David Bowie Tribute: Heroes

The Eno/Bowie collaboration on Heroestook my breath away – it seems to be a continuation of the frame of mind that he had begun to explore in The Man Who Fell to Earth. But here the music proceeds into a darker realm of amoral exploration of what it means to be a hero when you also want to be a “no one.” A record of songs that aren’t songs, that burst periodically into melody & then subside; the album takes Bowie into the beginning of his enigmatic exploration of despair & failure, and makes him more of a rock god that he had even been before.

“Heroes” galvanizes the first side, while the decomposed auras of “V-2 Schneider” dominate side two.

If there was an album that expressed the loneliness I was feeling at the time, this was it. Bowie entered the souls of people who felt lost – I was one of them.

MICHAEL SILVERBLATT