David Bowie R.I.P

Sad

Blackstar was the first record he didn't appear on the sleeve.
Lyrics are about death, and dealing with his past and the legacy he leaves behind him

Awful, unexpected, but kind of makes sense somehow. Fuck. RIP.

Can't believe this. Had to scan multiple sources just to make sure it wasn't a hoax. :(

Something happened on the day he died
Spirit rose a metre and stepped aside
Somebody else took his place, and bravely cried
(I’m a blackstar, I’m a blackstar)

----------

I know something is very wrong
The pulse returns the prodigal sons
The blackout hearts, the flowered news
With skull designs upon my shoes

damn, RIP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wd5e1b_6YfE

Fucking cancer. Blackstar was his and ours last birthday preaent. Wouldn't be surprised if it was Euthanasia

I'm dying too/ i'm dying to

I noticed he was trending and I figured he'd just done a TV appearance or something to promote the album. Jesus.

Fuck. No way. I'll say more about this later when I've taken it all in. Right now I've gotta go and put "Lodger" on to my mp3 player for the journey to work today.

(Just turned on Skynews to hear Eamonn Hughes saying to a writer from Q magazine, "The important question of the day, is it Bowie or Bo-ie?" then, "... 'The Laughing Gnome', what was that all about?" I don't know, maybe he's in shock.)

(Now Eamonn Hughes asking Paul Gambaccini, "What about his acting, how serious was he about his acting?")

Just pulled "Five Years" up on YT and shared on FB...weeping.

... Eamonn Holmes that is... I'm losing it (xp)

SHOCKED!

Ah shit

RIP

genuinely emotional about this. sorry if i came off as flippant with the born 2wice embed. rest in peace to fucking david bowie.

Lool at me
I'm in heaven

FUCK

i am crying so much rn

RIP

RIP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMThz7eQ6K0

the fuck? damn

Fuck this shit

Absolutely gutted. RIP

Oh god such shocking news :(

rip starman

Grimmy just played a live-at-maida-vale version of "Ziggy Stardust" from 2002, good choice it could have come from any year.

Gambacini is now on gmtv, saying the same old

"What was he like as a person?"

Gambo carries on, ignoring the question, he obviously doesn't know.

(tbf, who does?)

RIP, eternal props for going all-out on the swansong, the guy loved to give his music no matter what

Yes, like Lou Reed in that respect.

https://www.morrisonhotelgallery.com/images/medium/146-006-MIKE-ROCK.jpg

Keep going, Iggy!

(And Kenny)

Ned's post got me right in the ducts.

wow

don't quite know what to say. RIP.

we build up a sense of invulnerability in these rock gods...if they survived the 70s they'll live forever.

devastating especially since bowie was so vital until his very last moment

I feel like this was a very managed exit. Which is not surprising.

From his final single, Lazarus:

Look up here, I’m in heaven
I’ve got scars that can’t be seen
I’ve got drama, can’t be stolen
Everybody knows me now

Look up here, man, I’m in danger
I’ve got nothing left to lose
I’m so high it makes my brain whirl
Dropped my cell phone down below

Ain’t that just like me

jeeez

fuck this fucking news

watching 'lazarus' and 'blackstar' clips, the recurring motif is a blindfold. wondering whether the cancer affected his sight. regardless of that, at least the man got to work his death into his art in the most beautiful way.

btw 'blackstar' is his best song in forever imo

Awfully sad, devastating news.

Listened to "Low" on the commute home, only thing I could do.

I just listened to Blackstar for the first time apparently around his time of death. What a haunting way to be introduced to that record. And it is one of his best in decades. RIP

......

RIP. Fuck!

Just woke up to this awful news. Coincidentally, "It's No Game" was in my head as I came across this in the paper. Painfully sad. What a huge loss.

this is so sad :'(

rip

When Michael Jackson died, news spread a lot slower. I remember seeing it on cable news. I remember texting friends who were going off to the shore for the weekend. People were shouting it from their cars well into the summer evening. The radio played all his hits. It was shocking, a media circus for days we all recall, and yet we all saw it coming. I never considered myself a fan, but he was the King of Pop, sure.

Bowie's death couldn't be more opposite. The news of Bowie's death swept across twitter so fast, too fast, this new album I didn't even get to listen to yet still in a cardboard box, in the middle of a nasty January night. No one is around. Everyone I'm talking to, we were the only ones in our homes awake. It is a painful delirium like the many sleepless nights I had when I was much younger, when the Ziggy Stardust record was the best company I had. RIP, David Bowie.

^ beautiful post

This one is really tough on me. I'll never understand how it feels to be that dedicated to one's art, to toil away with dignity up until the very end. What an amazing life he had.

tony visconti has posted on facebook :

He always did what he wanted to do. And he wanted to do it his way and he wanted to do it the best way. His death was no different from his life - a work of Art. He made Blackstar for us, his parting gift. I knew for a year this was the way it would be. I wasn't, however, prepared for it. He was an extraordinary man, full of love and life. He will always be with us. For now, it is appropriate to cry.

the ending of BLACKSTAR, that final looking-into-the-abyss wash of guitar and keyboard, sounds even more 'staring death in the face' now

rip

This was the first thing to actually make me cry https://www.facebook.com/OfficialMichaelSkolnik/posts/903694659748939

They look so happy!

"David’s friendship was the light of my life. I never met such a brilliant person. He was the best there is."
- Iggy Pop

What a way to say goodbye. The only comparison that comes to mind is "These Are The Days Of Our Lives."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-JqH1M4Ya8

so sad for iggy :(

https://youtu.be/pO2vkaQAdSw

This is terribly sad.

Very hard to deal with this atm. Every social media channel seriously overflowing with touching tributes from all kinds of people (among them friends who got first in serious contact with Bowie through compilations of mine), a real heartbreaking sense of what he meant to people. On the other hand terribly idiotic jokes in the creative agency I'm hating to work today from pricks who couldn't care less... don't know what to say.

great anecdote here involving the beat:

https://twitter.com/PhilipNByrne/status/686484733379887107

^ was probably saxa i'm guessing?

so many thoughts going through my head - listening to first Blackstar, then Hunky Dory, now Station2Station in the office. What a variety of emotions, ideas, creative thoughts he was able to communicate, so many great collaborations.

can't help but feel very sad that I never got to see him perform, a dream since I was a teen and I had made a promise to myself I would fly anywhere in the world with my little brother to see him

Gosh, this was unexpected. He was a huge favourite when I was young and also my mom’s absolute favourite artist. Many happy memories of listening to Bowie with her, especially taking her to see him in 2004.

When I heard that Lemmy had died I was at work. But when I got home the first thing I did was play 'Ace of Spades', because it's so obvious, what else do you do?
I was wondering earlier this morning which Bowie track to play and couldn't come to a decision. But I settled on the title/opening track of 'The Next Day', and it feels like a fitting send off to listen to that album and then 'Blackstar' all the way through.

^^^ I put on Station to Station as it's my favourite DB album, but how can one record possibly sum up his career? Even his missteps (of which there were many) were at the very least interesting, and he has left such a wealth of material, a real embarrassment of riches.

this news really sucks. am genuinely much sadder than i ever expected. and im not even a huge mega fan (though i own about 75% of his albums). never suspected cancer. so sad. never saw it coming at all.

Listening to them in the order to which they came to me.

Which was a little odd, starting with Let's Dance (I was 13 when it came out, OK?) but adult ears are a lot kinder to that record.

I have had much of "Blackstar" running through my head this past week. It's an album that's made a big impression on me. I think the melancholia of "Dollar Days" the most.

It's 6 am where I am. Too early to be up. Was having an intense dream and woke, picked up my phone to scan Twitter just to break the dream's grip when I came across all these Tweets referring to Bowie in the past tense. What a shock this is.

Goodbye, great and inspiring soul.

Side 2 of Diamond Dogs :(

waiting to see if morrissey says anything.

Yeah, they were sort-of mates..

I knew for a year this was the way it would be.

I am devastated by this. He meant so much to my young friends and I when music was everything to us. He was an emblem by which we identified ourselves. We couldn't imagine a life without his music.

I was driving back home tonight. I had to pull over... I'm sad and not sad - if anyone could ascend/transcend, it would be him.

I bought Scary Monsters the week it came out. I was 13. It's always been about that album. It's never not sounded like one giant step into the future. I just put it on now and it's still like that. I'm freaked out that Blackstar is still sitting in the unplayed folder.

RIP

Don't really need to hear David Cameron talking about 'Hunky Dory' tbh.

