A Visit to Hansa Studios

David Bowie recorded at the famous Hansa Studios. The studio is not far from the reconstructed Potsdamer Platz, but for the story, I’m about to tell you, please imagine the wall instead of the giant skyscrapers made of glass.

Heroes are one of Bowie’s most famous songs. It tells the story of a young couple who are so driven to be together that they would meet every day under a gun turret on The Berlin Wall.

Bowie found the inspiration for the lyrics on the affair between his Tony Visconti, his producer at the time, and backup singer Antonia Maass, who would kiss “by the wall” in front of Bowie as he looked out of the Hansa Studio window during a smoke break.

Bowie didn’t say anything about Visconti’s role in inspiring Heroes until 2003 when he confessed to Performing Songwriter magazine:

“I’m allowed to talk about it now. I wasn’t at the time. I always said it was a couple of lovers by the Berlin Wall that prompted the idea. Actually, it was Tony Visconti and his girlfriend. Tony was married at the time. And I could never say who it was (laughs). But I can now say that the lovers were Tony and a German girl that he’d met whilst we were in Berlin. I did ask his permission if I could say that. I think possibly the marriage was in the last few months, and it was very touching because I could see that Tony was very much in love with this girl, and it was that relationship which sort of motivated the song.”

At Hansa Studios Bowie recorded only 2 of his world-famous Berlin Trilogy, the last album as just composed in the city but was produced with Brian Eno in Switzerland and New York City. So from Heroes, Low and Lodge, only the first two are part of this historical place.

Another cool story about the albums Bowie did here in Berlin is the story about the song Warszawa that we tell you all about it here at “David Bowie’s Warsaw: How Warszawa Came to Be”. A super exciting story that later changed the perception of how people saw Poland’s Capital Warsaw.

Hansa Studios – which used to overlook the Wall – remains operational and it is exceptionally relaxed about letting people visit. Who would have thought, huh?

I never manage to get inside, but I know people who did. Some tours can take you into the oak-panelled Tonstudio 2, the studio where Bowie recorded Low and Heroes and produced The Idiot for Iggy Pop.