“Heroes” by David Bowie

"Heroes", David Bowie's twelfth album, came out on RCA on 14 October 1977, only nine months after Low, and it's the middle panel of his Berlin Trilogy, the only one cut entirely in that city, at Hansa Tonstudio. He went in during the middle of 1977, fresh from working on Iggy Pop's Lust for Life, with Brian Eno as his co-conspirator and Tony Visconti producing, and most of the Low crew back in the room. The new face was Robert Fripp, whose guitar lights up the whole record.

Most of these songs were built on the spot in the studio, and Bowie didn't write the words until he was standing at the microphone, which gives the record its reckless, charged urgency. It keeps the blueprint of Low, rock songs on the first side and mostly instrumentals on the second, and the same electronic and ambient palette, but the mood is warmer and the performances burn hotter. The title track is the proof: it wasn't much of a hit as a single at first, but it has grown into one of the best-known songs he ever made.

It reached number 3 in Britain and number 35 in America, and two of the big British weeklies each crowned it their album of the year. Bowie pushed it hard on television and in interviews, then took it and Low around the world on the Isolar II tour in 1978. The cover shot, like the one for Pop's The Idiot, tips its hat to Erich Heckel's painting Roquairol.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.