Can't adequately put into words how important Bowie was when I was growing up. Always seemed like Glasgow (and environs) was especially insane about Bowie, a real Bowie Town, and from Bowie to Lou Reed, the Velvets, Iggy, Orange Juice, JAMC, Pastels etc etc etc.

I've got my older sister to thank for introducing me to Bowie (Lou Reed, the Velvets and so on). So thanks to her and thanks to David Bowie. RIP.

I'm freaked out that Blackstar is still sitting in the unplayed folder.

^^^

I'll listen to it this afternoon. I like to be in the right mind space when listening to any new album, but with this more than anything.

Discovering Ziggy Stardust was... discovering music. As a teen there were many important artists that expanded my idea of what music could be, what emotions it could produce, what iconography it could make available. Bowie was the nazz.

Feel very connected with other Bowie fans today, he somehow made a community out of an existential outsider-role (and made it work as music). Finding out that a friend shared this connection to Bowie always made me happy - it was never an exclusive club, but a hint that we understood each other emotionally.

RIP.
I'm stunned, and will be for a while

One of the real titans of music. So sad.

This is possibly ghoulish and grotesque but one angle that is really weird to think about is that Angie Bowie is on Celebrity Big Brother at the moment, and won't know.

Wendy Leigh (gossipy Bowie biographer) on BBC earlier this morning in an eye rolling tribute started with more even-handed adjectives, genius, chameleon, then notched it up with "he was also psychic and a wizard, he planned the time of death, it was all planned out so that it would hit exactly when Britain was waking up"

Oops, sorry, not wizard, *magician*

"This is possibly ghoulish and grotesque but one angle that is really weird to think about is that Angie Bowie is on Celebrity Big Brother at the moment, and won't know."

im sure they will let her know - would prob be good for the drama

His debut is maybe the worst album I've heard from '67, no joke. To not only come back from that but to have a subsequent decade of nigh-unimpeachable albums, several of which are unquestionably among the greatest of all-time, is an astounding feat. After that, the dude got a lifetime Stevie Wonder/Francis Ford Coppola pass to do whatever he wanted after bringing it so hard. So many amazing songs that hold up to listen after listen. 'Five Years' seriously makes me teary pretty much every time I hear it. Don't know if I can hear it today.

I'm really devastated and keep crying at work. I'm sort of surprised by how hard this has hit me because it's not like I've ever identified as the #1 Bowie fan or anything but my God if he wasn't a phenomenally talented powerhouse of a magical person. It's so sad. Surely he should be immortal. RIP.

was not at all expecting to wake up to this, what an awful shock

RIP

He and Lemmy in the same year is surreal. Rock isn't dead, but we are certainly in a different era.

Technically not in the same year but yeah - we're on the cusp of a wave of boomer-era rock 'n roll deaths.

"All the Young Dudes" is too much right now.

im sure they will let her know - would prob be good for the drama

They're going to tell her in private, off camera. Even Channel 5 has limits. I'm not an Angie fan, but this sounds like an unbelievable situation. Although my thoughts are much more with Iman and his two children.

His debut is maybe the worst album I've heard from '67.

It certainly isn't.

fuck

couldn't believe it, rip

I dare say Angie will leave the show.

I'd been having a heavy Bowie phase for a few weeks, & was shocked & bummed when I woke up and heard. Was maudlin on the train in to work, but then was walked up from Charing Cross, listening to 'Station to Station", & by the time I'd hit "It's not the side effects of the cocaine…" and it's galloping along, I was just thinking what a thing to have made, what a great life, just what an amazing way to have spent 70 years in the world. RIP, thank you.

i've had bowie-fever for the last several weeks as well, this latest bout kicked off by the amazing blackstar video.
RIP David Bowie. :(

dont even know what to say. people at work saying "I can't even name a single David Bowie song"...where the hell have they been?

oh man, what a thing to wake up to.

I just went to the record store to buy Blackstar yesterday, they were out of the CD.

RIP genius

xpost Depending on their age and general interest in music, I guess I can believe it. I was mostly only aware of him as the dude from Labyrinth who had some hits in the '80s until I actively sought his stuff out. Classic rock stations seem to have always unfairly slighted his work.

i would guess they would recognize several of his songs but just don't know they're Bowie - hell I was a fan of him for a while and didn't know "Golden Years" was him

i routinely confused him with billy idol until my mind was blown by station to station sometime after i went to college

I first heard him as a kid, because "Let's Dance" was a big pop hit at the time, and I can distinctly remember the video for "Dancing in the Streets". In high school, listening to classic rock radio, they really only played a handful of songs ("Space Odyssey", "Changes", "Fame" off the top of my head) -- he occupied this weird space where I always knew who he was, but he was somehow still "underground".

What would the average (American) person on the street know of his '70s work? 'Space Oddity' definitely, 'Changes' probably, 'Heroes' maybe. I'd be inclined to say something from Ziggy Stardust but I don't actually know how culturally ubiquitous those songs are. The riffs are probably more recognizable than the songs. 'All The Young Dudes' seems likely.

Honestly, I remember when I was a teenager (in the early to mid 90s), the general consensus (among teenagers) seemed to be that David Bowie was a washed up wannabe (old dude trying to be hip by touring with nine inch nails, etc.). It was only when I got into my 20s that I started buying his older albums that I got into his music.

I occasionally meet people my age who still have this mid 90s image of him.

Anyway R.I.P., one of the greats of all time.

devasted.
I think for a lot of people he was a beacon, especially for people who felt different or outcast. which i can't say was ever really true for me, and the bowie i first knew was the "let's dance" era, in his more corporate pop phase and well done at that.
but as someone who had such a desire to consume music as much of as i could, i can't think of anyone else outside of maybe zeppelin who made albums that suggested more possibilities in music, and in albums i could buy in the cornfields at Musicland. in the 80s and 90s in the midwest stick, the non-pop stuff on, say, "Heroes" was like a transmission from another galaxy, in an age when me even hearing about or being able to get a Harmonia album would have been literally impossible. just so much of it, the ryko reissues of ziggy and changesone, and diamond dogs and then the germanic dreadful soul of station to station, like i grew on ROCK BANDS like ac/dc and CCR and the stones and anything i listen to now that is remotely avant garde i heard an echo of in Bowie, even though he was able to make it accessible to me and make it something that i could understand but that weird "otherness" around the edges of his best work was a gateway to so many thing and i thank him for it.

Like, I bet a lot of people would say both 'oh I know recognize this song, cool riff' and 'what the hell is a 'Queen Bitch'?'.

"the general consensus (among teenagers) seemed to be that David Bowie was a washed up wannabe (old dude trying to be hip by touring with nine inch nails, etc.)"

this would have been around outside. that may have been the impression among some narrow age group but I was in college then and it clearly was not the impression of anyone else.

What would the average (American) person on the street know of his '70s work? 'Space Oddity' definitely, 'Changes' probably, 'Heroes' maybe. I'd be inclined to say something from Ziggy Stardust but I don't actually know how culturally ubiquitous those songs are. The riffs are probably more recognizable than the songs. 'All The Young Dudes' seems likely.

"Fame"

i know the song "heroes" has almost been killed by overexposure but i still remember hearing it and the whole thing seemed to just GLOW all those swirling synth and fripp textures, how could something from the past seem more futuristic than like guns n roses or nirvana that i was listening to?

and "Young Americans" for that matter xp

bowie became my guide as i traced his own connections and obsessions: lou reed/VU, iggy pop/stooges, t rex, kraftwerk, brian eno, cluster/harmonia from the 60s and 70s alone. my life just would have been totally different without bowie, and i'm sure the same is true for many others.

That's pretty much eperience. I knew him as the Labyrinth dude and from the Mick Jagger duet which I saw when they rerun Live Aid for its 10th anniversary. If I hadn't made friends with some glam rockers in the mid-90s, I doubt I'd know that much more about him, and even now I don't think I can name more than 5 tunes by him.

But he seemed like decent bloke, I like his movies that I've seen, and the Major Tom song inspired one of my favourite electro tunes of all time. So RIP, you weren't for me but you meant a lot for some friends of mine, thanks for helping them through hard times.

http://youtu.be/87yi3yb1saw

This is really fucking me up, and not in the way I expected.

I keep thinking about Bowie's phenomenal career and how much he was able to accomplish and the indelible mark he has left on rock music and how much his music has meant to so many people, and then I wonder what the world would have been like if a police officer had shot him when he was twelve years old, and then I just want to hug my sons.

i always thought of him as a beautiful humanoid creature-king, not a person who could die. feeling genuinely bereft.

