Honoring the ‘Heroes’ of years past
By Brian Sweeney and Sean Reichard | Oct. 14, 2013Oct. 14, 1066: The Battle of Hastings occurs, as documented on the Bayeux Tapestry. Oct. 14, 1586: Mary, Queen of Scots is put on trial for conspiring against Queen Elizabeth. Oct. 14, 1644: William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, is born. Oct. 14, 1884: George Eastman, founder of the Kodak Company, patents paper-strip photographic film. Oct. 14, 1894: e.e. Cummings is born. Oct. 14, 1908: The Chicago Cubs win their last World Series to date. Oct. 14, 1912: Theodore Roosevelt is shot by John Schrank in Milwaukee, Wis. Despite the bullet piercing his chest, Roosevelt is relatively unfazed by the act. Oct. 14, 1926: A.A. Milne publishes the first book of “Winnie-the-Pooh.” Oct. 14, 1962: The Cuban Missile Crisis begins. Oct. 14, 1965: Randall Jarrell, Poet Laureate, dies from car-related incident. Oct. 14, 1977: David Bowie’s “Heroes” is released. I would make the case that the 1970s belonged to David Bowie as much as any other musician. There’s really no one else who stood as tall as he did, and it wasn’t just because Ziggy Stardust wore pumps. Call him chameleon, call him crazy. It’s sort of hard to talk about Bowie’s career in a way that will make sense. It goes from folkie to chamber pop to space rock to cocaine soul to electronic Weltschmerz; by necessity, the frontiers between them need to be blurry/permeable. There is a holistic wholeness to it, denoted Bowie. That “electronic Weltschmerz” period is otherwise known as “The Berlin Trilogy,” when Bowie teamed up with Brian Eno and Tony Visconti to make, uh, “The Berlin Trilogy.” There’s no good descriptor since Low, “Heroes”, and Lodger all sound different—from everything else, from each other. “Heroes” itself is a tricky one. Low is the one everyone knows—a perfect melding of pop and ambient, every 40-something music critic who still marks its anniversary on the calendar says, yes, yes—and Lodger is the one that Moby likes and sounds like space cowboy music. “Heroes”, with neither the accepted “classic” status of Low nor the accepted “weirdness” status of Lodger, seems to be the odd one out. On the other hand, as the middle child, it has all the pressured idiosyncrasy. Did Bowie know he was making a trilogy? Such a plan might seem overly conceptual. Then again, we’re talking about David Bowie here, the king of concept. If he knew this was a trilogy, how was he going to pull it off? How was he going to make this movement of one unified cloth—like some aural Bayeux Tapestry? Did he pull it off? This is “Heroes’” day of scrutiny, so I can’t answer the success of “The Berlin Trilogy.” What I can say is that “Heroes” does sit pretty well smack dab between Low and Lodger. A weird classic then? Well, how do you evaluate that? You can start with songs. The title track, for instance, is David Bowie’s best song. There is nothing that even remotely approaches it in power and resonance. Now, you can make a good case for “Sound and Vision,” “Ziggy Stardust,” “Station To Station,” “Queen Bitch,” “Oh! You Pretty Things” or even “The Jean Genie,” but “Heroes” is really where it’s at. It’s got rock pretty well covered, with the double volley of “Beauty and the Beast” and “Joe the Lion,” which feature some pretty great, warped riffs from Robert Fripp. There’s even a bit of straight pop, with “Sons of the Silent Age” (which, for some reason, reminds me of The Beatles’ “She’s Leaving Home,” with more slinking synth and saxophone) and “The Secret Life of Arabia” (which breaks up the “pop/ambient” dichotomy formula Low was working with by putting it last, after the ambient pieces; Lodger abandons this formula entirely). The ambient pieces are pretty formulaic too. “V-2 Schneider” is like a caduceus—a sax snake and a Fripp snake ever twined—with minimal Bowie intrusions and a dappling of synths. “Sense of Doubt” rumbles along with plenty of sustained notes to make everything seem dramatic. “Moss Garden” is very peaceful. “Neukoln” flows along, tied together with the same ominous saxophone that keeps cropping up on “Heroes”. After songs, it’s hard to evaluate what makes an album classic, and I’m out of space here. But “Heroes” has one definite classic and a host of good songs. Not a classic album, per se, but better than most albums. Other albums released this day: OOPArts by the pillows (2009), Controversy by Prince (1981), Nimrod by Green Day (1997), Ha!-Ha!-Ha! by Ultravox (1977). Did you catch a dose of Weltschmerz from this article? Tell Sean at sreichard@wisc.edu.
