There is a video that comes and goes on YouTube every few months. I saw it a couple of years ago, and then it disappeared. Now, suddenly it is back again, and while we have access to it, I want to talk about what it teaches us about creativity.
It’s a quarter-hour of David Bowie’s longtime producer, Tony Visconti, talking about the session that resulted in one of the most iconic Bowie tracks of all time, “Heroes.”
So I’ve rewatched this breakdown a couple dozen times, and it really is a masterclass in the creative process. Or, at least, it is very revealing about one creative process—but if you are going to learn from anybody, there is a strong argument to be made that it should be Bowie.
At any rate, here are some of the core lessons we learn from listening to Tony (with apologies to Erin, sitting there in the background and making everything work)
Be willing to start without structure. “There was no melody. There was no form. There was no structure. We didn’t even know what the song was called.”
One of the amazing things about “Heroes” is that it is as much a vibe as a song. It just started out as an extended jam, and the task was to feel something. Not to plan it, or to map it out, but to feel one’s way in the darkness. That meant it was of the utmost importance toTrust the people you work with. Visconti points out that the musicians in the room were all, in various ways, at the top of their game. George Murray, Carlos Alomar, and Dennis Davis had all been working with Bowie for a number of years. They had played in the studio and on the road, and they knew they could explore together.
This is one of the most important and overlooked aspects of any creative process: Trust. You have to trust the process, and the people you are in the process with.Be willing to commit to something irreparable. One of the most fascinating comments, for me, comes right around 2:15 in the video. Visconti is talking about the flange on Murray’s bass. “At the time folks said, don’t put any effects on the tape, because you can’t take it off. But see that was just what Bowie and I wanted to do.”
Why is this important? There are points in a creative process where you want to be open to the possibilities. But having too many options for too long can paralyze you. It becomes essential for limitations to appear, because without those limits, a structure never takes hold.
So Bowie and Visconti started without any structure, true—but along the way they made specific irreparable choices that brought structure into the mix, and did so in ways that could not be undone. Whatever else this song became, it was going to have a flange on the bass line.
That leads to the next point,Create a vibe from minute number one. What is often overlooked in creativity is that there are at least two forms of structures. There is cognitive structure (think about a story outline, for example), but there is also affective structure. That is the structure that sits in your emotions, rather than in your brain.
Have you ever watched a movie where they have set up a conflict with a certain tension, and then they use a fast resolution, like a deus ex machina, to bring all the parts to a conclusion? That is an example of a cognitive structure: the pieces of the story that are essential are presented to the viewer. Conflicts have to have resolutions.
The problem comes when the resolution satisfies the cognitive requirement but not the affective one. The story resolves, but in a cheap way. For many of us, we might prefer the stories that lean more into this affective domain—giving us more character development, for example, at the expense of a tidy resolution to the story.
At any rate, I think that is what Visconti is getting at here. They were wanting to create a space that may have been somewhat alien to our expectations, but the vibe spoke to our emotions from the first note.Repeat with difference. “Heroes” goes on for about six minutes, doing pretty much the same thing the whole time. There are a couple points where the vibe breaks in a different direction, but it always comes back to the basic groove.
So instead of a standard variance of verse-chorus structure, Bowie and Visconti opt instead to build up the complexity of the layers.
It reminds me of something Thomas Dolby once said about songwriting: “Make sure to do the same thing differently on every chorus.” That’s like a Zen koan, right? It takes you time to figure out how to do that, and what that might mean for an audience.
To put it a different way, the composer John Cage once suggested that if you find something boring after three minutes, you should do it for six or twelve minutes, and inevitably you will find something interesting in the doing. I get the feeling that Bowie and Visconti were working in a similar mindset.Work with people who truly know their equipment. I’m thinking now of the description of Robert Fripp, who came in to play some guitar tracks. One of the things I love about Fripp is that he is not your standard flashy guitarist.
Instead of some technically intricate solo, apparently Fripp marked off points on the floor with some masking tape, and then spent close to two hours walking back and forth between the marks. At each point, his guitar would feed back at a different harmonic frequency.
As you hear when Visconti isolates the parts, each separate guitar track was pretty disjointed on its own, but taken together, they become a harmonic blend that forms a bed that anchors the song.
This is Fripp’s expertise on full display. Like an avant grade artist, he s not just the technical master of his instrument, but he is willing to think of the instrument in a wholly new register.
(Think Nam June Paik’s “One for Violin,” for example. It’s a completely different way of thinking about playing the instrument. As was said at the time, “Only one sound is made.”)Working in the dark is okay. Visconti’s throwaway comment makes me think of the possibly apocryphal story about Michelangelo coming in each day to stare at the huge block of marble that would—eventually—become his “David.”
”Working in the dark” is, I think, figuring out the block of stone, so that when you start to swing, you know what chunks to throw away, and what parts to keep.Be a bit impatient. Bowie wanted a cowbell, but there was not one handy. They could have phoned up and gotten a cowbell, “but by that time, the idea would be stale,” Visconti says. So they just found something that would work like a cowbell, and they went with that.
This is a good lesson (for me, especially). I tend to get precious about things, and want them just so. I waste time looking for the perfect quotation instead of grabbing the idea and moving on with the writing. I need to learn more to grab the idea and go with it.Be open to the miraculous moment. Who knows what the real story is about that iconic line, “I can remember / Standing by the wall / and the guns show above our heads / and we kissed as if nothing would fall.”
Regardless, Visconti’s explanation has a poetic beauty to it. The lesson here is that Bowie was open to seeing the lightning flash of inspiration, from whatever corner it might come.
I am especially happy for this story, however, as it occurred not too far from my old neighborhood in Berlin. I have a kind of mental image of what the moment was like, and it gives me a wonderful feeling of connection to a place in the world I love dearly.Use limitations. Visconti had one track left for the vocals. This necessitated an amazing solution, which Visconti explains at some length around 12:15 in the video. How “three microphone” technique, rigged with noise gates, created the unique vocal sound that is a signature of the song.
If Visconti had three separate tracks available, there would be none of this creativity in the vocal sound. The limitation brought out the brilliance.
“Bring the studio home with you,” says Visconti. I will admit I have no idea what that actually means—and so that’s what I want to leave you with in this little meditation. Let us ponder, each in our own ways, how to bring the studio home with us, on the way to our own vibe, our own process, our own “Heroes.”
Thanks for reading. If you dig this, please consider subscribing, or sharing with someone who might dig it, too.