David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ lyrics inspired by day with girlfriend Clare Shenstone, new documentary claims

A new documentary claims that the lyrics to David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ were inspired by a day he spent in Berlin with his then-girlfriend Clare Shenstone.

The song, which became one of the pop icon’s signature songs after being released on the 1977 album of the same name, was for a long time thought to have been inspired by an embrace under the Berlin Wall that Bowie witnessed between producer Tony Visconti and the German singer Antonia Maass.

Bowie himself had given that as the key inspiration for the song’s lyrics, but now a new BBC documentary has cast doubt on the song’s backstory.

Bowie In Berlin is set to air on BBC Radio 4 on September 14, and in it, Shenstone, a model, actor and artist who had a relationship with Bowie in the mid-1970s, claims that in fact the song contains a lot of specific details about “an extraordinary day” the two spent together in the German capital.

She says she told Bowie that morning about a dream she had in which she was swimming with dolphins, which she claims Bowie then referenced with the line, “I wish you could swim/Like dolphins can swim”.

Shenstone says they later crossed into East Berlin via Checkpoint Charlie. “We spent a couple of hours at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the guards were goose-stepping,” she said (via The Guardian). “We held hands very tightly and just took it all in, it was so extreme as an experience.

“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.”

Shenstone says when she later heard the song, she recognised that day “immediately”.

“I knew what each word meant, and it described exactly from moment to moment what that day was about.”

In other Bowie news, a collection of previously unseen footage from the Ziggy Stardust tour has been uncovered, including his first TV appearance as the character.

Last month, Bowie’s widow Iman also shared images of a previously unseen painting that the musician created in 2014.

The 1974 album ‘Diamond Dogs’ was reissued in May to mark its 50th anniversary. The album, made in the absence of regular guitarist Mick Ronson, saw Bowie taking the lead on the instrument himself, and was made in the aftermath of his failed attempts to adapt Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and a project based on the writing of William S. Burroughs.

Another gem from the Bowie archive was made available for Record Store Day this year in the form of ‘Waiting In The Sky (Before The Starman Came To Earth), a collection of recordings from Trident Studios in 1971 of songs that would go on to form the ‘Ziggy Stardust’ album a year later.