s the thought that this could have been one of those tracks that just never gets going on previous albums but here it just keeps coming. Guitars mixed with keyboards and a beat that doesn’t let go. It’s some opener..
“Joe The Lion” is more of the same, if more guitar lead. It grabs you and just keeps going. Bowie telling a story that may have made sense in his head but has anyone ever deciphered these lyrics?
“Joe the lion went to the bar
A couple of drinks on the house and he was
A fortune teller he said nail me to my car
And I’ll tell you who you are”
I imagine it’s great live song.
Now I don’t suppose I’ll come up with anything new about “Heroes”. I will say hearing it again among this collection has given it new context for me. Much loved by television sporting montage makers it’s ubiquity has dulled it’s greatness but hearing it here has given it new life. Such a simple yet clever song. Straight off with a basic backing beat accompanied by long single keyboard notes that stretch out endlessly but hypnotically. Is this the blueprint for my early 80’s heroes? I can only imagine being 15 or 16 hearing this and thinking “that’s what I want to do”. This is Bowies greatest vocal achievement as the music just keeps going without crescendo, that all comes from the vocal, another part of the song copied by many a young vocalist. Right now it’s my favourite Bowie song. I really need a word with 12 year old me who probably dismissed it… It’s perfect.
This being Bowie of course he deflates my balloon of wonder a little with “Songs of the Silent Age”. Maybe because it follows “Heroes” but its stage Bowie rearing his head again with the sax and the harmonies just not working for me. Expectations raised its perhaps not surprising but onwards we go.
“Blackout” raises the bar again another song that drives along with a mix of guitar and keyboard that finishes side one nicely. I’ve used “nicely” in a Bowie review, oh dear. On to side two where the fun really starts.
The title “V-2 Schneider” is so intriguing that I have to look it up. My thoughts that it referred to version two of Bo Duke was clearly wide of the mark.. It’s Florin Schneider from Kraftwerk meets a V-2 rocket. Of course it is… Either way it’s a gloriously bonkers almost instrumental track that mixes just about everything that they had in the studio that made a sound. The almost lost in the mix vocal repetition of the title gives it an otherworldly feel among the recognisable sounds. It’s all just a delicious pick and mix for your ears.
How to describe “Sense Of Doubt”? Well clearly its another electronic piece supplemented by piano that sounds like the noise I used to make on my Aunt’s piano when I was 9 and fascinated by the lower register keys. However what I really hear is one of those dramatic seascapes in sonic form, dark and foreboding. A mix of colour and form and impending doom. I found a painting, “The Ninth Wave” by Ivan Aivazovsky which illustrates it perfectly. The song and the painting are both glorious.
It segues seamlessly into “Moss Garden” which is soothing, calming and the sort of thing you’d want to meditate to. I’m going with a Japanese feel although it could equally be Indian. A biwa perhaps or shamisen or sitar over a ambient, electronic backing. It’s a haunting, whisper of a track that takes you into a Garden of Eden of sound. Ommmm…..
“Neuköln” on the other hand is bleak and industrial. Church like organ playing out a scene from a night time red light area full of suspicious characters and cheap thrills and danger on every corner. It’s so atmospheric, and engaging. It’s the end to a quite extraordinary run of instrumentals.
The album ends on a song I’m very familiar with “Secret Life Of Arabia” is an upbeat ahead of it’s time piece of pop that doesn’t quite fit with anything else on the album but that doesn’t matter. Somehow it works, Bowies vocal is bang on it again to finish off a quite remarkable album.
So I quite like “Heroes” then. I checked the charts for 1977 and it’s that period between ABBA and The Sex Pistols in amongst Rod Stewart and The Stranglers and here was Bowie ignoring all that and doing his own thing. Continuing to lay down the template for what was to come when electronic music really exploded. I came into this project as a cynic who needed convincing. There were snippets of what others heard but it never completely clicked with me. Then came the crashing disappointment of “Young Americans”. Since then for me to deny what followed through “Station to Station”, “Low” and now “Heroes” when I’ve spent the last few years telling anyone who’d listen how the early 80’s were the pinnacle of popular music would render these reviews completely worthless. I cannot deny their brilliance and importance in the unimportant world of popular music. I will seek out vinyl copies of these three albums. Who knows about “Lodger” and “Scary Monsters”? We’ll see. Not to listen to necessarily but to help tell the story of the rest of my collection from 1980 onwards. Like any collector my prized artefacts will remain so but owning these records will help define them, tell their story and as I’ve said before let me get inside the heads of my heroes as their creative spark was ignited by a man who would clearly have been a hero of theirs.
