"Heroes"

Bowie and Eno wrote it, and it was recorded in July and August 1977 in Studio 2 at Hansa, with Bowie and Visconti producing. Bowie played piano, ARP Solina and Chamberlin, Eno an EMS Synthi AKS, and Fripp the lead guitar. Visconti set up a multi-latch microphone system for the vocal, and Fripp made three feedback takes.

Bowie told Melody Maker in 1977 that the song is about facing that kind of reality and standing up to it. He confirmed in 2003 that it was inspired by seeing Visconti, who was married to Mary Hopkin, kiss the singer Antonia Maass by the Berlin Wall. Other inspirations were Otto Mueller's painting Lovers Between Garden Walls and a short story by Alberto Denti di Pirajno.

The single came out on 23 September 1977 with V-2 Schneider on the B-side. It reached number 24 in the UK and eleven in Australia, and did not chart in the US. In 2016 it returned to number twelve in the UK. A German version, Helden, was translated with Maass's help.

Live and covers

He played it at Live Aid in 1985, and at the Reichstag in West Berlin on 6 June 1987 during the Glass Spider Tour, which he described in 2003 as one of the most emotional performances he had ever done. setlist.fm lists 569 performances, the fourth most of any song. Philip Glass wrote his Heroes Symphony in 1997, and the song has been covered by the Wallflowers, Oasis, Blondie, Peter Gabriel and TV on the Radio. X Factor finalists took it to UK number one in 2010.