“We can be heroes”... An ode to a musical legend from a fan

It started way back in the 90s during the MTV revolution when we got our very first cable connection. A chart-busting pop song titled Ice-Ice Baby by a band called Vanilla Ice was making itself heard in living rooms around the world. With its infectious bass-line and ready to dance beats, it captured the imagination of teeny-boppers instantly. It wasn’t until much later when I discovered, way past my teens, into the throes of young adulthood that the song’s bass-line was a heavily inspired take on a brilliant rock number originally titled Under Pressure rendered by the British Band Queen, with frontman Freddie Mercury and supporting vocals by David Bowie. 

I had instantly fallen in love with the song and a certain section of it crooned specifically by Bowie that goes, “Cause love’s such an old-fashioned word, and love dares you to care for the people on the edge of the night, and love dares you to change our way of caring about ourselves. This is our last dance, this is ourselves, Under pressure...” 

As good sense supposedly prevailed, I had graduated from bubble gum-pop and was on my way to the haloed clan of rock music lovers. Fast forward to many years, and in 2009, I found myself swooning, head over heels on Bowie, this time due to the anachronistic placement of his song, Putting out fire with Gasoline, in maverick director Quentin Tarantino’s epic World War II adventure In glourious Basterds. The song appears in the backdrop of a mesmerising segment when a Jewish woman, dressed in a red evening gown, plots the downfall of the Third Reich at a movie premiere, conspicuous by the presence of the Nazi flags drenched in crimson and black. 

My parting memory of Bowie was one of absolute rapture, unknown to me then, that it would be the last time I would be experiencing such joy in his lifetime. A song by him titled Heroes , was featured in a very poignant moment in a film called The Perks of being a Wallflower . It’s a coming of age tale of a very shy and reticent young man with a dark history who has just slowly begun to open up to his friends. And on a night out with them, the song that’s played on their car stereo is Heroes. I remember how that scene excited me, on how it felt to be young once again, even if it was just for the running time of a film. The lines went, “Though nothing, will keep us together, we could steal time, just for one day. We can be heroes, forever and ever.” For me, David Bowie will always remain a hero.