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David Bowie: Heroes

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s

Artist: David Bowie
Title: Heroes
Released: 1977
Label: EMI Records
Time: 49:17
Producer(s): David Bowie, Tony Visconti
Appears with: Tin Machine
Category: Pop / Rock
Rating: *******... (7/10)
Media type: CD
Purchase date:  2003.01.04
Price in €: 9,10
Web address: www.davidbowie.com

 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Beauty and the Beast (D.Bowie) - 3:32
[2] Joe the Lion (D.Bowie) - 3:05
[3] Heroes (D.Bowie/B.Eno) - 6:07
[4] Sons of the Silent Age (D.Bowie) - 3:15
[5] Blackout (D.Bowie) - 3:50
[6] V-2 Schneider (D.Bowie) - 3:10
[7] Sense of Doubt (D.Bowie) - 3:57
[8] Moss Garden (D.Bowie/B.Eno) - 5:03
[9] Neuköln (D.Bowie/B.Eno) - 4:34
[10] The Secret Life of Arabia (C.Alomar/D.Bowie/B.Eno) - 3:46

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


DAVID BOWIE - Guitar, Instrumental, Composer, Keyboards, Saxophone, Vocals, Background Vocals, Koto, Lyricist, Mixing

CARLOS ALOMAR - Guitar, Rhythm Guitar
DENNIS DAVIS - Percussion, Drums
BRIAN ENO - Synthesizer, Guitar, Instrumental, Keyboards, Vocals
ROBERT FRIPP - Guitar
ANTONIA MAASS - Background Vocals
GEORGE MURRAY - Electric Bass
TONY VISCONTI - Bass, Background Vocals, Wind, Engineer

DAVE RICHARDS - Engineer
COLIN THURSTON - Engineer
EUGENE CHAPLIN - Engineer, Assistant Engineer
DAVID RICHARDS - Assistant Engineer, Mixing
Dr. TOBY MOUNTAIN - Mastering
JONATHAN WYNER - Mastering
SUKITA - Photography  

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


1999 CD EMI Records Ltd. 7243 521908 0 5
1999 CD Virgin 21908
1997 CD Rykodisc 80143
1997 CS Rykodisc 80143
1991 CS Rykodisc RACS-0143
1991 CD Rykodisc RCD-10143
1977 CS RCA 12522
1977 LP RCA 12522

Repeating the formula of Low's half-vocal/half-instrumental structure, Heroes develops and strengthens the sonic innovations Bowie and Eno explored on their first collaboration. The vocal songs are fuller, boasting harder rhythms and deeper layers of sound. Much of the harder-edged sound of Heroes is due to Robert Fripp's guitar, which provides a muscular foundation for the electronics, especially on the relatively conventional rock songs. Similarly, the instrumentals on Heroes are more detailed, this time showing a more explicit debt to German synth-pop and European experimental rock & roll. Essentially, the difference between Low and Heroes lies in the details, but the record is equally challenging and groundbreaking. [The CD reissue includes the previously unreleased instrumental "Abdulmajid" and a remix of "Joe the Lion."]

Stephen Thomas Erlewine


Beauty and the Beast: Once past the epochal title track, few of the songs on David Bowie's second album of 1977, Heroes, truly approached the legendary status of his earlier work. Both "Blackout" and "Sons of the Silent Age" have their supporters, however, while Bowie's label of the time, RCA, clearly had a soft spot for the opening "Beauty and the Beast," selecting that for the unenviable job of following up the earlier "Heroes." Of course, it could not hope to emulate its predecessor's performance, although its lyric did inspire one of the better bootleg titles of the following year's live tour, Slaughter in the Air..The song also became Bowie's first-ever 12" single, with a vaguely remixed " disco version" released in the U.S.