“We could steal time just for one day,
We can be heroes for ever and ever.
What d’you say?”
Sewer Robot says
I’m really glad you kept going, Dave, but maybe not as much as you are..
Tiggerlion says
Superlative review, as always.
Joe The Lion is about a real performance artist, named Chris Burden. He actually nailed himself to cars, amongst other eye-watering activities.
I love the fact you like side two more. Personally, I see Secret Life Of Arabia, the most danceable track on the album, as a postscript that really belongs on side one. Or the future. It would have suited Scary Monsters well.
The extra special ingredient on “Heroes” is Robert Fripp. His guitar work is amazing. He was instructed to play dirty, filthy Rock, something he never did with King Crimson. It’s his best ever album as a guitarist in my view.
Dave Ross says
You’re talking about the album “Heroes” as opposed to the song?
Moose the Mooche says
The album.
Dave Ross says
Thanks @tiggerlion More facts to pad out my musings. Again as you probably know I’m aware of “Secret Life Of Arabia” via Billy MacKenzie and BEF.
Moose the Mooche says
Tremendous song, almost the invention of mutant disco, I was dead chuffed when it turned up on the 74/80 compo.
Mike_H says
Moose the Mooche says
His face at 1.06: don’t have nightmares.
Moose the Mooche says
Roger that on the Sunday Lunch Hitmaker. Isn’t B&tB the one where Fripp just turned up, plugged in and played along with what he could hear in his cans without having had any information about what the track sounded like?
I would argue that his work on Scary Monsters is even better. When I first heard Fashion on the radio at the tender age of seven I absolutely could not fucking believe what I was hearing. “Is this allowed? Are you actually allowed to put noises like that on a pop record??”
Tiggerlion says
His work on Scary Monsters is equally good but there is less of it. “Heroes” is where to hear him at his absolute best.
yorkio says
It’s No Game (No. 1) is peak Fripp for me.
Moose the Mooche says
Oh yes, another one where he seems to be playing sideways. I know what I mean.
Black Type says
The featured instrument on Moss Garden is a Japanese koto, which gives it the distinctive Far Eastern vibe. The Dame was a noted Japanophile, but certainly no Weeaboo.
GCU Grey Area says
Fripp’s sustained guitar on ‘Heroes’ was done ‘old school’, I think, by feedback from his guitar amp in the studio. Notes were changed by a combo of string bends, and moving to/away from the amp, with duct tape on the floor as a guide. He seems to do the song nowadays with a Fernadez sustainer pickup on his guitar, as does Steve Hackett on his Les Paul-types.
fitterstoke says
Interesting…I had always assumed that Fripp used an E-bow for that “Heroes” sound…
GCU Grey Area says
I’ve thought on this some more, and thinked that the source was a video / videos on YouTube, with Tony Visconti. Fripp’s ‘guitar’ is him playing three or four different parts all overlain.
yorkio says
Sound on Sound had a great feature about the recording of Heroes, including Fripp’s technique for getting that extraordinary lead guitar.
https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/classic-tracks-david-bowie-heroes
fentonsteve says
For another fine example, see: Forest Fire by Lloyd Cole & the Commotions.
Dave Ross says
There’s my lesson for this month. Robert Fripp, Mr Wilcox in those crazy kitchen videos is actually a bona fide genius.
fentonsteve says
It wasn’t Fripp on Forest Fire, but Commotions guitarist Neil Clark. He surrounded himself with an array of cranked-up guitar amps all set to feed back at different tones, stuck gaffa tape all over the floor (hurrah!) to mark his positions, and moved around “sort of like a human feedback theremin”.
fitterstoke says
This clarification does not, in any way, detract from your observation about Fripp’s genius, @Dave-Amitri – plenty of very talented and inspirational guitarists around, but relatively few actual geniuses…
Dave Ross says
I answered the wrong comment but you know my love of Rattlesnakes so there’s a connection there sort of…
Hugh Janus says
I did think it was a bit odd that you thought it was a keyboard. 😀
(on the track, Heroes). This reply has somehow ended up far from where I thought it was going to be.
