I Heard the News Today…* Media Gets it Wrong About Who Produced “Heroes” and Low plus stories of the week…

This is my weekly summary of news about Bowie. The bolded titles link to the original stories I summarize below. Bowie is kind of an innocent bystander in the biggest story of the week with which he has a connection — multiple, credible news outlets misidentified who produced “Heroes.” Read below to learn more— who produced “Heroes” is not the news, but media outlets getting it wrong is the story about the story. And, as usual, there were many more articles this past week that either focused on Bowie or which at least mentioned him. Read on…
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NPR Gets it wrong! This NPR story is about the Brian Eno documentary, Eno. The story identifies Eno as the producer of Bowie’s song and album, “Heroes.” Almost immediately after the story appeared on the radio, Tony Visconti posted on social media that Eno did not produce the song or album but that he had: “The Heroes album and single were produced by David Bowie and myself, no other producer is credited as you can see on the official album credits… [NPR] ‘reported’ that Eno produced Heroes (he was the co-writer and played some synth parts)…” Visconti added, “Eno is a fabulous, innovative musician and composer and I have great respect for him. Make no mistake about that.” And he’s right, this isn’t about Brian Eno but rather about journalistic integrity. I often include links to some pretty obscure media outlets in this weekly feature that might be forgiven for such an error, but NPR, and as you will see, the New York Times set the standard and should get the facts right. I’m sure others are going to make the same mistake in discussing the Eno documentary, and since these stories will continue to live on-line for a long time, if not forever, they will serve as sources for future stories that will also get it wrong. I’d be interested to learn if Eno himself corrects the record.

New York Times gets it wrong!. This is a New York Times article inspired by the Eno documentary. The story is less about the documentary itself and is instead a top-ten list of Eno productions. Read a certain way, the word “production” might be meant in an abstract sense, but, in the context of the entire piece here, I think it is inescapable that the writer is identifying Eno as the producer of two Bowie songs. She flat out writes, “some of Eno’s finest moments as a producer came on ‘Heroes.’”

The writer, Lindsay Zoladz identifies as her number one Eno production a song from the 1977 album, Low. If she didn’t have the album available to check who produced it and instead just looked it up on Wikipedia, this is what she would have found about the matter at hand: “Bowie and Visconti co-produced the album, with contributions from Eno…In 2000, Bowie stressed Visconti’s importance as co-producer, stating that ‘the actual sound and texture, the feel of everything from the drums to the way that my voice is recorded,’ was due to Visconti. Eno was not a co-producer, despite being widely perceived as such.”

This and the NPR mistake seem so easy to have fact-checked that I wonder if I’m missing something. But I don’t think I am.

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The other Bowie news stories from the past week are not quite so controversial:

Bowie’s awkward first meeting with Bruce Springsteen. I’ve read brief accounts of this 1974 encounter before but don’t remember reading about it being uncomfortable. Apparently it was!

“Starman” now Bowie’s #1 song on Spotify. The song has surpassed “Under Pressure” for the first time.

Profile of Duncan Jones. This is a fairly thorough biographical sketch of Bowie’s son, the former Zowie Bowie and current movie director.

Linguini Incident Review. On the occasion of the long-awaited Blu-Ray release of the 1991 movie, which stars Bowie, this is a review. I’m waiting for my copy— I’ve never seen the movie and will write my own review when I get it. (So, I actually didn’t read this review because I want to watch the movie for the first time knowing as little as possible about it).

The Story Behind “Young Americans.” Part of what appears to be a series of posts about the story behind the song from the American Songwriter website. No really new information here, but it’s worth checking out.

The story of “Sorrow.” Perhaps lost in all the other anniversaries has been the 50th anniversary of this single from Pin Ups. This article details its background.

Bowie makes list of most valuable music catalogues. Not really a surprise here.

Bowie’s “Let’s Spend the Night Together” is one of the best Stones covers. I actually disagree with this assessment– I think Bowie’s attempt to make the suggestive song even more explicitly sexual falls somewhat flat. But hey, read an alternate view here.

“Ashes to Ashes” as song sequel. Another American Songwriter post containing information you already knew– this includes Bowie’s sequel to “Space Oddity” in a larger article about artists who wrote sequels to their own songs.

Diamond Dogs helped make 1974 the third-best year for albums. This is really a roundup of reader responses to an oddly-premised article that posted earlier in this San Diego paper. Bowie pops up more than once here.

Eminem Ties Bowie. Several articles reported that Eminem scored his 11th #1 album on the UK charts with The Death of Slim Shady. All of these articles point out that Bowie, Taylor Swift and U2 also had eleven #1s.

Far Out’s Bowie stories of the week: The online magazine manages to find a way to include a few posts every week that are about or at least mention Bowie. Here’s what I found from this week: Bowie’s five best duets… American Songwriter had a similar post, too; Bowie on The Downward Spiral;

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And with that, “we’ve finished our news…”*

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*“I’ve heard the news today” is Bowie’s adaptation of the Beatles lyric, which is heard in “Young Americans.” **“We’ve finished our news” is a line from, “Oh You Pretty Things”.