Back to a hall by a wall
“Heroes” is David Bowie’s twelfth studio album, released on RCA in October 1977 as the middle instalment of the run now known as the Berlin Trilogy. Unlike its predecessor and successor, it was recorded entirely in the city that gave the trilogy its name, at Hansa’s second studio, a former concert hall not far from the Berlin Wall. Sessions ran through mid-1977, once Bowie had finished producing Iggy Pop’s next record, reuniting him with Brian Eno and producer Tony Visconti. Ten tracks resulted, most of them written on the spot rather than arriving as finished songs, with the lyrics frequently not settled until Bowie stood at the microphone to sing them.
The same band, a healthier room
Much of the band carried over from the album before it: guitarist Carlos Alomar, bassist George Murray and drummer Dennis Davis formed the rhythm section again, with Bowie contributing more piano than previously, having practised the instrument while working on Pop’s record. The addition was guitarist Robert Fripp, brought in at Eno’s suggestion after another German musician originally approached for the job fell through. Visconti, who had grown frustrated by thin studio support on the previous record, had a full engineering staff this time and kept a two-track tape running throughout rehearsals so that nothing useful got lost. The overall mood in the room, by the production team’s own account, was markedly lighter than before.
A guitarist who never heard the songs
Fripp arrived from New York on a first-class ticket and sat down to record lead guitar over material he had never heard, working from minimal direction because Bowie had not yet written the words or melodies for most of it. He finished his parts across three days, and both Eno and Visconti singled out his playing as extraordinary for how well it suited songs built without him in mind. The results anchor several of the record’s best-known passages, the guitar lines threading through structures that were still being invented as he played them.
Songs built with nothing written down
Basic tracks for the first side went down quickly, in roughly two days, following rough run-throughs with the production team standing in for the eventual performers. Drums were left largely untreated this time, relying on the size of the room rather than studio effects, and Dennis Davis expanded his kit with congas and timpani to fill the space. Eno, credited as co-writer on four songs, took a more active role than on the previous record, suggesting unconventional approaches to individual tracks and pushing the band toward one-take performances that the team judged stronger than any later attempt.
One side of songs, one side of atmosphere
Side one holds the album’s more conventional song structures, while side two moves into instrumental territory, continuing a division set up on the record before it but with a more hopeful tone throughout. A Berlin jazz singer the production team met socially contributes backing vocals on the title track, one of several details tying the record directly to its surroundings rather than treating the city as backdrop. The proximity of the Wall itself became part of the working atmosphere, described by the production team as tense enough to sharpen the performances rather than dampen them.
A title track that outgrew the album
The title track struggled as a single on first release but has since become one of the most widely recognised recordings in Bowie’s catalogue, prized for its guitar interplay and its account of love conducted somewhere near a fortified border. Critical opinion at the time favoured this record over its predecessor for its warmth and its more passionate performances, even though later assessment has often ranked the earlier album as the more radical achievement. The cover photograph nods to a German expressionist painting, a visual echo that ties the trilogy together across its three very different records.
Where it sits against its neighbours
This suits anyone who wants to hear Eno’s constraint-driven methods produce something genuinely joyful rather than merely clever, and anyone curious how much a specific room and a specific political moment can shape a record without a word being written about either. It asks less patience than the album before it, while keeping the same appetite for instrumental risk on its second half. Listeners who need every track to carry a fully worked lyric, or who prefer the colder tone of the earlier record, may find parts of side two thin by comparison, but the title track alone justifies the time, and the album around it holds up nearly as well.