And I love Sons Of The Silent Age.
I used to put on the sequence of instrumental tracks and then lie down on my bed with my eyes closed, imagining that this is what it must be like to be on drugs. :-} I imagined myself in a spacecraft, gliding low over the smoking ruins of a previously inhabited planet after an apocalyptic event.
Secret Life Of Arabia always brought me round with a jolt after dropping into a kind of meditative trance.
Dave Ross says
I listened again and make no excuse for thinking it was done on a keyboard. It absolutely sounds like one. Fascinating that it was guitar. It remains a phenomenal song either way. I imagine OMD or similar being able to replicate it with one finger 4 years later must have been incredibly frustrating for Fripp and others. I remember the fuss and “keep music live” brigade at the time being really angry about synthesisers. Not surprising really….
Moose the Mooche says
Apart from Sgt Pepper, Exile OMS and SMiLE, is the making of any album as mythologised as this one? And it’s funny that it’s become, apart maybe from Hunky, his most celebrated album when it died on its arse on release.
Lodestone of Wrongness says
“Heroes was a commercial success, peaking at number 3 on the UK Albums Chart and number 35 on the US Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart. It was the best-received work of the Berlin Trilogy on release, with NME and Melody Maker naming it Album of the Year.”
Even me, a well-known and much admired (?) Bowie sceptic, immediately fell in love with Heroes. Dying on its arse it did not do
Rigid Digit says
Fulham Fallout?
dai says
His most celebrated album? Not sure about that. Most celebrated single? Possibly
deramdaze says
I know that Elton John’s albums took a bit of battering in the late 1970s, but surely most name acts automatically had albums which got to about no. 3 in the chart?
The success or otherwise is probably better measured by how long it was in the chart, and/or how steadily it sold over the subsequent years.
Moose the Mooche says
“Heroes” falls into that category of records like the first Velvet Underground album – the people who bought it played it to death over the next few years, making it seem more successful than it actually was. that said I’m probably really thinking of the single, which really did tank, no matter what anybody says.
@dai I was referring to the backstory of the album rather than the album itself. One of these days I’ll learn how to express my ideas using words, it might make life easier.
Lodestone of Wrongness says
Apologies if I came across snarky (me, heaven forfend !)
Never considered myself a Bowie fan ( in fact I gave Ziggy Stardust away to a bloke outside Goodge Street station) but Heroes blew me away.
Moose the Mooche says
Even John Lennon was impressed, and he was hardly listening to any contemporary music at the time.
Patti Smith liked it. Patti Smith! I didn’t even know she liked…..music!
Dave Ross says
It wasn’t ABBA, it wasn’t the Pistols, it was the future so number 3 when charts mattered seems fairly reasonable to me…
deramdaze says
… but completely in keeping with what you’d expect.
Name act releases album – people who like name act go out and get album in the first week.
Hugh Janus says
Moose the Mooche said: “I’m probably really thinking of the single, which really did tank, no matter what anybody says.”
Well that depends if you regard a single reaching number 11 as ‘tanking’, especially as that’s only one position below Starman. Also consider that singles sold a hell of a lot more copies in those days.
dai says
Highest Position/Weeks on chart:
Ziggy 5/168
Hunky Dory 3/150
Space Oddity 17/42
TMWSTW 24/30
Aladdin Sane 1/83
Pin Ups 1/39
D Dogs 1/42
YA 2/17
STS 5/24
Low 2/30
Heroes 3/33
Lodger 4/17
Scary Monsters 1/32
Moose the Mooche says
Ziggy was, I think, the biggest seller by a massive margin prior to Let’s Dance.
