Artist News Obituaries

David Bowie 1947-2016

By Andy Malt | Published on Monday 11 January 2016

David Bowie has died following an eighteen month battle with cancer, it was confirmed this morning. He released his 25th and final album ‘Blackstar’ on Friday, the same day as the musician’s 69th birthday.

Born David Jones in Brixton in 1947, Bowie became known as the chameleon of pop music for the number of times he completely changed his sound and image. He took on his stage name in the mid-60s to avoid confusion with Davy Jones of The Monkees, releasing his debut album, ‘David Bowie’, in 1967 to little success. The album was released shortly after pun-heavy novelty single ‘The Laughing Gnome’, which also failed to chart.

It was two years before he released his second album, also titled ‘David Bowie’ (and later re-released as ‘Space Oddity’ to avoid confusion with his debut). In the interim, he had begun studying dance and other physical arts, such as mime, which would influence his later performance style. Although the second album was not a commercial success at the time, it did feature his first hit, ‘Space Oddity’, which was released the week of the Apollo 11 moon landing – though it didn’t reach its peak of number five on the UK singles chart until later, the BBC electing not to play it until the astronauts had returned safely to Earth.

Released in 1971 in the UK (and six months earlier in 1970 in the US), ‘The Man Who Sold The World’ was the first album where Bowie really cemented the basis of the artist for which he would become known. Featuring the backing band who would also feature on ‘The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars’, the record ditched the folk influences of his previous efforts and opted for a hard rock sound instead. It was here he also began experimenting with his image, exploiting his androgynous features and wearing a dress both on the album’s cover and in public.

The ‘Ziggy Stardust’ album itself arrived in 1972 with possibly Bowie’s most famous image as the titular character of the record, which he had been developing for a number of years: an alien rock star bringing the people of Earth a message of hope in the planet’s last five years of existence, who then succumbs to the excesses of the rock star lifestyle. Themes of sexuality, drugs and politics assured the album some controversy, and also helped to keep it in the UK album chart for two years. In 1973, becoming concerned that he could no longer separate himself from Ziggy, Bowie abruptly announced the retirement of the character on stage.

His next incarnation, the Thin White Duke, proved similarly difficult to extract from the off-stage Bowie, coming to encompass his struggle with cocaine addiction. The first album in this guise, Bowie’s tenth, ‘Station To Station’, came after the musician filmed his first major movie, ‘The Man Who Fell To Earth’, in which he played a similar character, many of the songs having been written while he mistakenly thought he had been asked to create the film’s soundtrack. Towards the end of this era, a number of incidents led to Bowie being accused of being pro-Fascist, which he later blamed on his by then massive drug intake and obsession with the “nasty” persona he had created.

The next period of his career was influenced more by a city, Berlin – where he moved in 1976 – than a character he had created for himself. Here he worked on two solo albums by Iggy Pop, ‘The Idiot’ and ‘Lust For Life’, as well as a trilogy of his own LPs, ‘Low’, ‘Heroes’ and ‘Lodger’. Following the darker tone of these records, the 80s saw Bowie move back to pop with his fourteenth album ‘Scary Monsters’, which contained the singles ‘Ashes To Ashes’ and ‘Fashion’.

Having continued to be pretty prolific throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Bowie began to reduce his output and live performances after suffering a heart attack while touring his 23rd album ‘Reality’ in 2003. A decade passed before he released a new album, ‘The Next Day’, the creation of which was kept a secret until it was announced on his 66th birthday in 2013. Although appearing in videos for the critically acclaimed album’s singles, Bowie did not tour or give interviews promoting the album – his long-time producer Tony Visconti largely speaking to journalists about the record.

Then last year it was announced that Bowie would release a new album, ‘Blackstar’, on 9 Jan 2016, his 69th birthday. Also acclaimed by critics and fans upon its release, it would become his final record, with the singer dying just two days later.

David Bowie is survived by his second wife Iman and their daughter Alexandria, and his son with first wife Angie, Duncan.