Forget his own albums for the moment. Dude worked on Raw Power and Transformer and The Idiot and Lust For Life. That's a hell of a legacy unto itself.

and All the Young Dudes as well

(several xposts)

Quicksand, and all it's magic, is hitting a bit harder this a.m. RIP Bowie - truly a powerful musical force in my life, and I'm so thankful.

i always thought of him as a beautiful humanoid creature-king, not a person who could die. feeling genuinely bereft.

otm

dont even know what to say. people at work saying "I can't even name a single David Bowie song"...where the hell have they been?

― frogbs, Monday, 11 January 2016 14:30 (33 minutes ago) Permalink

In my office (in the U.S., fwiw) I overheard "the guy from Labyrinth died."

Why Bowie is Better Than God:

We know for certain that David exists.
David has cooler clothes; God's billowing robes are just so passe.
David is less prone to smiting sinners (a definite plus).
If you hear God's voice in your head, you're probably crazy.
If you hear Bowie's voice in your head, you may be crazy, but at least you have something to sing along to.
David looks better naked than God does. (Conclusion based on appearances in "The Man Who Fell To Earth" and the uncensored "China Girl" video)
God couldn't tease his hair that high, even during the 80's.
God can't play the guitar.
David has better shoes.
David is richer.
David is still attractive.
God probably looks like Mick Jagger or Keith Richards by now.
Going to a Bowie concert is a lot more fun than church.
God doesn't paint his toenails.
God's too uptight.
People don't corner you at malls to tell you that "Bowie loves you."
David looks better in a dress.

When I heard that James Brown died, I was not able to process it: how can someone like James Brown die? How is that physically possible?

Feeling the same way about Bowie right now. In a certain way, I don't think I really believe it (or I'm not allowing myself to believe it).

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CYbYsUPW8AAo87t.jpg

People grieve in different ways, some just prefer to tweet pictures of themselves

Stay classy Madge

And I guess to be fair, that's all I knew of him until my late teens/early twenties. I knew he was a musician, but probably couldn't name any songs back then.

I can distinctly remember the video for "Dancing in the Streets".

This was my first exposure to both Bowie and the Stones, and consequently why put off listening to either of them for a very, very long time.

Madonna ✔ @Madonna
So lucky to have met you!!!! Hot Tramp I love you So! ❤️ #rebelheart
4:06 AM - 11 Jan 2016
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CYbYsUPW8AAo87t.jpg

RIP

"We can be heroes, just for one day"

#rebelheart

liked this post from Momus very much: http://mrstsk.tumblr.com/post/137085985233

Not having much luck at work today. I've been less upset about the deaths of people I've actually known.

I'm sorry but can someone please explain to me why Madonna's post is so objectionable in a way that other artists making fannish posts talking about meeting Bowie or being hugely influenced by him are somehow not?

Actually, on second thought, just don't.

ILX wouldn't be ILX without someone being dickish on an RIP thread would it now.

RIP

Regarding Madonna, ending her tweet with a hashtag plug for her new album is in questionable teaste.

I'm more having trouble because I'd much rather ignore work to focus on listening to all of Bowie's albums than try to work with all of Bowie's albums playing in the background.

not sure what's "dickish" abt my post but ok

Finding myself having an odd reaction to this given that he's been so uncharacteristically low profile for the past decade. It's sort of a slow sadness sinking in rather than shock. And now Blackstar is sitting there to be poured through.

Regarding Madonna, ending her tweet with a hashtag plug for her new album is in questionable teaste.

i figured it was a "rebel rebel" ref

not sure what's "dickish" abt my post but ok

I think Branwell explained it quite clearly, but in case you didn't get it, it's dickish to deride Madonna for reminiscing his acquaintance with Bowie and not the kazillion male musicians/celebrities who've done the same.

Madonna puts that hashtag on all her posts, it barely means anything anymore.

The one where she talks about Bowie being the first ever concert she went to is pretty sweet.

tribute show at Carnegie Hall, 3/31

http://www.carnegiehall.org/Calendar/2016/3/31/0800/PM/The-Music-of-David-Bowie/

The one where she talks about Bowie being the first ever concert she went to is pretty sweet.

I bet you it wasn't though. What's Bono been saying?

This is completely ridiculous, I know, but I just got a little sad realizing that we'll never get another Nathan Adler album.

Thanks Tuomas! Didn't realize I was disrespecting the women of the world, will try harder next time.

moving on, daughter was pretty shook up this morning and wore her Aladdin Sane shirt to school. She's 13 and her obsession has been planing at a peak for the past year, makes this somehow sadder and weirder here for me....

also that's not even her in the picture, it's suzanne somers, American comic actress

You're not alone, RR. Outside meant the world to me in college. Blackstar seems to have a lot of that record in it.

chameleon is a weird compliment for bowie, he's much more a peacock

It never ceases to amaze me, listening to Man Who Sold The World and Hunky Dory back to back, the astronomical leap that he made in a single year from a decent artist with some interesting ideas to something akin to a pop/rock deity. Everything gets tightened up and streamlined and perfected and then he just rides that train for ten years.

Madonn has said often over the years that the Ziggy concert was her first, and she inducted him into the HOF. She's open about his influence on her.

*Madonna

What the fuck? No. I refuse to believe it.

RIP... what a life.

When I heard that James Brown died, I was not able to process it: how can someone like James Brown die? How is that physically possible?

Feeling the same way about Bowie right now. In a certain way, I don't think I really believe it (or I'm not allowing myself to believe it).

Yeah for real. Boulez died last week at 90 and I am still processing that, reading old interviews and articles and stuff, the force of his thought and aesthetic and just like the USEFULNESS of his WAY make it too hard to grasp that he could no longer be acting on earth.

This feels just like that minus the 'well but 90 years old' consolation. How could Bowie be gone at 69? How could Bowie be gone at all?

Same as Boulez though Bowie will not be gone, maybe not ever. The usefulness of his way will be there for everyone who needs it for their lives and art and people are always gonna need it.

Bowie seemed like someone who would have figured out how to will himself to live to 120, and would have managed to stay relevant and on point the entire time.

visconti says that he knew for a year this was how it would be, and Blackstar was his final gift to us. i have no idea why but I've never felt better about my own mortality for some reason, just in the way that he left. and i genuinely appreciate that there was no warning, publicly at least. that there was no endless stream of photos of bowie, weakened, coming in and out of hospitals. that for the past decade he's just decided to make some music here and there and live privately after being such a public icon. and i also appreciate that, from all i know and i could be wrong of course (please wait to tell me contradictory stories later), he was a super decent and soft spoken and relatively (to his career choice) humble and kind man.

just found out, totally shocked by this tbh

Very surreal and overwhelming to listen to Blackstar for the first time on my way to work this morning. Driving in total darkness, knowing he was gone, hearing a really beautiful and vibrant album from one of my all time favorite artists was too much. RIP.

honestly, with all the new material, I was expecting the next thing Bowie would do was announce a tour (or at least some kind of live performance).

I wish I could say with a straight face that I'd seen him in concert, but it was a Secret Machines concert and I just saw him sitting up in the balcony at the high line. Still feel lucky though.

profoundly bummed by all of this. what a terrible loss

First thing I ever stole in my life was a cassette of ziggy stardust from the record store in Rosedale. Not a tribute I'm proud of...

Love that he did this; he called out MTV's racist programming policies during an on-air interview in 1983:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CYbtVYJWMAA6x7o.jpg:large

xpost nomar absolutely right on the decent and kind front. He certainly projected that. All the shape-shifting genius stuff is inevitable and fair comment, but I was always amazed at what a thoroughly affable character he seemed. Don't know how he managed to be both the most far out and latterly the nicest and least affected of the old rock superstar dudes.

Hilton Als obit:

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/postscript-david-bowie-1947-2016?mbid=social_twitter

Als mentions this performance, backing Iggy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7hzBEBXEC0

some surprises here and there

http://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/david-bowie-s-official-top-40-biggest-selling-downloads-revealed-__2854/

oddly "As the World Falls Down" is iTunes' fourth most viewed Bowie video.

I can't even process this, it doesn't seem real

Playing "Fantastic Voyage" a lot, title seems apt.

so, i just want to make sure everyone is as surprised by this as i am. did anyone at all see this coming? or even know his health was failing?

thought there was talk of him being pretty sick a year or so ago, but i kinda figured he had gotten better since he suddenly seemed so busy.

tony visconti has posted on facebook :

He always did what he wanted to do. And he wanted to do it his way and he wanted to do it the best way. His death was no different from his life - a work of Art. He made Blackstar for us, his parting gift. I knew for a year this was the way it would be. I wasn't, however, prepared for it. He was an extraordinary man, full of love and life. He will always be with us. For now, it is appropriate to cry.

