"Heroes" by David Bowie; Covered by Peter Gabriel - The Music of Stranger Things

0:20 Hey y'all, and welcome back to Camp Nowhere, a Stranger Things podcast. My name is Lauren. And my name is Joel. We're so thankful y'all are here to listen to us process all things Stranger Things. We are in a miniseries. We are calling the music a Stranger Things, where for the next few episodes we'll be taking a deep dive into some of the key songs that are featured in the show. For this episode we are going to focus on Heroes by David Bowie, but also the cover version with the same name that's covered by Peter Gabriel.

0:55 Yes, and when we say deep dive, we mean a thorough song analysis and sharing lots of research we've done about the song itself, why it was written, as well as looking into some of the specific moments the song is used throughout the TV series. Exactly why was it chosen for those specific moments? What kinds of emotional implications does it have and resonating with the audience and how does it affect or advance the overall plot of the show? So with that in mind, spoiler alert if you have not, we have watched Stranger Things in its entirety, seasons one through 5.

1:31 Be warned, we will be discussing spoilers and I do not take spoilers lightly. Last year I actually got to read all of the Harry Potter series for the first time, and somehow I successfully avoided spoilers. By God's grace. And it was, yeah. And it was truly magical. Yes. OK, so now that you have been fairly warned, go watch Stranger Things and then we would encourage you to listen to David Bowie's song Heroes and the Peter Gabriel rendition. We've linked both in our show notes. And I just love both of those versions, Joel.

2:11 We can definitely talk about it more in depth later on in the episode, but just for a quick reaction, which version of the song do you like better? Honestly, I got to go with the Peter Gabriel. OK, me too. Yeah, as far as covers go, it's pretty top notch. Oof. I wonder. I wonder what a Kidz Bop cover would sound like, you know? Hopefully the world will never know that. Really. You sure you don't want to catch it on the totally legitimate and not fictional whatsoever album? Kidz bop 53 mega pop 80s bops.

2:47 You're crazy. And you're not wrong, but you did marry me. You're stuck in this situation. But I digress and I totally agree with you. I really do like Peter Gabriel's version better as well, though no shade to Bowie, definitely enjoy his version, but that makes us in the minority. Through the research I did, I I came to found that it seemed like Peter Gabriel's cover album, which we'll talk a little bit about it wasn't widely well received, which I was kind of surprised to find that. That's wild to me.

3:23 I yeah. For the first segment here, we'll be discussing who wrote the song, when they wrote it. What was the historical personal context of that? Lauren, I know you did some research, So what did you find out, my dear? So I found a great video that released a couple months ago by AJ Rock School Academy. No, fortunately it's not the same thing as School of Rock, although that would have been so rad. But it does a stellar job of summarizing the overall context of the song, which was Co written, like we said, by David Bowie and Brian Eno, produced by Tony Visconti.

4:01 And so here is a clip from that video. The Story Behind Heroes David Bowie In 1977, David Bowie recorded Heroes in West Berlin, a city still divided by the wall. It became one of his most powerful and emotional songs, a story of love, hope, and defiance. Bowie had moved to Berlin to escape the chaos of fame and drug addiction in Los Angeles. There, he found inspiration in the city's mix of tension and creativity. He worked at Hansa Studios, just a few 100 yards from the Berlin Wall. The song was written with producer Tony Visconti and musician Brian Eno.

4:38 Eno created those haunting synth sounds, while Bowie built the songs drama layer by layer, recording his vocal in three takes, each one louder and more intense. The idea for the lyrics came when Bowie looked out the studio window and saw Tony Visconti embracing his girlfriend by the wall. He imagined their love as something heroic, surviving in a divided world. The song's famous line, We Can Be Heroes Just for One Day, captured that feeling perfectly, a moment of courage and connection against the odds.

