|
Produced
by David Bowie and Tony Visconti
David
Bowie (vocals, keyboards, guitar, saxophone, koto)
Carlos
Alomar (rhythm guitar)
Robert
Fripp (lead guitar)
Brian
Eno (synthesisers, keyboards, guitar treatments)
George
Murray (bass)
Dennis
Davis (drums, percussion)
Tony
Visconti, Antonia Maas (backing vocals)
|
|
Gramatte's
self-portrait
Heckel's
Roquairol
At
home in Schoeneberg
|
UNCUT
interviews Bowie in 1999:
UNCUT:
Widely seen as a more upbeat and positive album than Low.
Is this accurate?
DB:
It's louder and harder and played with more energy in a way. But
lyrically it seems far more psychotic. By now I was living full
time in Berlin so my own mood was good. Buoyant even. But those
lyrics come from a nook in the unconscious. Still a lot of house
cleaning going on I feel.
UNCUT:
The album was mostly written in the studio and completed in very
quick takes. Correct? Was there an intent behind this method?
DB:
A couple were very definitely first and only takes. I think the
rest were probably run at two or more times until the feel was right.
With such great musicians the notes were never in doubt so we looked
at 'feel' as being the priority.
Most
of my vocals were first takes, some written as I sang. Most famously
Joe the Lion I suppose. I would put the headphones on, stand
at the mike, listen to a verse, jot down some key words that came
into mind then take. Then I would repeat the same process for the
next section etc. It was something that I learnt from working with
Iggy and I thought a very effective way of breaking normality in
the lyric.
UNCUT:
It is often said that the album sleeve was an allusion to Gramatte's
self-portrait or to Heckel's Roquairol - is either of these
correct? And did the Heckel painting also inspire Iggy's The
Idiot cover?
DB:
Heckel's Roquairol and also his print from 1910 or thereabouts
called Young Man was a major influence on me as a
painter. I personally couldn't stand Gramatte. He was wishy washy
in my opinion. I have seen the Gramatte in question but no, it was
Heckel.
UNCUT:
Is Blackout a reference to you collapsing in Berlin, or to
the New York City power cut of 1977 - both of these? Neither?
Blackout
did indeed refer to power cuts. I can't in all honesty say that
it was the NY one, though it is entirely likely that that image
locked itself in my head.
UNCUT:
V2 Schneider - a tribute to Florian?
DB:
Of course.
|
Hansa
By The Wall
The
view from Hansa
|
NME
interviews Bowie in 1977:
Charles
Shaar Murray: Why does Heroes - or more accurately "Heroes"
come in quotes? Are the inverted commas actually part of the title.
DB:
Yeah. Firstly - it was quite a silly point really - I thought I'd
pick on the only narrative song to use as the title. It was arbitrary,
really, because there's no concept to the album.
CSM:
I'd felt that the use of quotes indicate a dimension of irony about
the word "Heroes" or about the whole concept of heroism.
DB:
Well, in that example they were, on that title track. The situation
that sparked off the whole thing was - I thought - highly ironic.
There's a wall by the studio - the album having been recorded at
Hansa by the Wall in West Berlin - about there. It's about twenty
or thirty meters away from the studio and the control room looks
out onto it. There's a turret on top of the wall where the guards
sit and during the course of lunch break every day, a boy and girl
would meet out there and carry on. They were obviously having an
affair.
And
I thought of all the places to meet in Berlin, why pick a bench
underneath a guard turret on the wall? They'd come from different
directions and always meet there... Oh, they were both from the
west, but they had always met right there. And I - using license
- presumed that they were feeling somewhat guilty about this affair
and so they had imposed this restriction on themselves, thereby
giving themselves an excuse for their heroic act. I used this as
a basis... therefore it is ironic.
Yes
it is. You're perfectly right about that, but there was no reason
why the album should have been called "Heroes". It could have been
called "the sons of silent ages". It was just a collection of stuff
that I and Eno and Fripp had put together. Some of the stuff that
was left off was very amusing, but this was the best of the batch,
the stuff that knocked us out.
CSM:
Do you find that recording in a studio that's right by the Berlin
Wall gives you a sense of being on the edge of something?
DB:
That's exactly right. I find that I have to put myself in those
situations to produce any reasonable good writing. I've still got
that same thing about when I get to a country or a situation and
I have to put myself on a dangerous level, whether emotionally or
mentally or physically, and it resolves in things like that: living
in Berlin leading what is quite a spartan life for a person of my
means, and in forcing myself to live according to the restrictions
of that city.
Bowie
interviewed in Musician, 1983:
The
content of the album, which was the looking at the street life in
Berlin, had a lot to do with the feeling of Joe The Lion
and "Heroes". It's like the street life in New York but without
the emphasis on consumerism.
|
3
December 1977 NME interviews Eno:
ENO:
That time was really confused. It was much harder working on Heroes
than Low. The whole thing, except Sons of the Silent Age,
which was written beforehand, was evolved on the spot in the studio.
Not only that, everything on the album is a first take! I mean,
we did the second takes but they werent nearly as good. It
was all done in a very casual kind of way.
Q.
How did the rest of the finished album strike you?
ENO:
I never really listen to lyrics. I just hear bits and pieces. Like
in Joe the Lion where he says, Its Monday.
Thats a real stunner.
Q.
What about Bowie?
ENO:
He gets into a very peculiar state when hes working. He doesnt
eat. It used to strike me as very paradoxical that two comparatively
well-known people would be staggering home at six in the morning,
and hed break a raw egg into his mouth and that was his food
for the day, virtually.
It
was really slummy. Wed sit around the kitchen table at dawn
feeling a bit tired and a bit fed up - me with a bowl of crummy
German cereal and him with albumen from the egg running down his
shirt.
Q.
Do you have much in common in terms of approach?
ENO:
We used oblique strategies a lot. Sense of Doubt was done almost
entirely using the cards, and we did talk about work methods. But
no, I dont think we have that much in common. But thats
fine, so long as theres give and take.
Oblique
Strategies
Oblique
Strategies subtitled Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas
is a deck of oracle cards which Eno developed and published with
his painter friend Peter Schmidt. It is modelled philosophically
on the ancient Chinese I Ching or Book of Changes. Eno had taken
to formulating aphorisms as aids to the creative process.
Each
terse proverb was designed to frame a work-in-progress in a fresh
perspective when the artist got bogged down in details, unable to
maintain a sense of creative options.
The
short messages on the cards are varied, evocative and often intentionally
cryptic. Some examples, randomly chosen from the deck: 'Would anybody
want it?' 'Go slowly all the way round the outside.' 'Don't be afraid
of things because they're easy to do.' 'Only a part, not the whole.'
'Retrace your steps.' 'Disconnect from desire.' 'You are an engineer.'
'Turn it upside down.' 'Do we need holes?' 'Is it finished?' 'Don't
break the silence.' 'What are you really thinking about just now?'
Eno
wrote down his aphorisms on cards and placed them in various locations
around the recording studio. Random selection of a card and reflection
on its message often provided fresh and unexpected resolution of
a musical quandary.
Working
on Sense Of Doubt, Bowie and Eno each pulled out an Oblique
Strategy card and kept it a secret from the other. As Eno described
it:
It
was like a game. We took turns working on it; he'd do one overdub
and I'd do the next. The idea was that each was to observe his Oblique
Strategy as closely as he could. And as it turned out they were
entirely opposed to one another. Effectively mine said, 'Try to
make everything as similar as possible.' . . . and his said, 'Emphasize
differences.'
|