Timbar says
A lot of the mythologising about Heroes is due to the first takes and happy accidents way it was recorded. Bowie said in October 1977 “The album sounds fresh and was not at all preconceived” (The only song pre written was Sons of the Silent Age)
With Joe the Lion “the melody and lyrics and final vocal took less than an hour” (Tony Visconti)
For Moss Garden, Brian Eno was playing around with a chord sequence & said to Bowie “ Give us a shout when you think it’s long enough”. Bowie “looked at the clock and said Yeah that’ll probably do and then we stopped and on the record that’s exactly where the piece ends”
Bowie later said that the “plodding tempo and rhythm” of “Heroes” were inspired by I’m Waiting for the Man, while Tony Visconti remembered that “He wrote, or modified a pre-written verse as he sang it, asking me to stop the machine while he amended a line or two”
Bowie did a lot of publicity for Heroes, performing the single on both Top of the Pops & Marc. However it only reached 24 in the Uk charts. Hanif Kureishi said that “He was very competitive with Bryan Ferry. He used to do a very funny impression of Bryan Ferry in front of Brian (Eno) who used to look rather embarrassed” so it must have been galling that the rereleased Virginia Plain was a bigger hit.
Junior Wells says
Nice work Dave. Have you heard his version of Heroes sung in German?
Diddley Farquar says
Sons Of The Silent Age is one of my favourites on the album. It does sound to me more like a properly written song than most of the other tracks. Secret Life Of Arabia is also a cracking tune. Both are brilliantly performed by those involved. I care less for the rockers like Blackout and Beauty And The Beast. They sound kind of half-arsed to me.
Arthur Cowslip says
I like that one as well.
Tiggerlion says
I like them all.
Beauty And The Beast is possibly his best opener on an album, a step-change from Low.
Dave Ross says
I’m sure you know this song but having used up so many Associates references over the last two albums I couldn’t really go again in this review. The similarities between this and Beauty and the Beast though….
Moose the Mooche says
It kind of reminds me of Marcello Carlin’s Then Play Long blog – for quite a few years nearly every review he wrote would make some kind of connection with Carla Bley’s Escalator Over the Hill. He thought it was irritating but it was both interesting and endearing. Why shouldn’t you write about the music you actually like? This is the Afterword, not Pitchfork.
Dave Ross says
Ha ha Moose. When this is done I’m going to really dig into the Associates / Bowie connections for my own benefit
Moose the Mooche says
We will expect updates from this coalface. B McK gets a lotta love round here.
Tiggerlion says
Wow! I haven’t listened to that in in years. Must fish it out again.
I always thought Associates were mainly influenced by Lodger but, no, they go back further.
I’m very much looking forward to next month, Dave.
Moose the Mooche says
Is anybody else hoping Dave takes this into a second year? This time next year he’d be on Hours, assuming he missed out Tin Machine. I think Dave would like the later albums…. just sayin’….
attackdog says
Moose, One must not make assumptions, even Moose’s.
Tin Machine was a legitimate part of Bowie’s trajectory and I for one look forward to reading Mr Amitri’s take on at least Tim Machine 1.
Moose the Mooche says
Yeah, but then the project will extend into 2023. I’m trying to make it more of an attractive proposition for the lad.
Sewer Robot says
If we’re writing letters to Santa, I’d be keen to hear Dave’s thoughts on The Idiot and Lust For Life before he goes on to Lodger.
I think they have more relevance to what he’s digging for than Bowie post Monsters..
Dave Ross says
You’ll be relieved to hear I’m not planning any more after this…
Moose the Mooche says
Oh, okay then.
*quietly plans campaign of pitiless emotional blackmail to keep Dave manacled to his keyboard indefinitely*
Rigid Digit says
Oh go on – give Tin Machine a go when you’re done
davebigpicture says
I’d rather not. I still vaguely remember hearing it when it was released and I can’t imagine it has improved with age.
Hugh Janus says
Moose the Mooche said: “I’m probably really thinking of the single, which really did tank, no matter what anybody says.”
Well that depends if you regard a single reaching number 11 as ‘tanking’, especially as that’s only one position below Starman. Also consider that singles sold a hell of a lot more copies in those days.
I rate Hours highly as well, but to get the complete picture he really needs to watch the ‘A Reality Tour’ concert DVD, which is absolute peak Bowie and how I’d always like to remember him. My only gripe with it is that they inexplicably edited out Fall Dog Bombs The Moon, which is one of my favourite Bowie tracks.