― mark e, Monday, January 11, 2016 4:48 AM

what does this mean? is he hinting that bowie timed the release to coincide with his ailing condition? or just that he intended it to be his final album?

I fear conspiracy theorists will walk this around the park, I'm already seeing stuff about the line in Girl Loves Me “Where the fuck did Monday go?” and something about a Metal band called Lazarus Blackstar (or vice versa)

Suspected for a long time he might be ill, didn't Flaming Lips do a track called "Is David Bowie Dying?", or something similar?

i sang "happy birthday" into tony visconti's cell phone three days ago. this is truly disorienting.

http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2016/01/tony_viscontis.html

Yassassin.

Suspected for a long time he might be ill, didn't Flaming Lips do a track called "Is David Bowie Dying?", or something similar?

― Anyway, it's not a three, it's a yogh. (Tom D.), Monday, January 11, 2016 12:16 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

When "Where Are We Now" came out, Dave Grohl was on WTF. I don't remember exactly what he said, but he was real hesitant: I think ... I think he might be dying.

ugh i knew dave grohl would show up eventually

was extremely shocked when I heard this last night at exactly the time I was going to bed. though strangely i had less of an emotional reaction than i was expecting, such an exotic and glamorous figure that it's difficult for me to picture him as a regular joe. his demigod status didn't make me expect him to be immortal, but it makes it strange to think of him undergoing something as mundane as sickness and death. a huge, inescapable cultural juggernaut in the uk, ad an influence on pretty much every significant indie act in the first decades after punk. thankfully I was more than happy regarding this ubiquity. there are countless significant and non-significant moments of my life where bowie's music played a part. my wife cutting my hair with blunt scissors when we first started going out with diamond dogs on the turntable comes to mind immediately. we have a blown up print of him playing cello in the hunger on our living room wall that i started at as i ate my breakfast this morning. not sure there is any pop cultural figure whose passing will seem as significant as this.

How can a song like 'Life On Mars?', that's nearly 50 years old and that I and many others are super familiar with, still sound so goddamn fresh and amazing and modern?

(Probably going to be "live blogging" my journey through DB's discography throughout the day.)

You can play this game throughout his recorded works. I'm still waiting for the music world to catch up with 'It's No Game'.

out of respect to everyone i will withhold the Streisand cover of "Life on Mars"

German Foreign Office:

"Good-bye, David Bowie. You are now among #Heroes. Thank you for helping to bring down the #wall."

i don't even know how to think about this. he was such an immensity in my life from the time i was a teenager. i must have played "heroes" thousands of times by now.

xp oh wow

https://scontent-lax3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xat1/v/t1.0-9/940842_10153839081943610_917113864734352321_n.jpg?oh=46a12c1b591ef8e6fd83473348385861&oe=570E8AC2

the final string chord of "rock'n'roll suicide" has the power to bring me to tears on a normal day, i don't think i could handle it at the moment

oddly one of the first things i was moved to dig up when i heard the news was the video for "forbidden colours" and was surprised to see that bowie isn't in it at all!

http://ohyouprettythings.com/

Still very much unbelievable and surreal. Grinded through work today, not really willing to listen to anything else than William Basinski and Ambient 4: On Land on repeat.

Was just about to post Eno's take above as well, found it very moving.

It's his German version of Heroes, Helden, that I can't get enough of today.

weird popular guy that loved performance arts and was really into making music

wrote a few good tunes. condolences to his family.

A few good tunes!?

https://www.facebook.com/gordon.wilson.921/videos/vb.1847187167/10203940174905208/?type=2&theater

if you love Bowie (though I expect that's why you're on this thread) but haven't watched The Prestige yet, treat yourself soon!

Can't sing. Can't act. Balding. Can dance a little.

https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.top10films.co.uk%2Fimg%2Fintothenight.jpg&f=1

if you love Bowie (though I expect that's why you're on this thread) but haven't watched The Prestige yet, treat yourself soon!

good Pilate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5hvHu8gHUc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=214&v=jv6mEv_rDdE

Also suddenly saddened by the thought of no more Agent Phillip Jeffries!

^^^

oops

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv6mEv_rDdE

The Christopher Priest magic thing? He's in that? Still haven't seen.

he plays Tesla, one of the best bits in the film

https://soundcloud.com/steve-nieve-official/steve-nieve-plays-life-on-mars

A few notes of farewell to a great artist and fellow musician. Your work will never cease to inspire us all.

In the 80’s before computers made it possible for everyone to be a keyboard player, I had constant work with Clive Langer and Alain Whinstanley. Clive and Alain produced the soundtrack for Absolute Beginners, and I was involved on several tracks, including playing the string synthesisers on David’s title song "Absolute Beginners".
My Royal College of Music mate Rick Wakeman added the final piano flourishes. At the same moment in time, the huge concert Live Aid took place, Elvis was asked to appear solo, but thankfully I was involved by playing on Bowie and Jagger’s “Dancing in the Street”.

For this session I played bass piano on the backing track, which was an incredibly exciting studio moment. Jagger arrived unexpectedly early in the recording room as we were running down the track, and began dancing around us, whipping the music up several notches in the process.

The song was played round and round to his dancing, many many times before the record button went red, by which time the vibe was truly red hot. After this there was a killer scene in the control room with Bowie and Jagger, out starring each other, and me, all the musicians on the track, Clive and Alain, listening back. They overdubbed their voices two takes each. We all stood listening back takes A+B of David’s vocal and the best lines were compiled. Then Mick took the the chair beside Clive listening line by line. Each time the room was asked A or B? If the concensus was for take A, Mick insisted on take B.

This went down for the entire song. “It sounds pretty wonderful now” says David to the whole room, “does anyone have any ideas for overdubs?”. Although the quiet one in situations like this, I said instantaneously “Yeah I have a vox organ here, I can bring it in, it would add a cool flavour”. “Go get it then” said David, and I headed out through the door.

As I headed by Mick I heard him quip “That’s the sound I hate the most in the whole world”… I immediately looked at Bowie thinking to myself “what a catastrophe" but David smiled at me and I will never forget this smile that we all love so much. Needless to say the Vox Organ never made it to the mix.
But I will always remember how David made everyone feel at ease and brought out the best in people, even the contrary Mr Jagger.

Quickly a final mix was played back, I recall Bowie actually leaping over the mixing desk. He was standing behind the desk between the back and the control room window and in one seemingly effortless and elegant kick of his leg he just seemed to fly over the desk and landed right beside Clive and I. Later we all went down to Docklands to watch Bowie and Jagger shoot the video, once again, two megastars determined to out dance the other.
Brilliant.

that's a pretty great story about an unfortunate record

yep

It's his German version of Heroes, Helden, that I can't get enough of today.

That German version of Heroes reminds me of the day I stopped listening to 6 Music, because they played it and the stupid DJ talked over half of it with his lame Bowie "impressions"

Reading that Eno tribute, I'm hoping the terrific circumstances of Bowie's death spur him and many others to do something similarly extraordinary when facing the final curtain.

Although death comes too quickly for many, this kind of death, the slowly approaching train, is an horrendous curse upon the soul, to be wished upon nobody, and it speaks of the man's magnificence how he has wrung this blessing from it.

I thought you didn't like him much?

The new album is amazing and my favourite thing he's done

i... i have never heard this German Heroes before!

Bowie was someone it actually took me a while to get into, and he's still not in my most personal pantheon, but I love a lot of his music and he was a fascinating person. Man Who Sold the World gave me a way in through it's classic rock riffage, but I think my real conversion experience on him was watching Ziggy Stardust, and in a way it was as much people's reactions to him as it was him that changed my feelings about him, just the energy between him and his audience that made me feel that he tapped into something unconscious in people and that this was really, really important to them at that historical moment.

i can cosign most of that there

i also really admire the savvy and intelligence of good showmen, and then you put the musical innovation on top of that.

I think it transcends that moment and that is why people are so upset right now. He was an androgynous icon, a weird alien shapeshifter, someone who rocked SUPER HARD but did so in a way that always subverted the machismo of rock and was always hovering from the sidelines to throw a dash of weird into the status quo.

The amazing thing about Bowie is he puts on a huge front but is one of the few artists that actually delivers. Discovering his albums for me was like discovering Beatles albums, constantly exclaiming "He wrote THIS TOO???".