Dave Thompson

Joe the Lion: This track from Heroes mixes the album's experimental edge with a sharp guitar attack to create one of David Bowie's most potent rockers. The lyrics are a surreal character portrait inspired by Chris Burden, a performance artist who specialized in crucifying himself to cars (which inspired the line "Nail me to my car and I'll tell you who you are"). They also cryptically reflect the odd lifestyle that Bowie was enjoying at the time while living in an artsy district of Berlin with its tales of pub-crawling and the constant intonation of the phrase "get up and sleep." The music is a forceful hybrid of rock and pop stylings, combining the drive and riff-based energy of a rock song with oddball interjections of pop hooks (like the "yeah, yeah" counterpoint vocal lines that pop up midway through the song). However, Bowie's recording pushes the song into heavier territory thanks to a fierce instrumental attack. Robert Fripp's furious electric guitar leads set the tone, starting the song with an explosive bang and laying down thunderous textures that are given further layering by pounding, pub-style piano and crashing drum workJoe the Lion. Bowie tops it off with a righteously noisy vocal that finds him wailing as loud and hard as his vocal range will take him. As a result, "Joe the Lion" feels like an avant-garde band doing their version of hard rock. This unique fusion of styles, combined with the song's relentless energy, have led critics and fans alike to single the song out as one of the best moments on Heroes.

Donald A. Guarisco

Heroes: Not even ending up as a Microsoft commercial theme could quench the sheer power and beauty of "Heroes," arguably David Bowie's finest individual song throughout his varied, fascinating career. The story of its inspiration got a bit muddled over time — it might have been two employees at the recording studio near the Berlin Wall who Bowie saw in an embrace, or simply two random strangers in the shadow of that Cold War symbol. But inspired by that and with the collaborative help of Brian Eno and, with a jaw-dropping set of solos, guitarist Robert Fripp, Bowie, his backing band and producer Tony Visconti created a true classic. Clearly drawing from the various German influences he had absorbed while still relying on the dramatic power of rock and roll, the song becomes an anthem, Fripp's exquisite work at once celebratory and an electric requiem. That feeling of valediction is reflected in Bowie's lyric about individual connection and response in the face of a crushing, anonymous outside world — but it wouldn't be half so grand without Bowie's simply breathtaking vocal. Starting with an almost conversational tone, by the end of the song he's turning in a performance that could almost be called operatic, yet still achingly, passionately human.

Ned Raggett

Sons of the Silent Age: If there was any further proof needed that late seventies David Bowie was on a creative roll, it could be seen that the song following "Heroes" on the album of the same name was equally incredible. Using his talents for dramatic crooning in combination with everything from his own queasy sax playing and a moody but energetic wash of backing vocals and keyboards to regular rock instruments, Bowie and Brian Eno created another futuristic song that has stood the test of time. It even begins with a dramatic punch, whirling synths and aforementioned sax leading into a deeply curious verse, Bowie intoning about the titular characters almost as if they were aliens in the modern world. His best line there: "They never die, they just go to sleep one day." Contrasting with this is the bravura chorus, his tone suddenly shifting from conversational observation to hand-on-heart passion, yet still overlaid with a processed, unnervingly echo air, while the song concludes with a wordless backing croon, majestic and mysterious.

Ned Raggett

Blackout: Possessing the same compressed, chaotic feeling as its "Heroes" album-mates "Beauty and the Beast" and "Joe the Lion," "Blackout" is yet another demonstration of David Bowie's inventive recharge in the late seventies thanks to his collaborations with Brian Eno. Not merely content to suddenly spike the verses to turn them into chaotic spoken-word collages before sliding into a more conventional melody, more than once the music itself turns into a drum-only breakdown, Bowie suddenly calling out "Get me to the doctor!" The call-and-response exchange between lead and backing vocals towards the end of the song almost sounds like a wild parody of similar efforts from Young Americans, words and syllables drawn out into extreme falsettos. Astoundingly tweaked guitars almost sound like whining insects, the extra production to the rhythm section further makes everything sound just a little bit off. For all that, there's still a pop hook at the core of it all that works, just enough.

