‘Bowie In Berlin’ Documentary Sheds New Light On ‘Heroes’
A new BBC documentary, Bowie In Berlin, claims that the star’s classic song Heroes was inspired by a day he spent with Clare Shenstone, the model, actor and artist who had a relationship with Bowie in the mid-1970s, The Guardian reports.
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Bowie in Berlin – made by Francis Whately who made the 2013 Bowie film Five Years – offers a fresh perspective on the time that the singer spent in the German capital in the late 70s which produced three classic albums, Low, ‘Heroes’ and Lodger. Rather than focusing on Bowie’s relationship with Iggy Pop, Tony Visconti and Brian Eno, Bowie in Berlin centres on three women in the singer’s life at the time: Shenstone, the performer and nightclub owner Romy Haag and the former journalist Sarah-Rena Hine.
Shenstone reveals that the pair shared an “extraordinary day”, which began with her telling Bowie about a dream that involved swimming with dolphins, before they went to a museum show and crossed into the city’s east via Checkpoint Charlie. “We spent a couple of hours at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the guards were goose-stepping. We held hands very tightly and just took it all in, it was so extreme as an experience,” says Shenstone, who then returned with Bowie to the west.
“We walked along the other side of the wall. There were spotlights and you could see the guns silhouetted and we were holding hands and he took my other hand and he kissed me. It was so beautiful.”
“I recognised it immediately,” Shenstone says, recalling her reaction to Heroes. “I knew what each word meant, and it described exactly from moment to moment what that day was about.”
“By the time he wrote Heroes I’d managed to make him see that I would have to give up my painting my career, who I am. I wouldn’t be me,” she says. “I went back to London and when I heard Heroes I realised he had thought it through and he did understand.”
Bowie In Berlin will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 14 September at 2000.