Tobias Rüther - Heroes: David Bowie and Berlin

Music comes in the night and says: You are not alone. But why is there one on his own? Because he is a little hero, different to all the others.

Diedrich Diederichsen, 1985

And from right here, says the tour guide, at that time you could see the Wall.

Some of the young people press themselves up against the window, straining to get a look out. But they cant see anything. Oh, yes they can: the blank wall of a building, holding out the prospect of suddenly seeing the world as he saw it. And even if it isnt the Wall, since it no longer exists, then at least the city. And even it is not as he saw it, since you cant do that anyway, then at least from the same angle as he saw it.

But all you can see from the first-floor window of Hansa Studios in Berlin is the blank wall of a building.

No sign of his past. The focus of the city has shifted in the ast 30 years. The Kaisersaal of the nearby Grand Hotel Esplanade, for instance, was relocated when Potsdamer Platz was built up again after the Wall came down. It was in the shadow of the old Potsdamer Platz, as it happens, that in the mid-70s Bowie came to play what was to prove the most daring music of his career. In the very same Hansa Studios, in the very same room, and next door in the Meistersaal, the master masons hall, behind a wall that still exists.

Thats where there was a video camera set up, and here in the control room, now called the Grner Salon, the Green Room, there was a monitor relaying everything being filmed to the mixing desk. The equipment came from the Esplanade, then as now located not far away from here. Crazy, eh? A studio by the Wall, separated by a wall! The fans laugh. Then they strain to get another look, one last look, before the tour of Hansa Studios moves on. Its nothing. Just the blank wall of a building.

Some 200 metres away, behind this wall, just down Kthener Strasse, just over a piece of waste ground, still derelict after 30 years, then straight across Stresemann Strasse: thats where the Wall stood. Plus an East German watchtower. David Bowie made it into an image. He gave it the title Heroes. It shows two lovers standing by the Wall. It was from here that Bowie could see the man and the woman in the shadow of the watchtower.

Its nothing. Just the blank wall of a building.

We can be Heroes just for one day, David Bowie sings. Not a day, six minutes: thats how long the single Heroes lasts, and when its over, its like it has never been. Thats what pop songs are like. They summon up images that go on reverberating in the space between your ears, nowhere else. They make it possible for a simple tune to let you see walls for a moment, sometimes even to see through them. Strange heroes, pop songs.

It was 1977 when Bowie recorded the album Heroes in Berlin. To commemorate the event 25 years later, its already necessary for the photographer from a local paper to put the record cover into the picture when photographing the house Bowie occupied at the time in the Schneberger Hauptstrasse to have at least something to remind you of the singer.

Blotted out, built over, flattened to the ground, no sign of his past. Apart from the images he made of the city, most of them black-and-white like on the monitor in Hansa Studios, there is nothing to remind you of David Bowie in Berlin.

Or is there? Thats what this book is about.