Track Listing

1. Beauty and the Beast
2. Joe the Lion
3. Heroes
4. Sons of the Silent Age
5. Blackout
6. V-2 Schneider
7. Sense of Doubt
8. Moss Garden
9. Neuköln
10. Secret Life of Arabia

Product Details

• Released on: 2007-02-19
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Import, Enhanced
• Dimensions: .10 pounds

From Amazon.co.uk
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.com essential recording
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

Un Essentiel amazon.fr
Quand paraît cet album - c'est le second que Bowie publie en cette année 1977 -, le monde du rock, particulièrement au Royaume-Uni, est agité par les turbulences du punk. Mais lui est déjà ailleurs... Sa rencontre avec Brian Eno a déjà donné un Low paru quelques mois plus tôt où les deux hommes explorent, défrichent et inventent. Avec Heroes, Bowie va parvenir à un meilleur équilibre entre sa veine la plus mélodique et les obsessions synthétiques de Eno. Il s'adjoindra pour cela le guitariste parfait : Robert Fripp, ex-King Crimson, qui est l'homme des expériences les moins prévisibles. Et l'association des trois musiciens va faire éclore des chansons comme "Sons Of The Silent Age", où la construction classique d'une ballade de Bowie, avec ses choeurs d'une autre époque et cette sensation d'avoir déjà entendu ça ailleurs - pourtant ! -, cette construction va s'enrichir des effets de la guitare et des synthétiseurs. Lesquels se taillent la part du lion dans ce qui fut la face B du disque vinyle. Là, Bowie va lorgner du côté de Kraftwerk, et laisser davantage Eno livrer ses fantasmes ("Neuköln", "V-2 Schneider"). Pour sa part, il empoignera sur ces quatre instrumentaux un saxophone qui rappelle Albert Ayler et le free jazz. Mais c'est la chanson titre ("Heroes") qui servira de balise, avec sa pulsation répétitive, et une structure plus conventionnelle. Et c'est surtout par ces géniales 6 minutes que l'album sera connu. Alors qu'elles ne sont que la porte d'un univers à découvrir. --José Ruiz

Customer Reviews

Essential for your Bowie Collection, but not best
I don't subscribe to the conventional wisdom regarding "Heroes", so I have taken a bit more time than usual to compose my review.

Apologies in advance, then, for the essay:

Context: It's the latter half of the seventies. Having faffed around in the Sixties producing the output one would expect of an Anthony Newley aspirant (i.e., none of any merit) David Bowie had struck gold - just - in 1972 with a second release of the second attempt on a tune he'd had knocking around since well before the moon landing in August '69. Space Oddity is a great tune, so the only surprise is that it didn't get picked up earlier.

From 1972 Bowie releases a succession of breathtakingly good records, numbering among them Hunky Dory (think "ch-ch-ch-changes", and then consider that this is probably the weakest track on the album. Yes, I know: it isn't weak), The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust (which melds the vastly differing styles of 1969's Dylanesque Space Oddity, 1971's hard rock effort The Man Who Sold The world, and 1972'a Hunky Dory), and then by way of post gig hangover, Aladdin Sane (Bowie's equivalent of Rattle and Hum - or "Ziggy goes to America").

At this point things (you know, cocaine, the success, the accountants, the management contract, the hairdo) were clearly beginning to get the better of him, and the latent paranoia in his records became startlingly overt in the next release, the Orwellian concept album Diamond Dogs (not actually as bad as it sounds!), and finally David wigged out altogether midway through the Diamond Dogs tour, quickly recorded and released a record of dreadful plastic Philly soul, Young Americans (which isn't to say it wasn't popular - it was - nor that doesn't have its dedicated adherents) and a live album of the experience (David Live) which appeared to prove quite the contrary.

This back-story is important because it is the context for Bowie's next three, great records, of which "Heroes" is the last. The first and second are Station To Station and Low.

I should immediately own up to being a little controversial here: most Bowie-Nuts will, tell you that "Heroes" is the middle of The Great Triptych of "Berlin" collaborations with Brian Eno, which starts with Low and concludes with Lodger.

I think most Bowie nuts are wrong. Station To Station, whilst recorded in LA at around the time The Man Who Fell To Earth was filmed, is the first of the record where Bowie pulls everything together and jettisons entirely the excesses of the Ziggy Stardust experience: this is indeed the first part of the rehabilitation which "Heroes" completes: here, the Man has indeed fallen to earth and the decision to quit America has been made, even if the body hasn't moved. "The European Canon is Here" sings the Transylvanian sounding - and looking - Thin White Duke.

If Station To Station staunches the flow of paranoia and halluncination, then Low works it out of the system: if Bowie is to be believed (as often as not, he isn't) even when he moved to Berlin he was still a pretty spooked out puppy ("Always Crashing In The Same Car" is, allegedly, autobiographical) but by the end of an album half comprising taut, sparse, minimalist rock songs and half moving but pretty maudlin instrumentals (from anyone else, you'd call that "self-indulgence"), Bowie was ready to pull out of the swan dive. Where Lodger might be the fly-by once he'd done it, and Scary Monsters the sitting-by-the-fireside-recounting-all-his-adventures, "Heroes" prescribes the upward bending arc to the heavens.

Man, that sounds pretentious. But what i mean is that, for the first time in a while it's record that's not completely inward looking: Bowie notices others and they form the material for his metaphors: a performance artist who nails himself to a Volkswagen. Lovers who furtively meet by the wall. There are a couple of pretty nifty asides where Bowie assesses his position: "I wanted to believe me; I wanted no distractions; I wanted to be good" he wails in Beauty and the Beast, and in Joe the Lion he remarks, "You can buy God - it's Monday...".

