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.

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.