David Bowie - Heroes - Musikladen 78

YouTube via aliensatemybrain.

One of my favorite Bowie tracks. Anyone know what's under the Prophet-5 in the end?

"The third track to the Musikladen Extra television show broadcast in Germany 1978,

Carlos Alomar
rhythm guitar, backing vocals

Adrian Belew
lead guitar, backing vocals

Simon House
electric violin

Brian Eno
piano, string ensemble, backing vocals

Roger Powell
keyboards, synthesiser, backing vocals

George Murray
bass, backing vocals

Dennis Davis
drums, percussion

"Heroes" is a song written by David Bowie and Brian Eno in 1977. Produced by Bowie and Tony Visconti, it was released both as a single and as the title track of the album "Heroes". A product of Bowie's fertile 'Berlin' period, life in the city was crystallized into a tale of two lovers who come together in the shadow of the 'Wall of Shame' (though here "the shame was on the other side"). While not a huge hit at the time, the song has gone on to become one of Bowie's signature tunes and is well known today for its appearance in numerous advertisements. It has been cited as Bowie's most covered song after "Rebel Rebel"

The title of the song is a reference to the 1975 track "Hero" by the band Neu!,whom Bowie and Eno admired. It was one of the early tracks recorded during the album sessions, but remained an instrumental until towards the end of production.The quote marks in the title, a deliberate affectation, were designed to impart an ironic quality on the otherwise highly romantic, even triumphant, words and music.Producer Tony Visconti took credit for inspiring the image of the lovers kissing "by the wall", when he and backing vocalist Antonia Maass embraced in front of Bowie as he looked out of the Hansa Studio window.Bowie's habit in the period following the song's release was to say that the protagonists were based on an anonymous young couple but Visconti, who was married to Mary Hopkin at the time, contends that Bowie was protecting him and his affair with Maass. Bowie confirmed this in 2003.

The music, co-written by Bowie and Eno, has been likened to a Wall of Sound production, an undulating juggernaut of guitars, percussion and synthesizers.Eno has said that musically the piece always "sounded grand and heroic" and that he had "that very word - heroes - in my mind" even before Bowie composed the lyrics.[1] The basic backing track on the recording consists of a conventional arrangement of piano, bass guitar, rhythm guitar and drums. However the remaining instrumental additions are highly distinctive. These largely consist of synthesizer parts by Eno using an EMS VCS3 to produce detuned low-frequency drones, with the beat frequencies from the three oscillators producing a juddering effect. In addition, King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp generated an unusual sustained sound by allowing his guitar to feed back and sitting at different positions in the room to alter the pitch of the feedback. Tony Visconti rigged up a system of three microphones to capture the epic vocal, with one microphone nine inches from Bowie, one 20 feet away and one 50 feet away. Only the first was opened for the quieter vocals at the start of the song, with the first and second opening on the louder passages, and all three on the loudest parts, creating progressively more reverb and ambience the louder the vocals became."