For all this cleverness, it's an album which does take some getting used to. It doesn't have the lush production of Ziggy Stardust - even the comparatively jarring Low is an easy listen compared to Robert Fripp's punishing guitar work here - and there is half an album of pretty impenetrable instrumentals on it - again, at first listen they're harder work than the equivalents on Low, but fundamentally they reward perseverance.

But when Bowie does put it all together, it's just magnificent. There are two places he really does this. The first is the triumphant title track, "Heroes" itself, of which there's not much to say but listen. From the very first down-stroke, tweaks you like a photo of an old girlfriend. The other is Sons of the Silent Age, which follows it, and in which Bowie really exercises his lungs with his patented "histrionic" singing style.

In summary, there are too many oddities and unexplained curios (such as the instrumental side!) on this record for it to hold up as among the greatest Bowie has done across 40 minutes, but, as the old boy himself said, "When it's good, it's REALLY good..."

We can be heroes, just for one day
Phase two of the Low-Heroes-Lodger tryptych during Bowie's Berlin period, collaboration with Roxy Music's Brian Eno, you name it. The musicians here other than Eno are Carlos Alomar (rhythm guitar), Dennis Davis (percussion) and George Murray (electric bass). Lead guitar honors go to King Crimson's Robert Fripp. As with Low, part of the album contains vocal songs, the other haunting instrumentals coming from Bowie's observations of Berlin from the Hansa by the Wall studio.

The dark and brooding mood from "Beauty And The Beast" comes from the prominent electronic noises courtesy of Eno. This got to only #39 on the UK charts.

The wall of noise, mainly the guitars, in "Joe The Lion" evokes a dazed dreamworld of Berlin, based in part on Bowie's observations of a city of disillusioned people, but also the antics of an American performance artist named Chris Burden, which included the "tell you who you are if you nail me to my car" line. But the line "get up and sleep" does have a weird dreamland-type atmosphere.

Then the title song, a #24 hit on the UK chart, and one of Bowie's most anthemic and inspiring songs. The inspiration came from a couple having a forbidden sort of affair by the Wall, and that despite the presence of the Soviet occupation, that "we can be heroes just for one day." The triumph of their togetherness is taken later when gunshots are fired above their heads while they kiss: "And the shame was on the other side/Oh we can beat them for ever and ever."

The droning sound on "Sons Of The Silent Age" echo the numb hopelessness of a generation who "don't walk, just glide in and out of life/they never die, just go to sleep one day." The chorus has a message of hope for those who isn't a son of the silent age.

"Blackout" could've been a good single what with its insistent drums and danceable beat.

Then come the instrumentals. "V-2 Schneider" has a strange droning organ-like sound which leads into upbeat sax-like notes, with Bowie crooning the title. V-2's were of course the aerial terror weapons Hitler used in the last stages of WW2, called doodlebugs by the Brits. Schneider refers to Kraftwerk keyboardist Florian Schneider, whom Bowie had a rapport with.

With a rustling sea and four notes on the way left-hand side of the piano, the haunting and oppressively gloomy "Sense Of Doubt" with some keyboard synths that conjures up a wasteland or futuristic city the same way. And the melancholy this evokes makes "Art Decade" and "Subterraneans" from Low as peppy as an Altered Images song. My favourite Bowie instrumental period.

Bowie uses the koto, a 13-stringed Japanese rectangular instrument along with Eno's synths to evoke the timeless wonder of a "Moss Garden," which in Japan is used as a place of contemplative meditation. Kokedera in Kyoto is one example of a moss garden. At times, a sound like an airplane flying overhead can be heard.

"Neukoln" is the name of the Turkish quarter in Berlin, where the Turks live in appalling housing and misery, much like the immigrants photographed in the 1880's by Jacob Riis. Bowie's sax is distorted and wailing, overlaid with some oppressive Eno keyboards.

The final track is a vocal song, "The Secret Life of Arabia," built around uptempo drums and funky bassline.

The instrumentals alone are worth buying this album, as is the title track and the last song. As good as Low, demonstrating that Bowie's time with Brian Eno was among the best spent in his career, but that of Berlin was very emotionally haunting.

The Overlooked Sister to 'Low'
David Bowie's catalogue is very diverse in terms of styles and personas he's adopted over the years. Most people familiar with his work are likely to name 'Ziggy Stardust,' 'Station To Station' or even 'Let's Dance' as milestone albums. But when someone mentions "Heroes," one immediately thinks of the monolithic title track, which to this day retains a place in David's live shows. In my opinion, 'Heroes,' the album, has always been rather overlooked; the spotlight being stolen by it's sister, 'Low.' And while 'Low' is most definitely a masterpiece, 'Heroes' is an excellent work in it's own right and deserves re-evaluation.

'Heroes' takes the listener away to an alternative world filled with chaos ("Beauty and the Beast"), desperation ("Blackout"), nostalgia ("Sons of the Silent Age") and humor ("Secret Life of Arabia"). David's voice hits startling new heights here, and he's singing as though his life depended on it. The ambient instrumental tracks range from murky ("Sense of Doubt") to soothing ("Moss Garden") to horrific ("Neukoln").

I find it almost a cathartic experience listening to 'Heroes,' for it's as if David is purging all these raw emotions out of his system and trying to make the best of a difficult situation (relevant to his circumstances during the time the album was recorded). Depending on my mood, it's not uncommon that I feel either drained or refreshed after listening to the album in one sitting.

'Heroes' evokes a whole gamut of feelings, and is a most provocative listening experience. It's a wild runaway-train of an album, by an artist who was always far ahead of his time. Highly recommended to all DB fans (new or old) or anyone who likes music that takes you on an adventure.