5:10 There's also a hidden touch. The guitar tone, played by Robert Fripp from King Crimson, was recorded in one take. He'd flown in for just a few hours and improvised those soaring lines that became one of Bowie's most iconic sounds. When Heroes was first released, it wasn't a huge hit, but over time it grew into one of Bowie's defining songs, a symbol of hope and resistance. Years later, when the Berlin Wall fell, Heroes was played during the celebrations, a full circle moment for a song born in its shadow.

5:40 David Bowie once said he wanted to write about ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Heroes did exactly that. So that was incredible context. And then I did some further digging and found out that the artist Moby, who we talked about on our last podcast episode, he was actually really good friends and neighbors with David Bowie. In fact, Bowie was Moby's favorite artist. And in a SiriusXM radio interview from about 7 years ago, Moby shared a little secret related to Bowie's song Heroes. And so we wanted to share that clip as well.

6:20 This is the story that I tell David Bowie fans that makes them want to kill me. So one morning, he came over to my house with coffee, and we were sitting on the couch in my living room, and we're going to play an acoustic show together. And I said I worked at my nerve. And I said, you know, we should really play Heroes acoustic. And he said, I never have. And I said, well, let's try it. So I got a guitar and just the two of us sitting on my couch in the living room drinking coffee, playing Heroes on acoustic guitar.

6:49 And when it was done, he said, let me tell you a little bit, a little secret. He said Heroes, he was an obsessive Velvet Underground fan. So Heroes was originally a cover version of Waiting for the Man. He was playing Waiting for the Man on Guitar and just rewrote it and turned it into Heroes like Dun Dun Dun Dun Dun like I Will Be King, I'm waiting for My Man like it's so. It was originally a cover version of Waiting for the Man. Wow, yeah, that totally checks out since the Velvet Underground was often cited as one of Bowie's most significant influences.

7:27 Definitely go check out that song. I'm waiting for the man. If you want to compare it with Heroes, the Songwriters Hall of Fame did a feature on David Bowie, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2005 and they wrote this. David Robert Jones was born in London on January 8th, 1947. As a teenager he played saxophone and sang the Blues, inspired by the jazz he heard in London's West End. By the 60s he renamed himself David Bowie to afford to avoid confusion with the Monkeys lead singer Davy Jones.

8:00 But this change was fairly small when compared to the distinctive personas adopted by the chameleon like Bowie throughout his 40 year career, such as the androgynous Ziggy Stardust or the ill-fated Major Tom. These enigmatic transformations helped define him as an icon and extended his influence not only in music, but art, fashion and pop culture as well. Although Bowie is known first and foremost as a pioneer of the glam rock genre, his range as an artist was vast. During his life, he was a songwriter, multi instrumentalist, a record producer and arranger, a painter and an actor.

8:42 His influence spread to a broad range of musicians that includes rockers, punks, hip hop artists and pop pop stars. Bowie died in January 2016, just two days after his 69th birthday and the release of Black Star, which was his 25th studio album. He left the world of a legacy of music with 25 entries on the Billboard Hot 139, albums on the Billboard 200 chart, including seven Top 10's and countless other accolades. Wow. Yeah, that is a wide range of talent. And Bowie's interest in the deeper meanings of life impacted his songwriting.

9:24 I also found in a 2004 interview that he did on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, he said, and this was Speaking of when he was around 18 years old, he said I was young, fancy free, and Tibetan Buddhism appealed to me. At that time. I thought there's salvation. It didn't really work. Then I went through Nietzsche, Satanism, Christianity, pottery and ended up singing. It's Been a Long Road. And in a 2003 interview with Anthony de Curtis, Bowie said This questioning my spiritual life has always been germane to what I was writing.

10:00 Always. Wow. Yeah, his song Heroes is from the album that's also called Heroes, which was released in 1977. And Heroes embodies themes of spirituality through exploring like love, resilience, the human spirit's capacity to stand against adversity. It reflects on spiritual freedom. It invites listeners to think about and just contemplate their own experiences of what love and struggle is and what it means to search for meaning in a complex world. Gabriel's version of Heroes, which is a which is a cover.

