“Heroes” Covered Part. 1: Deliverance performs Beauty and the Beast

“Far Out” is a British on-line cultural magazine that seems to have a daily article on Bowie. Some of the videos I get for this blog, I first see via “Far Out.” Recently the magazine compiled covers of ever song that appeared on the “‘Heroes’” album. I’m going to kind of reproduce that here. I say, ‘kind of,” because the commentary will be my own. Also, the cover of the song,”Heroes” used in the article is Peter Gabriel’s version, which appears elsewhere on this blog, so I’ll use a different cover.

OK, so all that said, here is a cover of my very favorite song, performed in the style of Bowie by… a Christian metal band called Deliverance. I don’t think I had ever heard of this band before, and there’s nothing about this cover that tips me off to the band’s religious orientation. The arrangement is faithful (pun intended) to Bowie’s studio version, and the lead singer, who is an American, almost seems to be trying to imitate Bowie’s voice.

And yet… I have long thought that “Beauty and the Beast” is about the song’s narrator struggling with adultery. He (presumably “he,” but who knows) can’t stay no to “beauty,” the object of his temptation, and “the beast,” the temptation itself.

Although not exactly a narrative song, the singer establishes in the opening lines that he’s basically walking down the street, singing to himself and minding his own business, when he makes a play on words using “highroad” to quickly transition from actually referencing a road to the metaphorical moral high-ground, which has “gone wrong.”

What comes next is a description of chaos that comes off as internal struggle encountered as external forces by the narrator. After describing this turmoil, he cries out, “someone fetch a priest” before resolving that “you can’t say no to the beauty and the beast.”

This point is repeated and underscored with campy phrases like, “my, my” and, “darling,” before the singer comes back to moral equivocation— “ I wanted to be good; I wanted no distractions; like every good boy should.” Whether an adulterous affair or something else, the singer has been distracted despite his moral intentions. He tries to rebalance by pledging, “nothing will corrupt us; nothing will compete” before expressing relief that “heaven left us standing on our feet.”

This line, which actually begins with, “thank god,” can be interpreted literally — like god literally has given the singer and his partner in sin another chance to straighten out. But the singer closes by once again conceding “you can’t say no to the beauty and the beast.”

So, I see the song as about a moral dilemma. I see adultery because the singer seems to be referencing someone else whose in on the unexpected act of sin— what other bad behavior invites that type of situation? So without any change of words, I can see how a Christian band can adopt this song. I am reminded of Neil Young commenting on Dolly Parton’s cover of “After the Gold Rush,” in which she apparently interpreted the song as being about Jesus. Neil said that wasn’t his original intent, but he respected what Parton did with the song. I think Bowie would be OK with this, too. (And by the way, it is a good performance).