The collected instrumentals album (lions share of which comes from the Berlin trilogy obv) is so perfect, I want to go for long walks in its world

reportedly the last picture taken by Iman of David Bowie on his birthday three days ago:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CYdZHyuVAAAokvL.jpg

I was thinking about his relationship to "rock" while listening to the Heroes instrumentals this morning. He obviously loved rock'n'roll -- both the music and mythology of it -- but he never confined himself to it. He had equal footing in the avant-garde and in musical theater, and I think the key is that he didn't segregate or even differentiate them. He never sounded like a rocker trying to be arty, or an arty guy trying to rock, or a theater kid doing all of the above, because he was comfortable with all of his influences and they all made sense to him and flowed through him. Sometimes more successfully than others, but that's the nature of an experimenter.

this kind of death, the slowly approaching train, is an horrendous curse upon the soul, to be wished upon nobody

indeed.
due to bowie soundtracking over 20 years of my life with bh, i had only recently come around to be able to listen to certain albums of his again.
earlier today i had to switch off 6music/5live/facebook etc as it was all getting too much.
i had intended to get blackstar tomorrow, but i have no idea when i will be able to listen to it.

fuck cancer.

thoughts with you, m

The amazing thing about Bowie is he puts on a huge front but is one of the few artists that actually delivers. Discovering his albums for me was like discovering Beatles albums, constantly exclaiming "He wrote THIS TOO???".

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Monday, January 11, 2016 12:59 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'd almost say he was more like my Beatles than the actual Beatles (who I like but have never felt a particularly deep connection with).

i appreciate that bowie was a consummate showman with these incredible personas but also a private person, a sort of 'give the people everything of my art and nothing of my own life' philosophy that resonates with me.

While the timing of the album played out like a choreographed plan, cancer does not follow orders well, however determined one is to fuck with it. And fuck it.

i had intended to get blackstar tomorrow, but i have no idea when i will be able to listen to it.

fuck cancer.

― mark e, Monday, January 11, 2016 1:12 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

just FYI i put in an order today but if you were intending to get Blackstar on vinyl i would get on it TODAY, lots of places sold out already. i got mine from MusicDirect.com, SoundStageDirect had them at least a few hours ago, none on Insound, Best Buy, Amazon, or Barnes & Noble. B&N said I could reserve one in a store and pickup later, then i got a email saying it was gone.

Was wondering about this earlier today, delighted to see what I suspected being confirmed, stick yer knighthood up yer arse, FTQ.

"Where the fuck did Monday go?" .....

do you guys remember like 10-15 years ago he had this contest where a lucky fan was going to write the words or melody to one of his songs? Whatever happened with that?

Maybe Scott Walker won

local tumblr gay on my feed saying "he called himself the arayan (sic) superman. if u don't get as upset when cosby or r. kelly dies you're a racist". been meaning to unfriend the cretin for a while anyway.

xp it appeared on Hours, apparently: http://www.davidbowie.com/news/david-bowie-include-whats-really-happening-track-written-cyber-song-bowienet-contest

important reaction policework there, xp

Today's "Mutts" comic strip seemingly attributes the lyrics to "Nature Boy" to Bowie.

https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xft1/v/t1.0-9/12540773_10154456014289746_3410372207873061167_n.jpg?oh=2adb793d1a42da77e3e7061ef0db5deb&oe=5743228E

Argh, sorry for size.

he did the song in the Moulin Rouge soundtrack

(FWIW)

From personal experience and just as something I've generally noticed - especially this past year - people with terminal cancer set great store by making it to landmark days.

I lost a very close friend to secondary liver cancer a few months ago; six weeks before she died we saw each other and she seemed like she had a lot more time than what eventually transpired. She was making plans to come back again. But she started fading just a few days after her birthday, and was gone about a fortnight later. People seem to be able to coast along being moderately ill for just long enough for others to think it's not imminent, but once you're past a certain psychological boundary, it seems to me that the end can come very quickly.

I'd like to hear what that amazing dude who did the song-by-song website/book has to say. I'm too afraid to start putting the records on because I get choked up just going over to them. Just a constant in my life, almost everyday.

Why, he's right here: http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2016/01/11/the_making_of_sound_and_vision_the_archetypal_david_bowie_song.html

& he's keeping up a good stream of tweets, @bowiesongs

just last week the boweisongs guy was complaining about how bowie kept putting out new music (cuz he had started when bowie was "retired", this presenting what appeared to be a finite body of work)

xp

Thanks, Alfred and woof.

Has George Clinton weighed in yet?

Apparently I've never shared my brush-with-Bowie story here...

Attended a live performance at The Bottom Line club (West 4th Street, RIP) of the legendary Uncle Floyd Show, (a cultishly adored New Jersey UHF kiddie-show parody/vaudeville exhumation, cheerfully lowbrow and leeringly offensive) with some college buddies in January '81 -- it was SRO, and we stood beside the exit near stage right. Preshow murmurs/exclamations of "Bowie's here!" and so he was. (It was his off night from playing The Elephant Man on Broadway, and he told the cast Lennon had turned him onto the show.) Many autographed napkins procured at intermission.

As Floyd tinkles away at the piano for the show finale, Bowie glides past us and exits, followed by his extremely large bodyguard... who falls flat on his face, at our feet.

DB that night:

http://i456.photobucket.com/albums/qq286/OldFred_photos/Bowi.jpg

and his Floyd-inspired tune, from Heathen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQrJE56oU7I&sns=em

One of his best late tunes too.

Beautiful posts here. This is why I love ILX. And all you folks. Play his music as LOUD as you can today.

Just last week I was enjoying this clip of Bowie:

Ian Penman ‏@pawboy2 Jan 5

Possibly my favourite clip of Bowie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkJeClpQ8zQ … Remember watching it teatime, with my Mum; off to the barbers next day, too...

and this:

Ian Penman ‏@pawboy2 Jan 5

This, of course, being the other contender: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy80bUKt54I … #IPsync #JohnnyBoyCollar #KingOfHair

Hopefully both have been put up already

xxp
https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3052/3080528290_3793dcc56a.jpg

bravo!

I'm halfway through Aladdin Sane, playing as loud as I'm able without disturbing my workmates. This was such an unstoppable run.

Yeah, "Slip Away" is wonderful. And the fact that it pays homage to Floyd and the gang (who I grew up watching every evening in NJ) gives it a special place in my heart.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kf7Yu0HIfrc

Brief overview of his time in film xp

the way he looks in that video is just... i mean, look at the earring in that still

^^^points off for failing to mention Into the Night

xxp

RIP

Will we ever have another musician like Bowie?

thoughts from dr dr3w, Stephin, Sondre Lerche, Rick Moody etc:

http://thetalkhouse.com/music/talks/talkhouse-contributors-remember-david-bowie/

Okay, 'Time' was the song that finally took the wind out of me. God damn.

Aside from the invention and the chops and the catchiness, his music works because he put so fucking much of himself into it.

heard "let's dance" just now -- still such an wonderful/odd sounding hit.

from Jim'll Paint It

https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xtf1/v/t1.0-9/12439255_617455185074756_8430022611780275721_n.jpg?oh=47764bcf5c19013e205789281dc07116&oe=5745BDD2

I love David Bowie’s music deeply, and yet when I learned of his death last night I instantly flashed on a terrible, guilty memory whose repetition at present risks speaking ill of the dead: Sometime around the Earthling album in the late ’90s, I sat with a friend and my boyfriend and we started to take cheap, idiotic pot-shots at that album, which we regarded as a catalogue of typical uninspired aging rock star moves, a case in point of a vampire trying to draw sustenance from a then-thriving subculture (drum and bass).

I remember listening to that album played at a bookstore for a good half-hour (it was around 8pm which is why the staff could play jungle beats). It was such an odd experience, stayed with me for years but I could never go back and try the album proper, but I remember getting a kick out of this lol old guy trying it out..balls etc.

oh wow i'm listening to Blackstar for the first time; "I Can't Give Everything Away" lifts the two-note harmonica line from "A New Career In A New Town," one of my favorites.

this is so sad.

Basically unable to function as a real human today. Surprised by the level of grief.

The release of Blackstar two days before his death is probably one of the most brilliant artistic gestures in the history of pop music. Unreal

Me as well, hardcore. And I also resigned from a shitty job today - sent out emails to all the pertinent folks last night before bed - so today is a perfect day to stay home and celebrate The Dame and forget all the bs.

flappy bird otm though the sense of "timing" for lack of a better word or phrase to describe it all is overwhelming.

my kid rufus and his pals at the variety show last year. he's the one with the hair.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WceXXacO1SU

uh doing bowie. should have said that...

