Bowie seems much more focused here, swinging for the fences with “ Beauty and the Beast,” a mechanical roar of intent, both soulful and alien as ever. For starters, the “pop” songs on side A are much more fleshed out, raging for appropriate lengths in comparison to Low‘s looser studio snippets and curious fade-outs. Named partially in tribute to a Neu! song from 1975, “Heroes” follows the same format as its predecessor, and while Low often commands the lion’s share of attention and celebration, I’ve always found “Heroes” to be the stronger of the two records, by a slight but important margin. King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp, arguably Bowie’s strongest guest collaborator, lifted many of the tracks to incredible highs, but more on that momentarily… Naturally, Brian Eno (and his deck of Oblique Strategies) was on board as a collaborator, and Tony Visconti engineered and produced the sessions.

The record featured a similar lineup as his prior few records, including guitarist Carlos Alomar, drummer Dennis Davis, and bassist George Murray, many of which had been on retainer since 1975’s Young Americans. Curiously enough, “Heroes” was the only record of the three (book-ended by 1977’s Low and 1979’s Lodger) to be fully recorded in Berlin, tracked at Hansa Tonstudio. 14 1977, David Bowie released “Heroes”, his second installment in the originally divisive but now celebrated Berlin trilogy.

Sons of the silent age lyrics