Ned Raggett

V-2 Schneider: David Bowie's propensity to name or salute particular idols and inspirations in his songs can readily be noted, and this effort from "Heroes" is no exception, paying tribute to Florian Schneider, one of the two core members of the band Kraftwerk. That said "V-2 Schneider" isn't specifically a tribute to that band as it is German electronic Krautrock as a whole, moody bass and clipped guitar parts being as essential to the song as much as the shimmering synth background and melodies. Perhaps the most inspired touch of all from Bowie and his main collaborator Brian Eno is how Bowie's sax is turned into an exultant, echoed horn section, giving the song the same forward-looking surge as "A New Career in a New Town." It's mostly an instrumental, though Bowie's chant of the title floats through the mix towards the end, a soothing touch over the propulsion and sudden guitar feedback that sends out the song on a high, powerful note.

Ned Raggett

All-Music Guide, © 1992 - 2002 AEC One Stop Group, Inc.



One of Bowie's more stellar moments working with Brian Eno, Heroes again sees the artist moving into barely chartered waters (at that point, 1977), creating moving, emotive rock and putting it right up against some very detached and futuristic synthesized sounds. The collection opens with a ferocious rocker, courtesy of Robert Fripp's taut, snarling guitars ("Beauty and the Beast"), and then slides into the roar of "Joe the Lion" without missing a beat. Bowie's vocals have rarely sounded as desperate as they are on "Heroes," the anguished "Blackout" rages on a peculiarly up beat, and suddenly the listener finds they've slipped into a parallel world of icy soundscapes. The next four tracks present glassy synthesizers, stark piano, the ping of Asian-styled guitars, and other styles presumably left over or influenced by the Low recordings. The delicate "Moss Garden" is particularly beautiful, and "Sense of Doubt" is brooding and ominous. The closer, "The Secret Life of Arabia," moves with the rhythm of a snake charmer, and Bowie's vocals are irrepressibly intoxicating. Challenging, and worth the effort.

Lorry Fleming, Amazon.com essential recording



Zusammen mit Low (797719 2) und Lodger (797724 2) markierte Heroes Bowies Höhepunkt Ende der 70er. Dem damals kokainabhängigen Wahlberliner assistierten Gitarren-Zauberer Robert Fripp und Sound-Wizard Brian Eno zu einer brillanten Koketterie mit Düsternis, Untergang und Traurigkeit. Verfremdete Stimmen, schräge, teils orientalisch inspirierte Harmonien, vier harsche Instrumentals, dazu die Titelsong-Hymne - langweilig wird Bowie nie. Erst recht nicht mit den Bonustracks Abdulmajid und Joe The Lion (Remix).

© Audio



Part two of the Berlin trilogy that started with Low and ended with Lodger, Heroes saw Bowie trying to kick his assorted drug addictions while simultaneously attempting to create the music of the future. And so, on the one hand, "Beauty and The Beast"--which spawned the Human League's "Love Action" and not a whole load else, really. And on the other, the title-track--one of mankind's greatest achievements, a song so incredible it's permissible to know a technical fact pertaining to its recording, i.e., Bowie had eight microphones set up for the vocals, all at staggered distances along a hallway. That's why he sounds like he's bouncing his voice off mountains on the moon. Like Low, Heroes is an album of two halves--the second side being taken up with the brooding instrumentals he and producerBrian Eno cooked up while the engineers were busy wiring up eight microphones in the hallway. It's not your essential Bowie. But it's pre-Tin Machine Bowie, and that's more than enough.

Caitlin Moran, Amazon.co.uk Review



Heroes is the second album in what we can now hope will be a series of David Bowie-Brian Eno collaborations, because this album answers the question of whether Bowie can be a real collaborator. Like his work with Lou Reed, Mott the Hoople and Iggy Pop, Low, Bowie's first album with Eno, seemed to be just another auteurist exploitation, this time of the Eno-Kraftwerk avant-garde. Heroes, though, prompts a much more enthusiastic reading of the collaboration, which here takes the form of a union of Bowie's dramatic instincts and Eno's unshakable sonic serenity. Even more importantly, Bowie shows himself for the first time as a willing, even anxious, student rather than a simple cribber. As rock's Zen master, Eno is fully prepared to show him the way.

