Just For One Day
My two favorite versions of David Bowie's "Heroes"
Greetings, Jagged Time Lapsers!
I’m currently heading into the home stretch on my Redd Kross book, so I won’t have much time and energy to write much else here until March. But for whatever reason, I have been obsessing lately on two versions of David Bowie’s 1977 hit “Heroes,” so I thought I’d share them with you during this brief break between chapters.
During one of the second conversation I ever had with my lovely now-girlfriend, she asked what my favorite David Bowie song was. I reflexively said “Heroes,” mostly because it had been my favorite Bowie song for decades, at least until “Sound and Vision” knocked off the top spot sometime shortly after his death. What I really meant to say — but held back lest my excessive music nerdery might scare her off, though in retrospect I needn’t have worried — was that my favorite version of “Heroes” isn’t the one from his album of the same name, nor the shorter edit that you find on most of Bowie singles collections.
No, the version of “Heroes” that really sends me is the English/German edit that was (I believe) originally created for the soundtrack of the mightily depressing 1981 German teen junkie prostitute film Christiane F., which tacks the first two verses and choruses of his original English-language album rendition to three and a half minutes of “Helden,” his German-language single version of the song.
“Helden” has always given me chills — those harsh Teutonic consonants get me every time — but I’ve always felt that, at three and a half minutes, it isn’t long enough really deliver the dramatic payoff when Bowie moves to his higher vocal register for the final verses and choruses. Whomever did the Christiane F. edit clearly felt the same, since their cut expands the song back out to its original six-minute length, and Gott im Himmel is it fucking devastating.
Not quite so jaw-dropping, but still holding a special place in my heart, is the live cover of “Heroes” that was included as a bonus track on the 12-inch 1980 UK and European single releases of Blondie’s “Atomic”. Recorded at the Hammersmith Odeon on January 12, 1980, with one “Mr. Robert Fripp” guesting on lead guitar, this rendition has enchanted me since I first discovered it in 1985 during my original Blondie completist phase.
I love how the performance slowly lurches to life, its whizzing phase shifters and synthesizers struggling to stand upright like Frankenstein’s monster until Clem Burke’s dynamic drumming kicks everything into gear. I love Debbie Harry’s vocals, which find a different (yet equally compelling) cross-section of yearning and defiance from Bowie’s performance. And maybe most of all, I love Fripp’s lyrical guitar solo, which I actually prefer to the one he recorded on Bowie’s original version. If you’ve never heard this before, by all means give yourself a treat.
All right, folks — that’s all for now. If you don’t hear from me next week, it’s because I’m up to my eyebrows in my manuscript; but I’ll be back soon, I promise. Thanks as always for your eyeballs and your continued support of Jagged Time Lapse; you make me feel like a hero, for more than just one day.
Shortly after Bowie's death, it was time for the mundane task of car registration renewal. Dammit, I'd never had a personalized plate before and I was still reeling that Bowie was gone. And just like that, JST41DY plates were slapped on my car. Remarkably, very few people get it. Most conflate it with "one day at a time" which is funny because it took a few glasses of wine to pony up the extra cost of the plates. Thanks for this post - memories of suburban-angsty kids smoking Sobranie Black Russians, listening to the "Heroes" German/English version, blissfully ignorant of true existential angst. Blondie with Fripp was just the icing on the cake.
Two vegans were passing by a fast food restaurant, where the smell of gyros was tempting them mightily. They talked it over for a while, the pros and cons of breaking their lifestyle. But the winning argument - We can eat gyros, just for one day.