10:54 It's a different version. It first appeared on his 2010 album Scratch My Back, in which he covered songs, so it was just an album entirely of covers. And Gabriel was also inspired by that message of triumphing over adversity. For sure, and those are some of the core themes throughout Stranger Things as well. So let's discuss then the particular seasons, episodes and scenes where the song plays, and maybe why they why we think they chose to use each specific version of the song during those specific moments.

11:32 Yeah, yeah. So we'll first talk about Gabriel's version. So the cover, Gabriel's version is used at 2 significant instances. The first is in Season 1 early on. It's an episode 3 near the end. It's a pivotal moment where Mike, Lucas, and Dustin discovered that their friend Will is seemingly dead from drowning in a quarry, in a simultaneous moment when Joyce and Jonathan embrace after she runs away in terror. Because remember, at that point, Joyce had finally seen a demagogue in for the first time and it broke through the wall of her home.

12:15 In season 3. It is featured in the season finale, so episode 8, called The Battle of Star Court, during the final moments when 11 reads Hopper's letter, which he had written before he supposedly died, which makes it carry so much more emotional weight. And then one last time. This time it's David Bowie's version. The original David Bowie's shows up in the finale of the whole series, so it's Season 5, episode 8. It's playing during the credits. Yeah, at the end of the series. Yes, and just a quick observation here.

13:01 The Peter Gabriel version is used during moments of deep and utter despair, heartbreak, fear and grief, whereas the David Bowie version is used right after a scene that is meant to communicate the end of an era, the end of a coming of age story. Things have been made right. The episode is called the Right Side up. The kids are growing up into young adults about to go off to college, and yet there's still that sense of grief intermingled with new found hope. Kind of the oh wow, like put the closing of an end of a chapter on my childhood and it makes me think about the movie Perks of Being a Wallflower, the 2012 film adaptation.

13:50 Spoiler alert if you haven't seen that movie. But essentially it's also a coming of age story which depicts this this struggle of making sense of the fallen world around and within you. And at the end of the movie, Bowie's version of Heroes is playing as the main characters are driving through a tunnel. It's come to be known as the Tunnel Song after they finally have graduated. So there's a parallel there. They seem to feel a sense of celebratory freedom and this aliveness in spite of the suffering and trauma that they experienced growing up in the different relational struggles they had to overcome throughout the the book and the film.

14:33 Yeah, yeah. Shifting gears here, let's take a listen to the sound clips of the two different moments where Peter Gabriel's version is used. So it's first the moment when they find Will's body, and then the other one is when Elle is reading the letter. And then the gang is about to move far away to California, which is really sad.

15:27 Come on standing, but please, if you don't mind, for the sake of your poor old dad, keep the door open 3 inches.

15:51 I'm the king. Are you OK?

16:17 Lauren, what do you remember about the emotions you had when you heard Peter Gabriel's version of the song during those two key moments? Why do you think the use of that song resonates with the audience? Yeah, great. Great question. So I was crying for sure. I mean, in season 1, you have the song being used to convey death, despair, your worst fears coming true. It's especially powerful how the writers chose to mirror the scene of Mike hugging his mom Karen as he's weeping because his best friend Will had died.

16:59 And at the same time, Joyce is hugging her eldest son Jonathan because she's terrified by this awful, horrifying monster that just broke through the wall, maybe broke through the 4th wall at her house. And even more terrified that she isn't going to be able to figure out what is going on and how she can get back to her son. Because at this point she doesn't know that Will's body has been discovered. The song use here is brilliant because the lyrics are about being a hero and overcoming adversity, which makes it ironically heart wrenching because the kids as well as Hopper were trying really hard to be heroes themselves.