Like Low, Heroes is divided into a cyclic instrumental side and a song-set side. "V-2 Schneider" is an ingeniously robotic recasting of Booker T. and the M.G.'s—at once typical of Bowie's obsession with pop dance music and a spectacular instance of an Eno R&B "study" (a going concern of Eno's own records). "Sense of Doubt" lines up an ominously deep piano figure with Eno synthesizer washes, blending them into "Moss Garden," an exquisitely static cut featuring Bowie on koto, a Japanese string instrument. Low had no such moments of easy exchange; Bowie either submitted his voice as another instrument for Eno or he pressed Eno to play the part of art-rock keyboard player.

The most spectacular moments on this record occur on the vocal side's crazed rock & roll. Working inside the new style Bowie forged for Iggy Pop, "Beauty and the Beast" makes very weird but probable connections between the fairy tale, Iggy's angel-beast identity and Jean Cocteau's Surrealist Catholicism, a crucial source for Cocteau's film of the tale.

For the finale, Heroes explodes into a trilogy of dark prophecy: "Sons of the Silent Age," "Heroes" and "Black Out." It's a Diamond Dogs set that, this time, makes it into the back pages of Samuel Delaney's post-apocalypse fiction, pushed by a brilliant cerebral nova among the players. Bowie sings in a paradoxical (or is it schizo?) style at once unhinged and wholly self-controlled. With a chill, the listener can hear clearly through Bowie's compressed lyrics and the dense sound.

We'll have to wait to see if Bowie has found in the austere Eno a long-term collaborator who can draw out the substantial words and music that have lurked beneath the surface of Bowie's clever games for so long. But Eno clearly has effected a nearly miraculous change in Bowie already.

BART TESTA - RS 256
© Copyright 2002 RollingStone.com
  

 L y r i c s


BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

Oooooooo...

Weaving down a byroad, singing the song
That's my kind of highroad gone wrong
My-my
Smile at least
You can't say no to the Beauty and the Beast

Something in the night
Something in the day
Nothing is wrong but darling
Something's in the way
There's slaughter in the air
Protest on the wind
Someone else inside me
Someone could get skinned, how?
My-my
Someone fetch a priest
You can't say no to the Beauty and the Beast
Darling

My-my
You can't say no to the Beauty and the Beast
(Liebling)
My-my
You can't say no to the Beauty and the Beast

I wanted to believe me
I wanted to be good
I wanted no distractions
Like every good boy should

My-my

Nothing will corrupt us
Nothing will compete
Thank god heaven left us
Standing on our feet
My-my
Beauty and the Beast

My-my
Just Beauty and the Beast
You can't say no to the Beauty and the Beast
Darling

My-my
My
My-my
My


JOE THE LION

Joe the lion
Went to the bar
A couple of drinks on the house an' he said
"Tell you who you are if you nail me to my car"

Boy
Thanks for hesitating
This is the kiss off

Boy
Thanks for hesitating
You'll never know the real story
Just a couple of dreams
You get up and sleep

You can buy god it's Monday
Slither down the greasy pipe
So far so good no one saw you
Hobble over any freeway
You will be like your dreams tonight

You get up and sleep
You get up and sleep
Joe the lion
Made of iron

Joe the lion
Went to the bar
A couple of drinks on the house an' he was
A fortune teller he said
"Nail me to my car and I'll tell you who you are"

Joe the lion, yeah yeah
Went to the bar, yeah yeah
A couple of dreams and he was
A fortune teller he said
"Nail me to my car tell you who you are"

You get up and sleep
The wind blows on your check
The day laughs in your face
Guess you'll buy a gun
You'll buy it secondhand
You'll get up and sleep

Joe the lion made of iron (repeat ad inf.)


