(1058) Frightening the way time flues by … truly … can’t it slow down just a bit? (1200)
7. The mood of Heroes
Now, though I liked the Stranglers a lot, not sure No more heroes is the Sunday mood I’d like to project … maybe on Mondays. As for Bowie … never liked him, esp. his lifestyle (ugh). On the other hand, he was quite fair about this song in saying it wasn’t him with a girl in his arms, it was his producer. Wiki:
“An art rock song that builds throughout its run time, “‘Heroes'” concerns two lovers, one from East Berlin and the other from the West. Under constant fear of death, they dream they are free, swimming with dolphins. Bowie placed the title in quotation marks as an expression of irony on the otherwise romantic or triumphant words and music. Directly inspired by Bowie witnessing a kiss between Visconti and singer Antonia Maass next to the Berlin Wall, other inspirations included a painting by Otto Mueller and a short story by Alberto Denti di Pirajno.”
The main thing for me is that this is classic Brit rock from one of its strongest periods … you can say many things about the British, mostly true, but you’d probably need to concede that they do good comedy, good music.
I have two stories of my own. In the first, I was beside the wall myself one day, near Checkpoint Charlie, having been given a hard time by East German officials on the way into Berlin and later on the way out.
The second story, later than that, was being on a train from Helsinki to the north one late evening, via the lakes which went close to the Russian border … was with an American girl or eight, fell asleep, awoke near the Russian border … I saw them over there, the Russki guards … real Russians, everyone was looking from the carriage (thinking Nikita). I thought then I want one of those girls … there’s mystery there. Ended up in Rovaniemi with an Australian couple, met a Finnish girl from Helsinki, we got close, then broke my arm on bobsleigh.
Then I met some Russian girls in London, took them to Greenwich Park to see the deer, ended up invited by one. I wrote about the plane flight in the long saga (Masquerade) … I call it semi-fictional in that no one actually knocked my cabin bag in RL … Ms Melancholy Eyes was actually waiting thousands of km away at the other end … all the rest was true:
“In the slow moving Aeroflot queue at Heathrow, about the only excitement, Hugh felt, was when a young lady accidentally fell against him, knocking his cabin bag to the ground just as he was opening it to get a mini-Toblerone, spilling all the documents, photos, mini-Toblerones and bits and pieces over the concourse floor.
…
All through that flight, her eyes remained on his mind. Did they all have those melancholy eyes? He wondered if they cloned them over there – sculpted face, athletic figure, high cheek bones and blue-grey, melancholy eyes. And stunning.
…
Over Russia proper, he looked down from the cabin window onto the forest below – he could make out, through the cumulus, a long straight road with bumper to bumper traffic – there was a cruise ship on the meandering river. That might be something nice to try out one day, he thought, as the last of the whisky in the plastic beaker went down the throat neatly.”
Some years later, with that particular young lady in RL, not the character in the book, I was in St Petersburg, at Peterhof, we walked to the front sea balustrade, by the gulf (we actually did) … the exact location is on the map below … Monplaisir … and the semi-fictional Masquerade takes over from there.
Point is, we were gazing across the gulf waters at the very Finland I’d gazed from the opposite way years before, at Russia.
Heady days back then. Another time, another place.
It was a brilliant move imho for Hitchcock to make Scudder in The 39 Steps into a femme fatale … it worked far better but once she ended up knifed, he had to bring in a second and to my mind, the second was not as mysterious and alluring. Have another look at the movie below, coming in at about 6m 30s, no later.
11. Steve B and his chart
Zoomed in here immediately on No more heroes and Heroes. Second half of the 70s I’d say.
Carly Simon sang the theme for The Spy Who Loved Me which was circa 1977 so yes, second half of the 70s.