The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain's trademark is well done and humorous covers of pop and rock songs. In this case, they do a serious, straight, and very well done cover of David Bowie's Heroes, that captures well the song's sentiment. Bowie wrote the song in the late 1970s while in West Berlin. The last verse refers to a moment when he observed a couple kissing by the Wall.
I, I can remember (I remember)
Standing by the wall (By the wall)
And the guns shot above our heads (Over our heads)
And we kissed as though nothing could fall (Nothing could fall)
And the shame was on the other side
Oh, we can beat them forever and ever
Then we could be heroes just for one day
From David Bowie in 1973. Mike Garson's piano, which builds into a crazy solo, makes an otherwise musically uninteresting song memorable. Garson had just joined Bowie's band for what was supposed to be eight weeks, but ended up playing tours with him for decades. He said of recording Aladdin Sane:
I had told Bowie about the avant-garde thing. When I was recording the Aladdin Sane
track for Bowie, it was just two chords, an A and a G chord, and the
band was playing very simple English rock and roll. And Bowie said:
'play a solo on this.' I had just met him, so I played a blues solo, but
then he said: 'No, that's not what I want.' And then I played a Latin
solo. Again, Bowie said: 'No no, that's not what I want.' He then
continued: 'You told me you play that avant-garde music. Play that
stuff!' And I said: 'Are you sure? 'Cause you might not be working
anymore!'. So I did the solo that everybody knows today, in one take.
And to this day, I still receive emails about it. Every day. I always
tell people that Bowie is the best producer I ever met, because he lets
me do my thing.
And here is Garson talking about his collaboration with Bowie and approach to music.
It's difficult to do a good cover of a David Bowie song. Here's one done right - The Man Who Sold The World infused with Nirvana's characteristic melancholia from MTV Unplugged.
We passed upon the stair, we spoke of was and when
Although I wasn't there, he said I was his friend
Which came as some surprise I spoke into his eyes
I thought you died alone, a long long time ago
Oh no, not me
I never lost control
You're face to face
With The Man Who Sold The World
I laughed and shook his hand, and made my way back home
I searched for form and land, for years and years I roamed
I gazed a gazely stare at all the millions here
We must have died alone, a long long time ago
Who knows? not me
We never lost control
You're face to face
With the Man who Sold the World
And don't forget astronaut Chris Hadfield's great take on Space Oddity done from the International Space Station.
And finally, from the opening night of Bruce Springsteen's 2016 tour just a couple of days ago, is Rebel, Rebel.
In the 1970s, while living in Berlin, Bowie wrote Heroes, inspired by the sight of a couple embracing in front of the Berlin Wall. On June 6, 1987, two years before the Wall opened and six days before Ronald Reagan's Tear Down This Wall speech, Bowie sang Heroes in Berlin on a stage that backed up to the Wall. Here he remembers that concert in a 2003 interview (from Songfacts):
"I'll never forget
that. It was one of the most emotional performances I've ever done. I
was in tears. They'd backed up the stage to the wall itself so that the
wall was acting as our backdrop. We kind of heard that a few of the East
Berliners might actually get the chance to hear the thing, but we
didn't realize in what numbers they would. And there were thousands on
the other side that had come close to the wall. So it was like a double
concert where the wall was the division. And we would hear them cheering
and singing along from the other side. God, even now I get choked up.
It was breaking my heart. I'd never done anything like that in my life,
and I guess I never will again. When we did 'Heroes' it really felt
anthemic, almost like a prayer. However well we do it these days, it's
almost like walking through it compared to that night, because it meant
so much more. That's the town where it was written, and that's the
particular situation that it was written about. It was just
extraordinary.
We did it in Berlin last year as well – 'Heroes' – and
there's no other city I can do that song in now that comes close to how
it's received. This time, what was so fantastic is that the audience –
it was the Max Schmeling Hall, which holds about 10-15,000 – half the
audience had been in East Berlin that time way before. So now I was
face-to-face with the people I had been singing it to all those years
ago. And we were all singing it together. Again, it was powerful. Things
like that really give you a sense of what performance can do. They
happen so rarely at that kind of magnitude. Most nights I find very
enjoyable. These days, I really enjoy performing. But something like
that doesn't come along very often, and when it does, you kind of think,
'Well, if I never do anything again, it won't matter.'"
And just released four days ago is a video for the song Lazarus, from his recent album. Its opening words; "Look up here, I'm in heaven".