HEROES

I, I will be king
And you, you will be queen
Though nothing will drive them away
We can beat them, just for one day
We can be Heroes, just for one day

And you, you can be mean
And I, I'll drink all the time
'Cause we're lovers, and that is a fact
Yes we're lovers, and that is that

Though nothing, will keep us together
We could steal time, just for one day
We can be Heroes, for ever and ever
What d'you say?

I, I wish you could swim
Like the dolphins, like dolphins can swim
Though nothing, nothing will keep us together
We can beat them, for ever and ever
Oh we can be Heroes, just for one day

I, I will be king
And you, you will be queen
Though nothing will drive them away
We can be Heroes, just for one day
We can be us, just for one day

I, I can remember (I remember)
Standing, by the wall (by the wall)
And the guns, shot above our heads (over our heads)
And we kissed, as though nothing could fall (nothing could fall)
And the shame, was on the other side
Oh we can beat them, for ever and ever
Then we could be Heroes, just for one day

We can be Heroes
We can be Heroes
We can be Heroes
Just for one day
We can be Heroes

We're nothing, and nothing will help us
Maybe we're lying, then you better not stay
But we could be safer, just for one day

Oh-oh-oh-ohh, oh-oh-oh-ohh, just for one day


SONS OF THE SILENT AGE

Sons of the silent age
Stand on platforms blank looks and no books
Sit in back rows of city limits
Lay in bed coming and going on easy terms
Sons of the silent age
Pace their rooms like a cell's dimensions
Rise for a year or two then make war
Search through their one inch thoughts
Then decide it couldn't be done

Baby, I'll never let you go
All I see is all I know
Let's find another way down (sons of sound and sons of sound)
Baby, baby, I'll never let you down
I can't stand another sound
Let's take another way in (sons of sound and sons of sound)

Sons of the silent age
Listen to tracks by Sam Therapy and King Dice
Sons of the silent age
Pick up in bars and cry only once
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

Baby, I won't ever let you go
All I see is all I know
Let's take another way down (sons of sound and sons of sound)
Oh baby, baby, baby, I won't ever let you down
I can't stand another sound
Let's find another way in (sons of sound and sons of sound)
(Sons of sound and sons of sound)
Baby, baby, baby, fire away!


BLACKOUT

Oh you, you walk on past
Your lips cut a smile on your face
Your scalding face
To the cage, to the cage
She was a beauty in a cage

Too, too high a price
To drink rotting wine from your hands
Your fearful hands
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 honour's at stake

The weather's grim, ice on the cages
Me, I'm Robin Hood and I puff on my cigarette
Panthers are steaming, stalking, screaming

If you don't stay tonight
I will take that plane tonight
I've nothing to lose, nothing to gain
I'll kiss you in the rain
Kiss you in the rain
Kiss you in the rain
In the rain
Get me to the doctor

Get me off the streets (get some protection)
Get me on my feet (get some direction)
Hot air gets me into a blackout
Oh, get me off the streets
Get some protection
Oh get me on my feet (wo-ooh!)

While the streets block off
Getting some skin exposure to the blackout (get some protection)
Get me on my feet (get some direction, wo-ooh!)
Oh get me on my feet
Get me off the streets (get some protection)


SENSE OF DOUBT

Instrumental


MOSS GARDEN

Instrumental


NEUKOLN

Instrumental


THE SECRET LIFE OF ARABIA

The secret life of Arabia
Secret secrets never seen
Secret secrets ever green

I was running at the speed of life
Through morning's thoughts and fantasies
Then I saw your eyes at the cross fades
Secret secrets never seen
Secret secrets ever green

The secret life of Arabia
Never here never seen
Secret life ever green

The secret life of Arabia
You must see the movie the sand in my eyes
I walk through a desert song when the heroine dies

Arabia (secret secret)
Arabia (secret)
Arabia (secret secret)

THREE TIMES:
  Arabia
  Arabia (secret secret)

The secret life of Arabia
Never here never seen
Secret life ever green

 M P 3   S a m p l e s


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