Bowie had been working on a book as well, right? Wonder how far he got.

full of despair, but he will live forever. after all he came from the future. can't imagine what music would be like now without his work.

woke up this morning to the news and felt completely shattered. feels unexpected and painful in a way few other celebrity deaths have been for me. ended up writing a short tribute in like half an hour while sleepily listening to my co-workers chat.

i actually had "blackstar" stuck in my head when i woke up this morning and it was still there as i came across the news, v v surreal

nb i came very close to watching velvet goldmine last nite w/ a friend who;d never seen it, that would have been extra spooky

Will Sheff's blurb in the Talkhouse roundup is typically corny-but-canny.

listening to Earthling right now, what can you even say about it? so many good and really bad ideas chased after simultaneously

on his history with NYC, in 2003:

Having performed a gig outside London on a Thursday in June 1972, I shot home to sleep, then caught an early-morning flight — getting me to Madison Square Garden about ten minutes after Elvis hit the stage. I had the humiliating experience of walking down the center aisle to my very good RCA-provided seat while Elvis performed “Proud Mary.” As I was in full Ziggy regalia by this time — brilliant red hair and Kabuki platform shoes — I’m sure many of the audience presumed Mary had just arrived....

People here are very decent about their interactions with well-knowns. I get the occasional “Yo, Bowie,” but that’s about it. My only rule is to avoid tourist areas. But if I weren’t known, I’d still avoid ’em. In London, the saying goes, life takes place behind doors. Here it’s on the street....

My three favorite places in New York are Washington Square (it’s the emotional history of New York in a quick walk), the Strand bookshop (it’s impossible to find the book you want, but you always find the book you didn’t know you wanted), and Julian Schnabel’s house (the most extraordinary interior and quite beautiful; no one else but Julian could carry it off).

http://www.vulture.com/2016/01/david-bowies-reflection-on-being-a-new-yorker.html

I left work early and am gonna do some drinking before my radio show in 2 hours. the fuckin DMCA means that I can only play three Bowie songs in two hours (unless we turn the streaming off), so I'm gonna play "Heroes," "Station To Station," and "Blackstar"

do you guys remember like 10-15 years ago he had this contest where a lucky fan was going to write the words or melody to one of his songs? Whatever happened with that?

― Poliopolice, Monday, 11 January 2016 19:45 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes, I do: I entered.

what happened was, you got an jnstrumental (mostly) with DBowie la-lai-ng a melody, and singing a chorus, and you had to write verses. Then you saved them onto the website Bowienet, and then you got a series of other contributions that you could rate out of five. I was quite pleased with my entry, and I have to say all the other entries (and there were huge amounts) were pretty awful.

Anyway, it was won by Alex Grant, and his entry was . OK. The only other decent lyric I ever saw was his when I sneaked a look at the finished product's booklet. I still think mine was better but it wouldn't upset me to think someone else favoured his over mine, it was comparable.

I had a thought about finishing the instrumental with my lyrics for the ILX version of "The Next Day" but I had mislaid the cassette a friend had sent me of the backing from back in the day, and didn't find it in time.

One day.

(some time later, Robbie Williams did something similar, and my lyrics for that were awful, so it goes to show, something or other)

I always loved this super funky version of "What in the World" from the STAGE live album. Fucking great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-IySjuTNfk

My obit: http://www.spin.com/2016/01/david-bowie-tribute-eulogy/?utm_source=share-fb

great piece alfred

v nice. the chameleon bit is not something that had occurred to me tbh

one correction: i'm pretty sure the pumpkins never covered "quicksand"

That was Dinosaur Jr.

The Pumpkins covered "Kooks" in 1993. Billy insults the band at the end. "MISERABLE!"

https://archive.org/details/tsp1993-06-29

hmm I've a memory of a late summer '93 Pumpkins show during which they covered "Quicksand" and, I think, "Kooks."

xpost

ah, there you go!

The Pumpkins covered "Kooks" in 1993. Billy insults the band at the end. "MISERABLE!"

oh ha! guess i'm not as deep a fan as i thought

"The Secret Life of Araiiibia"

(Sorry, carry on, folks)

They did a pretty cool cover of "Fame" in 2014 around the release of the last record. They did a pretty lame cover of "Space Oddity" on the Oceania tour. And of course, at Bowie's 50th birthday party in 1997...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HD73LyWpcw

last SP post - Bill had this to say this morning:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CYdZVDwUkAAtMVa.jpg

RIP David Bowie: 'When a true star blinks out, the sky looks different, and never feels the same' - Billy Corgan

lol @ Lou's head

robert smith kind of looks like mid 70s bolan there

bowie weirdly channeling scott weiland in that pic

A++ photo

realized i had a leaked version of the unreleased 01 album Toy, listening now...different, quirkier version of "Slip Away" called "Uncle Floyd"

In other things this illlustration by Helen Green of Bowie's different hairstyles throughout the years is awesome:

http://www.oldskull.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/All-Bowies-illustration-hele-green.png

and a gif (which is very fast in my opinion but it seems like this was the original intent of drawing the heads going from left to right)

http://payload342.cargocollective.com/1/16/514318/9158551/DB-Transformation-Colour.gif

And one of my favorite remixes of Bowie that some of you might not be familiar with - David Bowie - Love Is Lost (Hello Steve Reich Mix by James Murphy for the DFA):

https://vimeo.com/79764317

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyGO0IxAr4A

i'm revisiting the buddha of suburbia and man, what a wacky little record

Toy was a good experiment. Some great versions (most of those wound up being released anyway) and some duff ones but it was nice to hear him revist that material. I particularly like Conversation Piece.

really great piece Alfred!

I ran to a Coconuts store in November '95 to buy it and Tonight, the latter newly reissued. "Dead Against It" would easily make a Bowie 75 for me.

Just meekly asked my boss if I could leave at 3 for "bowie sadness" reasons :/

didn't expect to be so destroyed by this tbh

Excellent article, Alfred.

aw VG, I left early too, hope you get it off

thanks, crew

I remember going to the store to pick up Outside since the "Bowie's back" hype machine was in full swing and saw the Buddha of Suburbia in the rack right next to it. I picked it up as well and played both of them in equal measure in the autumn of '95. I was surprised at its quality and have always felt it was a little ignored. Dead Against It is a great track.

Yeah, great work, Alfred. The only nit I was tempted to pick was that you seemed to downplay Reeves Gabrels tenure with him before Outside, but I guess compared to Carlos it was fair enough.

i was watching a few videos from the 50th birthday concert and gabrels' guitar tone is offensive

My boss didn't give me permission to play "Under the God."

Gabrels would probably take that as a compliment (xpost)

Still dealing with a lot of things here today. A friend just shared this on FB:

On national Belgian Radio 1 they had a phone call with Ivo Van Hove, the director of the Lazarus play.

Jan: You probably saw this day coming ?
Ivo: (hesitating) yes, he told me over a year and 3-4 months ago, after we had been working for a few months on the musical Lazarus.
And then he said in confidence that he was badly ill. That he should know this, if Bowie wouldn't show up he'd know why.
I didn't even tell my partner, who is also working on the musical.
I saw this day coming, but when I heard it this morning... Coincidentally I didn't sleep last night so, there must be something in the universe...

Jan: There was a big disbelief this morning when we heard the news. Our first thought was that it was a bad hoax, a very disgusting one.
One just can't believe this...
Ivo: No. You cant, I can of course because I have lived with it, meeting him multiple times, in that very difficult year in which he truly did not
want to die. He still has a very young child, a daughter aged 13,14. He truly is a family man, he is really somebody who likes to be at home.
Likes to watch television, knows all tv series, a true family man. And I have got to know him in that battle.
He really fought like a lion. He did NOT want to die. He made a new album, worked at the musical. I had an immense respect for him, but with tears in my eyes.

Jan: Did you get the chance in your conversations to talk about it, how he saw his death ?
Ivo: No, we didn't. Besides I really saw a man who didn't want to die and didn't want to talk about it. Anyway, Bowie has a reclusive lifestyle. Just his wife and daughter.
I have always respected that, I do think he liked that that I didn't try to get to know stuff about his private life.
When he talked about it, I let him and i never... I felt that he didn't want to talk about that. We did talk in great lenght
about other things, even those last days.

But I knew, the day of the premiere... We were on stage, receiving applause and in "De Volkskrant" (a Dutch paper) in the Netherlands we read that
he was standing there in good health with great energy. But we weren't even down the stairs of the stage and he collapsed. Together with Enda Walsh we have talked for about 15 minutes.
And then I knew, that evening, when he walked out of the door into his car that this would likely be the last time we'd see eachother.
And this turned out to be so.

