Damn. Bowie was a legend and one of my favorite singers, especially as a teenager in the 70s.
From Fox News.
David Bowie, a rock and roll icon who sustained a chart-topping career for five decades with hits including “Fame”, “Heroes” and “Let’s Dance”, has died at the age of 69, his family and representative confirmed Monday.
Spokesman Steve Martin said in a statement that the “Ashes to Ashes” singer was surrounded by his family when he died Sunday after an 18-month battle against cancer.
“While many of you will share in this loss, we ask that you respect the family’s privacy during their time of grief,” Martin’s statement concluded. No further details were provided.
The singer’s son, filmmaker Duncan Jones, issued a confirming statement of his own on Twitter.
……Bowie died two days after the release of “Blackstar”, his 29th album, which had been timed to coincide with his birthday. The singer had kept a low profile in recent years after reportedly suffering a heart attack in the 2000s, and it had not been widely known that he was struggling with cancer.
Long before alter egos and wild outfits became commonplace in pop, Bowie set the music world on its ear with the release of the 1972 album, “The Rise of Ziggy Stardust and Spiders from Mars,” which introduced one of music’s most famous personas. Ziggy Stardust was a concept album that imagined a genre-bending rock star from outer space trying to make his way in the music world. The persona — the red-headed, eyeliner wearing Stardust — would become an enduring part of his legacy, and a touchstone for the way entertainers packaged themselves for years to come.
His first album broke the airwaves on WMMS, the rock station famous for helping to bring the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame to Cleveland.
……”My entire career, I’ve only really worked with the same subject matter,” Bowie said in a 2002 interview… “The trousers may change, but the actual words and subjects I’ve always chosen to write with are things to do with isolation, abandonment, fear and anxiety — all of the high points of one’s life.”
His performance of “Heroes” was a highlight of a concert for rescue workers after the 2001 World Trade Center attacks.
“What I’m most proud of is that I can’t help but notice that I’ve affected the vocabulary of pop music. For me, frankly, as an artist, that’s the most satisfying thing for the ego.”
……Bowie was awarded a Grammy lifetime achievement award in February 2006 and his final performance on stage was later that year when he sang alongside Alicia Keys at the Black Ball in New York. He made a surprise comeback in 2013 when he suddenly released a new single on his 66th birthday, with his first new album in 10 years, “The Next Day,” following just weeks later.
“Blackstar,” which earned positive reviews from critics, represented yet another stylistic shift, as Bowie gathered jazz players to join him. He released a music video on Friday for the new song “Lazarus,” which shows a frail Bowie lying in bed and singing the track’s lyrics. The song begins with the line: “Look up here, I’m in heaven.”
He was the first entertainer to reinvent his image and create a whole music style around it. I’ll always thing of the Ziggy Stardust role as my favorite one.
RIP, Ziggy.
In 2013, astronaut Chris Hadfield made a video while on the International Space Station of Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’. View it HERE.