17:41 They were like absolutely determined to find and save Will, only to see what they could only assume was Will's body being brought out of the quarry. This hauntingly melancholic nature of the song emphasizes the failure, hopelessness, and grief that they were they had to be experiencing in that moment. Yeah, I loved the juxtaposition of the two hugging, where you have Mike and his mom hugging and then Jonathan and his mom are hugging. But what's interesting about that is that the roles are reversed because Karen is comforting her son while Jonathan is comforting his mom.

18:27 So and when one of those Karen, the mom is comforting, but in the other case, Joyce is being comforted. Right. Jonathan's almost taking on like a fatherly role to his mom. Like comforting her. Yeah, yeah, man, I just love the scene, especially with Joyce and Jonathan, because both the characters and the audience just don't know anything. Yeah, like, you have to remember, we're in Season 1, right? We're only on episode 3. We've seen in the same episode. We've seen the famous scene of Joyce with the Christmas lights.

19:09 Iconic. It's super iconic. I love that we have and. I do drink a coffee mug every day that has that, you know, with the lights and on the wall. Yes you do, baby, every day. Yes, you do. Yeah, shout out my friend Erica for shout. Out, Erica.

19:26 But yeah, it's it's just important to note that we don't know anything. And so we finally see a Demogorgon and it's ripping through the wall crazy of Joyce's house. Joyce runs for her life. Like, how does she not go into just anaphylactic shock and just, like, pass out? I don't, I don't know. I don't know if just adrenaline. She's just fully running on adrenaline. She does a whole fight and fight or flight thing and she chooses flight. I'm getting the heck out of here. Yeah. Yeah, she just runs for her life and she doesn't even know where to go.

19:59 Like, she's just running in a street. Like Jonathan finds Joyce just in a street, like, not really sure where she's going. And when it feels like life is crumbling around her. Joyce finds someone familiar that reminds her of home, and that's her son Jonathan. Also, at the beginning of the scene, we see Hopper's reaction to finding Will. And yeah, like, I rewatched that today before recording this episode. And that was something I noticed was that like, it focuses in for on Hopper for a moment. And it made me realize like, Oh yeah.

20:37 At this point in the show, we we can't. We don't know about the extra layer of grief that Hopper has because as you find out later, Hopper lost his daughter to cancer. And so it's probably especially difficult for Hopper to see a child's dead body because it may bring back past grief that he has of losing his daughter. Right. And oh, man, like he honestly likely feels like he had failed both of them, that he had failed his daughter, he had failed Will, even though the reality is their deaths were out of his control.

21:19 But I can't imagine, like if he had made it his own personal mission that he is going to save Will because he can't let another child die. And then to have culminated into all this, this climactic moment. And then he's like, tell me, please tell me it's not the kid. And then they pull his body out. Oh my gosh, you can't even imagine. And then when it comes to the finale of season 3, bring on more waterworks, right? Like, I cry. Let me tell you what, I cry during this scene pretty much every time I do a rewatch of the show, which is often.

21:57 So just being honest, the emotion felt from Elle as Hopper was reading the letter was actually incredibly authentic because I don't know if you knew this or not, but Millie Bobby Brown was hearing that out loud for the first time while they filmed that scene. So those are real tears. Like, that's a real reaction. And the scene resonated with me and likely other fans of the series because we had sympathy and empathy for Elle. Elle especially, like we feel for her because she's hit with waves of grief that not only is her dad seemingly gone now, the man that has become a dad for her, but now she has to move across the country from the majority of her closest friends And Mike, the love of her life.

22:47 I distinctly remember the first time I watched it, like toward the end of that scene. I think it's like the last moment of that season, Joyce closes the door kind of as the song is ending. It made me, it kind of mirrored that same feeling that like we and other show, fans of the show friends had when the gang like left the apartment for the last time, close the door, they zoom in on the door and they kind of do do a similar thing at the end of this episode and Stranger Things. So what about you?