Dave Ross says
Thanks as always @Timbar for padding out my guesswork with facts. Fascinating stuff
slotbadger says
This is the album for me, I so taken by it I actually moved to Berlin and would walk around Neukolln late at night listening to it on my headphones (dodging the hordes of other “sensitive” British blokes wandering around the streets doing exactly the same thing)
Sense of Doubt is walking up Karl Marx Allee at sunrise on a winter mornings, flanked by peeling old Soviet housing blocks and massive, imposing Brutalist buildings.
Beauty And The Beast is wandering on a busy night down Ku’damm
Joe The Lion ditto, through Kreuzberg
Heroes itself is wonderful when listened to walking north east of Potsdamerplatz, past Hansa Studios itself
Moose the Mooche says
I never knew that you could DO that….
deramdaze says
Spare a thought for the guy who liked Squeeze so much he ended up in Deptford.
paulwright says
Nicely done
slotbadger says
Just walking the dead, innit Moose
Dave Ross says
This is great. Album tours should be a thing or at least a thread on The Afterword….
Freddy Steady says
Big fan of Yes Please by the Monday’s!
Moose the Mooche says
That’s a good album. Fuck the backstory.
…..NETTO……
Freddy Steady says
Oh Moose, it’s not a good album.
Moose the Mooche says
I like it.
Compare it to something by Ed Sheeran or the fkin Lighthouse Family. It’s good – not excellent, but good.
Freddy Steady says
No thanks.
Moose the Mooche says
“The living dead don’t get a holiday”…..
Timbar says
Beauty & the Beast was released as a single at the start of 1978 – 2 weeks in the top 40, peaking at 39 – and I remember it getting a fair bit of airplay. Sounds reported that the b side Sense of Doubt was being played by pub landlords on the jukebox at chucking out time.
Tiggerlion says
Wyatting!
I haven’t been in a pub for a long, long time and back then it was to watch a football match. Do they still have jukeboxes linked to the worldwide web?
dai says
Well done on not mentioning Eno at all …
Dave Ross says
More ignorance than design…
Black Type says
A kind of oblique strategy, if you will.
Moose the Mooche says
I’m pretty sure Eno borrowed those cards from the then-teenage Bob Mortimer. They say things like
“Be more puce”
“A stitch in time saves Nigel”
“Adopt a seagull and milk it for wisdom”
“Point everything at Norfolk”
Alias says
Moose said that most of the big name pre punk acts had gone to shit by 1980. I would say that most of them had gone to shit by 1977. I was into punk and didn’t object to the 1977 year zero attitude. One of my sisters was also into punk, but stayed loyal to Bowie. She bought this album and it was great. Bowie still had it. That made us both very happy.
Tiggerlion says
The advert for “Heroes” said “There’s New Wave and Old Wave and there’s David Bowie”.
Moose the Mooche says
I didn’t say that. I said that most pre-punk artists went to shit in the 80s. And then thought of a load of artists who very much didn’t.
Just thought of another one : Robert Wyatt.
Alias says
I take that back then.
Most of the bands that I liked pre punk had gone to shit by 1977.
Moose the Mooche says
Which bands, out of interest? The Rubettes? I’m with you there….
fentonsteve says
The double concept album, Tales from Topowombling Wimbledon Common, was so awful it remains unreleased and the band split shortly after. Wellington’s 1976 solo single flopped and nothing more was heard until they reformed for a triumphant Glastonbury Festival headline set in 2011.
Moose the Mooche says
….followed by the near-legendary What’s The Story (Tobermory)? gig at Knebworth.
fentonsteve says
Where they performed their comback hit, Madame Cholet Supernova
Moose the Mooche says
Baby I Know What I Meeeeeeean
Alias says
Elvis, Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
Moose the Mooche says
You’ve been listening to that frightful ruffian Joseph Strummer and his Clashes.
dai says
You mean the “no hits” Clash (31 top 40 singles and albums in a career of 6 years)
https://www.officialcharts.com/artist/16161/clash/
deramdaze says
No Top 10 hits = no hits clash… why did you use speech marks?
You don’t call getting to no. 54 a hit!
The Beatles had hits … 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1… they’re hits.
Even Blondie or the Jam. They had hits.
comrade joe, a ruffian?… he’d have been blown over in a light breeze.
dai says
I didn’t call getting to no. 54 a hit.