Jan: Not just the musician, Bowie, but also the man who opened the world for lots of people. Like the emancipation of the entire holebi society.
ivo: indeed, as was the case for me from my local town. I knew aged 11 I was gay, I didn't make a secret about it but I didn't shout it out neither.
And of course, somebody like Bowie, wether he was or wasn't, I didn't ask that either, I don't think it matters. He did a lot... If somebdoy like Bowie
can on stage can make love with his guitarist, then we could do. You see ? A very important statement. Also, because of this past year, I dove into his music.
I was a longtime fan, but I dove into the lyrics, analyzed them. We also talked about them a lot, he was very open about them towards me.
His assistent who was present at the time even said he had never done that before with anyone.

You also feel that this all was a testament, he wanted to leave something behind. Something meaningful. And those songs are all very personal or, and that is
something I found out, about a society in which he didn't feel at home. So many songs are about being in space... Also, the title song lazarus.
If you just play one more song, make it that one, and hear the lyrics. I already knew their meaning but couldn't tell anyone, not even Michael C HAll.

Every sentence has a meaning, look up here I'm in heaven, look up here I'm in danger.
On earth... you see, I feel like a bluebird. See that's me, reincarnated you understand ?
Knowing that you're going to die, wanting to live, hoping that in some way you can stay here on earth.

His songs are full of that, on Blackstar.
That last line on blackstar says it all.
Alas I am not that good in rephrasing it exactly but
"I can't give it all away"

I still need to have some privacy, but I gave everything that I had...

Jan: Clear words indeed. Best of luck to you Ivo, since you still have a week to go with Lazarus.
For you and those around you, stay strong. Thank you.

Gabrels tried too hard to be the fly in the ointment; he was like a silly uncle singing Whitesnake at karaoke.

xpost

Alfred i said it elsewhere, but; I love that obit so much

Wow Alfred. Great piece. Thanks!

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/d6/90/b1/d690b18e0eeee6e632f5e005a4347b86.gif

Thanks for that, Ned.

You're welcome -- the original post:

http://www.threedimesdown.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=296102&sid=945cb9d29908caa3ac99ad8c96ed9063#p296102

I teared up for the first time today reading that excerpt.

like a zillion other people, DB was a big part of life for me, for so long, I thought he would just be around forever. I put Blackstar on the speakers Saturday afternoon and listened to it 3 times through. I imagined, man he's really got something here, maybe we'll get another one out of him yet, if the results are this good this time around.

I don't have much relevant to say that it's been a hard couple of weeks to lose my artistic heroes in one big swoop.

sfj's is a little odd

I remember watching this 'live by request' tv performance when it came out. He's such a charmer on this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnnY_Z9OtC0

Also, yes, good one Alfred!

lol wtf @sfj's

is that really the best the LA Times could do

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ms-david-bowie-heroes-appreciation-20160111-column.html

haha wtf indeed

uhhh

woof

I mean I'd probably passive aggressively dislike Bowie too if that happened to me, but I don't think I'd express that feeling in print on the news of his death!

would love to see his genius annotations for bowie songs though

I don't know what is in any of those trucks. Maybe nothing I need, maybe everything.

what was in them that I didn't have?

Well that's an interesting approach

my 4yo daughter's story about Bowie and the Spider from Mars is better than that sfj piece:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/princessparkle/6179715201/in/album-72157625628118184/

"was he high when he wrote that" seems like a cliched thing to ask but ... was he high when he wrote that

sfj's is ehhhhh. Hey. His opinion, ya know?

here are my dumb bowie feelings. i slowly got into a few albums, mostly the berlin trilogy, ten years ago. then i stopped listening. now he's dead and it's the reason i'm re-listening to station to station right now. it's incredible, way better than i remembered. it really sucks that he's dead. the end.

it's pretty weird how compelled people are to tell their bowie stories, like everyone's got one and it's always this indelible memory from their youth that (usually) isn't actually that interesting to other people, like the people i heard on the radio today (callers on local npr station) -- one caller was like "i used to sing 'the little drummer boy' with my cousin and that's why we love bowie" and another said "i listened to david bowie with my son, who is now 32" and her big claim to bowie expertise was having been raised in england. my own memories are precious to me, but utterly mundane and not really worth sharing. and yet i found myself contacting my old friend from 8th grade to reminisce about how we used to listen to her brother's records and jump on her bed. it's like bowie was always there being totally amazing even when we were super boring. that's part of his charm imo!! his excellence elevated reality in that way, at least he did for me.

i also admire his ability to remain a private person.

mattresslessness otm

i did a report on Mars when i was in 3rd grade and titled it "Is there life on mars?" and my mom introduced me to Bowie then

his excellence elevated reality otm

Lorde, on FB:

When a hero dies, everyone wants a quote. I woke up this morning with a tender head from tears and that big red cup of Japanese whiskey, gulped last night just after the news came. People were already asking me what I thought. It feels kind of garish to talk about oneself at a time like this, when the thing that has happened is so distinctly world-sized. But everything I’ve read or seen since the news has been deeply intrinsic in tone, almost selfish, like therapy. That’s who he was to all of us. He was a piece of bright pleated silk we could stretch out or fold up small inside ourselves when we needed to.

Mr. Bowie, I guess right now we have to hang this thing up for a minute.

The night I met him I played at an expensive Vogue benefit with a lot of fresh flowers, honouring Tilda. I was not quite seventeen, America was very new to me, and I was distinctly uneasy and distrustful toward everything happening in my life that was putting me in these flat-voiced, narrow-eyed, champagneish rooms. I played my three songs, thrashing and twitching in platform boots. Afterward, Anna clasped my hand and said “David wants to meet you,” and led me through people and round tables with candles and glasses and louder and louder talk, and he was there.

I've never met a hero of mine and liked it. It just sucks, the pressure is too huge, you can't enjoy it. David was different. I'll never forget the caressing of our hands as we spoke, or the light in his eyes. That night something changed in me - i felt a calmness grow, a sureness. I think in those brief moments, he heralded me into my next new life, an old rock and roll alien angel in a perfect grey suit. I realized everything I’d ever done, or would do from then on, would be done like maybe he was watching. I realized I was proud of my spiky strangeness because he had been proud of his. And I know I'm never going to stop learning dances, brand new dances.

It's not going to change, how we feel about him. For the rest of our lives, we'll always be crashing in that same car.

Thankyou, David Bowie.

That Lazarus play director also revealed, on Dutch radio this time, but he plobably shouldn't have, that it was liver cancer btw (article in Dutch).

http://www.hln.be/hln/nl/35902/David-Bowie/article/detail/2580998/2016/01/12/Regisseur-Ivo-Van-Hove-Bowie-had-leverkanker.dhtml

The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)
Posted: January 11, 2016 at 6:02:51 PM
I teared up for the first time today reading that excerpt.

Me too

It should not be so jarring that a guy with cancer does not want to die but I can't take reading it

aw lorde <3

Celebrate! New mix from Stirmonsterrrrr https://www.mixcloud.com/JD_Twitch/strung-out-on-lasers-and-slash-back-blazers-bowie-mix-by-jd-twitch/

So many older misfits on the soc media showing deep love for this man at the moment. It's special. Gotta love the Interwebs at a time like this.

To discuss his film performances for a moment: rather good as Pilate in The Last Temptation of Christ, a magnificent camera object in The Man Who Fell to Earth, dotty in the best sense in The Prestige, and believably ravaged in The Hunger. My best friend and I watched The Linguini Incident in early '94; the Blockbuster employee actually snickered.

With Rosanna Arquette?

yes

and Marlee Matlin

awkwardly southern in FWWM

AHHH'VE SEEN SOMETHIN

oh -- excellent as David Bowie in a Japanese internment camp in Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence.

i feel like a goober for blarping my boring bowie memories on fb this morning but I was so sad and stuck at work & i didnt know what else to do

i love reading about interactions people had with him. he seems to have had the same warmth about him that i heard mccartney has, putting people at ease & being ok with everyone turning to jelly in their presence & patiently, sublty diffusing the weirdness. and i like hearing how funny he was.

also he is one of the few men i've stayed in love with my entire life, like i never really went off him, i just found new ways to think he was great. i mean music & writing & performing he's the bees knees obv but then fashion! all those iconic, incredibly artful looks, plus just his bloody walking-around clothes he was always so put together & interesting...

i already hate using the past tense

Bowie in FWWM is wrong in the best sense. Almost out-Lynches Lynch for weirdness. And the extended stuff they released a couple of years ago makes it even more 0_O

I like his cameo in Into the Night. Rewatching it now he reminds me of Ricky Gervaise.