23:23 Like, what emotions did it evoke for you? Why do you think the use of this song resonated with the audience? Yeah, yeah, I think, I think something particular about the the scene with Elle in Season 3 is that she also lost her powers. And so I I point that out because that also does give her a sense of identity. Like even her name refers to her powers. Like her, Like her real name is Jane, but people call her and know her as 11 like she's. Tattooed on her. Like her name? Yeah. And the tattoo, like her name, is reduced to basically her childhood of being raised as a human experiment.

24:16 Yeah, pretty traumatic. Yeah, and until the end of Season 3, she was able to help and protect her friends because of her powers, right? And so that gave her a sense of identity and uniqueness. And then like she's also moving away from Max, who became her best friend in the same season. Yeah, yeah. So like the like you know the the cute scene of them at the mall with Material Girl. Playing, I love it. Like it's, it's iconic and it just shows that their friendship is really blossomed. Well, now Elle is having to move away from Max.

24:53 The only people that are actually moving with Elle, right, are the buyers. But The thing is, is that Elle just isn't as close to them. Like Elle hasn't really talked to Will very much throughout the show so far at that point.

25:11 And then like just she doesn't really know Joyce or Jonathan that well. And so she's just moving with this family that she doesn't have as strong relationships with, Right? Yeah. And then without her father figure, her best friend, her love interest Mike, like you mentioned, her powers and her only real sense of a physical home. Because let's remember, like before, she lived with Hopper in the cabin, she was running around in the woods. And she was only running around in the woods because she had escaped the lab where she was tortured and raised as a human experiment.

25:54 And so now Hawkins, like, she finally has a sense of home and belonging and like, is getting these solid friendships. And now she has to leave. Wow. Yeah, man. All of this happens while Heroes is playing, so it begs the question, can Elle, despite all of her losses, can she still be a hero without? The the people that she's closest to with the powers that she's been relying upon. Yeah, that's a. Good question. Can she still be a hero? And then that made me think of in Season 4, we learned through an interview that Finn Wolfhard, who played Mike, he ad libbed something at the Season 4 finale where he told Elle that she's a superhero.

26:48 And that's a sweet response to the song Heroes, as if the story is to say, like, yes, even despite her losses, she can be and will be a hero. So there's that theme again of like, triumph over adversity. Yeah, yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I do. I love how there's that call back to Heroes in Season 4. OK, I think it's time we do a deep dive into the actual instrumentalization of the songs themselves. And we can totally, you know, compare and contrast the versions of the songs because if you've had a chance to listen to them, like they are quite different, very different.

27:28 It's like, is this even the same song? So yes, let's let's do that kind of deep dive. Yeah, for sure. So yeah, it's safe to say that with David Bowie's version, so the original, there's a lot happening. A lot. You have Bowie singing on vocals, you got piano, keyboard, saxophone. You got a rhythm guitar, bass guitar, drums and tambourine because you got to keep the spirituality in there, right? Amen, brother. And yeah, don't forget the empty metal tape reel used to mimic a cowbell sound. Guess what, I got a fever and the only prescription is more cowbell.

28:11 Well, if that's the case, then Peter Gabriel did not get the memo, because he took a vastly different approach to his cover of the song. Because in there you've got violins, violas, cellos, synthesizers, and Gabriel's like, more Moody vocals. Yes, it's like a cinematic orchestral version for sure. No drums or guitars are utilized. Gabriel aimed to find the melancholy and pathos in the track, transformating it, transforming it from an anthemic pop song into a slow, tense and emotional piece. He didn't want to just cover songs, rather he wanted to radically reinterpret them entirely.

28:55 The most gripping part for me, and probably for most people, is the last verse of Gabriel's version. Absolutely. Yeah. Because at that point, it strips to where it's just strings are playing, like in this kind of rapid, reverby way, and then you've got the vocals that jump an octave up. I remember feeling a sense of like, I'm thinking especially of the Season 1 moment with Will's body. I remember feeling a sense of like, almost dizziness of just not knowing, like, where the beat is because it was clear through, like, earlier in the song.

