R.I.P. David Bowie

This week got off to a rather shocking start as I woke this morning to the completely unexpected news that David Bowie has passed away. I was reading through my Facebook feed and wondering why so many of my friends were talking about him, then I saw the announcement of his death on his official page and let out a few involuntary profanities, such was the shock. While I wouldn't class myself as a die-hard Bowie fan and there are parts of his work that I don't like, particularly some of the more bizarre material from his later years, I do enjoy listening to the classics and his music has had a great influence on me. It's not an overstatement to say the man was and is a legend: everyone has heard of him and he was very influential over a long period, not just through his music but also for his persona and stagecraft.


Born plain old David Jones, Bowie had just celebrated his 69th birthday on Friday and the album Blackstar was released on the same day, already becoming the best-selling album on Amazon UK even before his death. The news that he had been battling cancer for 18 months came as a great surprise as he had obviously kept this very quiet and none of his fans knew. He deserves a huge amount of respect for the way he handled this like a true gentleman, keeping it private and getting on with life without making a fuss or trying to gain any form of sympathy and publicity from it. He seems to have been very active right up to his final moments, as his Facebook page was filled with news and events relating to the new album. In retrospect, he does look unwell in the publicity photos but this could have been put down simply to his age and lifestyle and there was no indication he was suffering from a terminal illness.

Ziggy played guitar!
(By Rik Walton [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)

There are too many hit singles to mention and they remain instantly recognisable, even by those born long after his heyday. Bowie was never afraid to experiment and won much praise for the originality of his music. He had a strange and unique way with words and some of his lyrics are frankly rather bizarre, allegedly because he wrote by cutting words out of newspaper headlines, and became unforgettable as a result: only Bowie could claim of 'The Jean Genie' that "he says he's a beautician and sells you nutrition, and keeps all your dead hair for making up underwear"! My personal favourites are two of the lesser-known songs though, 'Absolute Beginners' from the 1986 movie of the same name, and 'Rock and Roll Suicide', the closing track of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, together with the 1981 collaboration with Queen, 'Under Pressure'.

Bowie's great skill as an artist was to keep things fresh by constantly reinventing himself and adopting a new image, creating various characters and alter egos: Major Tom, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, the Thin White Duke. His androgynous appearance and ambiguous sexuality during the seventies shook up the rock music establishment by challenging preconceptions and creating an enduring cult, and some of his styles have become iconic and oft-imitated, such as the famous image with the lightning bolt across his face from the Aladdin Sane album cover. Of course he wasn't just a musician but turned his hand quite successfully to acting, playing roles as diverse as a goblin king and Nikola Tesla, and was also known as a fashion trendsetter. He even has a species of spider named after him!

David Bowie may have gone to meet the Starman waiting in the sky, but his legend will live on forever through his music. He was a truly remarkable man and things won't be the same without him. Rest in peace, Ziggy.

Ashes to ashes, funk to funky. David Bowie, 1947-2016.