Monday, November 09, 2009

David Bowie on the Berlin Wall

20 years ago, the Berlin Wall came down- the biggest historical event of my lifetime anyway. There are tons of articles and speeches and retrospectives to consider today. But, I thought one appropriate cultural artifact (at least for this blog) would be David Bowie's hit song Heroes, which is the story of a couple separated by the Berlin Wall. Bowie had the idea while recording in West Berlin with Brian Eno. The album Heroes is the second in the "Berlin Trilogy", a moniker that is a bit confusing, since Heroes was the only one fully recorded in Berlin. Anyway, this is a great song, and I've always thought that a film about a couple separated for three decades by the Wall could be great.

Note: Corrected to reflect the fact that the Wall did not, in fact, fall in 1979. :)

Note: Also corrected to reflect the fact that a couple would be separated for nearly three decades, and not four by the Berlin Wall (1961-1989). I swear that I am only a numerical illiterate at seven a.m.

4 comments:

Brian Dunbar said...

30 years ago,

I was in the tv lounge, watching on CNN. A fantastic day. I'd just re-enlisted in the Marines the month before and was on my way to Quantico to learn how to talk to computers.

But I am not that old - check your math.

Rufus said...

Haha! yeah, of course, it was twenty years ago. That's funny- I couldn't be that old either because I was just about out of high school when it happened.

I'll fix that. This, of course, is the danger of posting first thing in the morning after about six hours of sleep.

Man, it was great though when it happened. In spite of that damned Scorpions song that got played on every radio station once an hour for three months.

John Lessnau said...

I think you will enjoy the David Bowie Berlin wall story I quoted in my post today.

Rufus said...

Thanks for the link- that's a great story!