29:36 And then you get there and like, yeah, if you listen to it, the strings are just rapidly playing. And, yeah. And then I'm watching this scene, so I'm not, like, actively listening to the song. And then that happens and it, like, grips my attention. Yeah. And so I I point that out because that dizziness makes me feel of what Mike and Joyce were feeling. Because Mike. Yeah. Like when Mike saw his friend's body and when Joyce saw this otherworldly demagogue game. Like for the first time, there's no bass during this part of the song, which I think is the climax of the song.

30:20 There's no bass there, so there's no foundation to ground or to guide the strings. And so in the same way, Mike and Joyce are focused on here as they feel vulnerable and they don't know what to do. They're at a loss of where to go. These are the characters in that moment who need comfort and guidance. In Season 3, Elle loses the relationships and powers that once gave her a sense of identity and groundedness, and so she too is looking for a foundation. Wow, yeah. Just a brief note about the vocals, the vocals jumping up an octave and then the intonation, like the way that Gabriel intentionally sounds somewhat strained.

31:13 And that's not an insult, an insult towards the vocals. I think it was intentional. Like he's intentionally sounding like a little strained and like the way that he cuts off certain syllables or parts of the word, like especially on the words I and standing that it gives me a sense of pleading. Like, it's not as triumphant. It's more kind of pleading, like how the way that we speak is affected, like when our emotions build and we are trying, especially like when we're trying to hold back a cry. The way.

31:57 Yeah, like your intonation, the way that you speak is affected by that. Like certain syllables or endings of words may get cut off a little bit. It makes me think of I had the the privilege and the honor to play music and to lead hymns for a memorial service a few days ago. And yeah, and I remember there was a particular point of a song where I was feeling that, of feeling this, like singing is a lot more difficult right now because of this emotion that I'm feeling. And so certain parts of my words were getting cut off a little bit.

32:40 I was still able to sing, so I wasn't fully choked up. But it's that like semi part where yeah, like we've all experienced it. And so, yeah, it makes me think of that. Yeah, but like, I'm glad you had that experience because it's a sense of vulnerability and Peter Gabriel, like that's I think one of the reasons why we love his version of the song. It is really vulnerable and raw for him to almost yet for the vocals to be just kind of like lingering a little bit and to feel a sense of like, yeah, that pleading was, yeah, really good.

33:19 So a really strategic move by the Duffer's to use the Gabriel rendition of Heroes for the climax moment of all of Season 1. The Duffer's also recently revealed that it was actually Joe Keery, who plays Steve Harrington, who suggested that the Bowie version of Heroes play. As the credits rolled for the series finale the end of Season 5, Ross Duffer told Netflix's To Doom. It was actually Joe Kiri who suggested that we do the Bowie version. Once Joe said that, we immediately knew that that was the right song to end the show on because it is in some ways, an anthem for Stranger Things to use.

34:02 The original Bowie version just felt fitting for the conclusion. Yeah, maybe using the original version of the song represents the sense of finality that the show is over. Man, the end of an era for sure. Still grieving? Yeah, and a cool way to honor David Bowie almost 10 years after his passing. Yeah, So would you say the kids were heroes? Was Elle a hero?

34:30 I believe me too. And I believe that about wraps up this episode. Thank you all so much for listening. If you enjoy listening, give us a review or a rating on Spotify as this helps us reach other listeners as well. Totally. So our next episode will be another music deep dive on the song that is my personal favorite, like possibly one of my favorite songs of all time, Running Up That Hill, A Deal with God by Kate Bush, as well as the orchestral and piano versions that were arranged by Rob Simonson.

35:06 If you have any thoughts about how the song was utilized throughout Stranger Things, or if you want to reach out and share with us which song would save you from Vecna, we'd love to hear from you. You can contact us at Camp Nowhere Pod at Gmail dot com or on Instagram at our handle Camp Nowhere pod. Thank you all so much again and we'll catch you on the next one. See you all, bye.