Moose the Mooche says
Fucking hell, this is Pavlov territory
Barry Blue says
Or a meringue?
Moose the Mooche says
Arf!
(said the dog)
MC Escher says
Just trolling, Moose. Nowt to see here…
Moose the Mooche says
Y’ don’t say…
Black Celebration says
I’m really enjoying these reviews because I am coming at it from a similar perspective to Dave in that I was just too gosh-darned young to appreciate any Bowie album before Scary Monsters, other than singles compilations and Low.. I know we’ll come to Scary Monsters later, but that was the one that “got” me. I was about 14 at the time. Nothing out there sounded anything like it.
Hamlet says
I might be alone in thinking Beauty and the Beast is one of the crappiest songs I’ve ever heard; Heroes is one of the best.
Diddley Farquar says
I’m with you.
Timbar says
That’s the downside of first takes & happy accidents (“ I don’t do retakes unless absolutely necessary. I get bored so quickly“) the quality control can suffer.
Freddy Steady says
You’re not alone!
Hugh Janus says
Admittedly, there would be little to it without Fripp’s searing guitar explosions.
Dave Ross says
Usually when I’ve finished one of these I go back to listening to stuff I’m familiar with. Today for my car journey home it was this. What’s happening to me? 😳 (It’s bloody good though, all killer etc…)
NigelT says
I hadn’t heard the album in donkey’s years, so I dug out my old 70s vinyl copy today. To be honest, I never really liked this or Low all that much back in the day – my memory was of some great tracks, but some rather tedious instrumental stuff. I actually have revised my opinion now – I guess my 70 something self has got a little more open minded than my 20 something counterpart, which I find surprising! So, I followed it up with Low and Lodger (which I always did like) and had a brilliant afternoon!
fentonsteve says
I really like the recent Visconti remaster. I dunno what the speakers in Hansa were like, but I always found it a screechy listen.
This sent me back to Dylan Howe and Philip Glass cover albums, both of which are great.
fitterstoke says
Not sure you could really call the Philip Glass piece a covers album – more a Glass symphony based on themes from Heroes. It’s like saying Rachmaninov was covering Paganini…
(Is that the hamper for Mr Amitri?)
fentonsteve says
I’m not sure you could really call the Dylan Howe thing a covers album, either – more of a jazz extemporisation based on themes from Low & Heroes.
(just making sure Mr Amitri’s CORSAIR TINNED CHICKEN is in the post).
fitterstoke says
Aye, true enough…I do enjoy the Dylan Howe album but I don’t hear much Bowie left…
duco01 says
1. “Heroes” always used to be my favourite Bowie album, but I think that Low has just about overtaken it now. It’s a close call, though. They’re both brilliant, and the Berlin period has always been my No.1 Bowie era.
2. Has anyone on this thread mentioned the fact that “Heroes” (the album and the song) must always be written in inverted commas? (Welch, Chris (1999). “David Bowie: Changes, 1970–1980”. p. 116. The use of quotation marks around the title meant that Bowie felt there was something ironic about being a rock ‘n’ roll hero to his fans, while he kept his own emotional life as far distant and remote and private as possible.)
3. I like that bit in Blackout where Bowie cries “I’m under Japanese influence and my honour’s at stake!”
4. I love Joe the Lion. It must be, technically, a very difficult song to sing.
5. The only track I’ve never cared for is “The Secret Life of Arabia”. I’m rather surprised by how popular it is among Afterworders.
Tiggerlion says
I was felt that the song “Heroes” is a straight forward love song, capturing that flush of excitement & wonder when you feel on top of the world. It was inspired by Bowie spotting Tony Visconti and Antonia Maass sharing an illicit intimate moment by the Berlin wall. Antonia had not only replaced Tony’s wife, Mary Hopkins, in his affections but also in the backing vocal booth (Antonia on Beauty And The Beast, Mary on Sound And Vision).
The inverted commas are there to emphasise the couples ordinariness apart from the epic nature of their love affair.
The Secret Life Of Arabia is a wonderful dance song, thanks to Carlos Alomar who gets a rare writing credit, with a totally over-the-top vocal. It is, as you say, a postscript, one that points us toward Scary Monsters.