Townshend:

Woke up to the awful news that my lovely friend David Bowie passed away. I am so deeply sad, but he just completed a radical and audacious new album, and that is a great thing. Personally I am grateful to him for doing it.

For those who were his fans he was a charismatic and exotic creature and still gloriously beautiful even as he approached 70. But face to face he was funny, clever, well-read, excited by the arts, and really good company.

In a Japanese restaurant we once ate tiny live crabs sent over to our table by a businessman fan. David said we must try, out of courtesy. I wouldn’t have done it with anyone else on the planet. Delicious, of course.

He was simply a joy to be around, so good at making everyone feel at ease. I’m sorry to hear it was cancer that got him. I knew he had been ill for several years but didn’t know the details. My thoughts now go to his family and close ones, and to so many of his fans who will be beyond distraught today. We have lost a monumental figurehead of the British arts scene. We have also lost a wonderful clown whose combined sense of mischief and creativity delightedly touched our hearts. David Bowie was my Salvador Dali. He was also one facet of my perfect Ace Face.

Pete Townshend, 11 January 2016

;_;

love Townshend's solos on "Because You're Young" and "Slow Burn."

Every time I think about him making Blackstar as a parting gift to us the tears come. It's so beautiful and tragic, him leaving us like this. I can't get over it. I feel like I didn't appreciate it the way I should have upon the first listen.

gosh. What a day.

Just noticed that on RateYourMusic all the ratings are in black stars today.

So glad that I already had Bowie on my mind this morning... Thought about him last week on his birthday while listening to Blackstar... Joking around with some of you about that Magnavox CD player ad from the 80s that had a quasi-Bowie rocking out next to a quasi-Willie Nelson...

Even this weekend, I forgot how we got on the subject, but Sunny and I were talking about a close relative of mine who told me goodbye without my realizing it until two weeks later when they died. How I get to have that conversation in my head now instead of anything else.

And hell, the surprise of it all... "not doing interviews because he wants the record to speak for itself, etc." This guy, what a performer.

love Townshend's solos on "Because You're Young" and "Slow Burn."

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, January 11, 2016 7:38 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ditto; his playing on "Slow Burn" is so fucking blinding.

btw, very moving piece in Spin, Al, and glad to see love for "Jump They Say." Always thought it was an underrated track of his; it's an all-time fave for me (and the trumpet solo is by none other than Lester Bowie).

"jump they say" is a fuckin' all time jam

Hours later, and I still don't know what to say... I guess I'm still very much stunned and shocked by the news of Bowie passing away and it's going to take days to process it all. Not only am I a huge fan of his music, but the man was a huge influence on many of my all-time favourite artists, alongside Kraftwerk and Roxy Music. Part of me imagines that this is how it must have felt when the world lost John Lennon, but... for many, many reasons the loss of Bowie feels greater, much greater.

Today I was hit by this really precise memory, which is probably fake, or an amalgam of several memories, where I am walking to golf practice in high school listening to "Ashes to Ashes" on my ipod mini. In the memory, I am really focused on the part where Bowie sings "I've never done good things, I've never done bad things, I've never done anything out of the blue." It seems like a warning, written just for me, about the regrets i would have down the line if I continued down my current path, going through my days with my head down trying not to attract undue attention, good or bad.

I don't think I actually heeded Bowie's advice, certainly not at the time. The song didn't make me a bolder person. But it made me want to be one, which is still a really powerful thing for an mp3 to do to a shy sixteen year old.

speaking of Lennon, he says nice and touching things about Bowie at the one hour and 10 minute mark here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaTy3kSxyoo

"He writes in the studio. He goes in with four guys and a few words....I like that track, and I must say I admire the vast repertoire of talen the guy has..."

btw, very moving piece in Spin, Al, and glad to see love for "Jump They Say." Always thought it was an underrated track of his; it's an all-time fave for me (and the trumpet solo is by none other than Lester Bowie).

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Monday, January 11, 2016 7:55 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"jump they say" is a fuckin' all time jam

― HYPERLINK TO RAP GENIUS (BradNelson), Monday, January 11, 2016 7:56 PM (11 minutes ago)

I can't deny that part of what drove me to write it was giving "Jump They Say" its due in the canon. In the two-disc Rykodisc comp released in 1993 that is, to me, his best comp, it BELONGS.

I'm listening to "Voyeur of Utter Destruction" a lot today. One of my favourites.

I SAY.

What rarities/live shows/other are you all hoping the Estate will put out? I'd like a proper release of the Cracked Actor doc, a good show from the 1974 tour, and any and all Young Americans outtakes!

I tend to think he has no hidden material, given his penchant for recording in the studio.

I would like more live stuff like this. I love how much he enjoys Belew's playing in this clip. You can tell he loved working with hot-shit musicians.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tWyIug2qP0

I've run across snippets and fragments of YA songs that haven't been on any reissues afaik--Shilling the Rubes is one I remember. But yeah, maybe there's nothing there. Related, isn't there quite a bit of unreleased Scary Monsters stuff?

I can't help but wonder, now that we've sadly reached the point where Bowie's discography is very much a "finished" thing, if people will be more willing to give some of his post-Let's Dance output more of a chance. How likely is it that we'd get any posthumous rarities/archival releases? Did, or does Bowie really have much in the "vaults", as it were?

I haven't even started to listen, tipsy, but yeah, Stay is such a killer live one. I love the Nassau '76, such a workout.

What's the earliest tour any ILMers saw him on? I saw the Let's Dance tour, Hartford, CT, good seats. The hair and the suit were what hit you first. I wasn't that old but even I felt like, wow, this is the 1980s.

My Bowie concert history is a comedy of errors. I missed his epic, legendary Ft. Lauderdale show in October 1997 (almost four hours) because my grad school had dropped my courses. In 2003 I was gonna see him in Philly until he canceled the show. I got credit for his Miami show in June 2004. I was grabbing a beer in the lobby when we learned that a roadie had fallen and died, forcing him to cancel the show.

I can't help but think that Bowie must have had a fair amount of abandoned/unfinished projects over the years... like Toy for example.

He is one of those dudes that has been remarkably tight on outtakes and unteleased stuff, as far as I know.

I never saw him, but he's hard-wired into my first concert memory -- U2's War tour, I remember "Modern Love" blaring from the PA while we were waiting for the band. It was the first time I'd heard the song, it hadn't been released as a single yet. I loved the U2 show like any first-time-concertgoing 13-year-old would, but the next day I had "Modern Love" in my head.

I dunno, the Ryko reissues seemed very generous at the time -- lots of demos and unreleased tracks.

In retrospect, when an album reissue today gets a multi-disc boxed set, it's quaint to think of the Rykos as offering the goods, but Bowie was (iirc?) the first to fill reissue CDs with almost another album's worth of rarities.

xp

My first Bowie show was the infamous Glass Spider tour at Anaheim Stadium in 1987. I didn't think the show was as much of a clusterfuck as folks say now, but for an enormo-show that requires connection and a strong set-list, Bowie just seemed lost in the spectacle. Siouxsie opened up and had to play during the daytime. Oops.

The Glass Spider has undergone reappraissal in recent years. Many of the shows are on YouTube and are far from embarrassing. In fact, the set lists are impressive ("Up the Hill Backwards," "Sons of the Silent Age," etc).

*The Glass Spider tour

I'm still having a hard time processing his passing, or figuring out how I should process it. But while we're talking about memories, I got to see him twice. Once, headlining Madison Square Garden, in ...2003? Somewhere around then. He was great, setlist was great. The other time was opening for Moby on the ill-fated Area 2 tour, where he was still great (played a bunch of Low stuff, iirc). But the latter show was telling, because of course he could have instead filled arenas himself as a headliner whenever he wanted. He could have done the Sound & Vision Tour (which I remember staying up to tape when it was broadcast live on the radio back in 1989 or 1990) over and over. But he didn't. He chose to open for Moby, or open for Nine Inch Nails, or rebrand himself Tin Machine and play theaters, rather than do the obvious and easy. Especially at the Moby gig, I'm amazed, in retrospect, how much I took him for granted. Oh, hey, it's Bowie, there he is. Like it was no big deal. Which I suspect is exactly what he wanted.

What's the best Bowie biography? Is there a really good one?

What rarities/live shows/other are you all hoping the Estate will put out

LEON. and whatever other fragments of the purported outside trilogy were actually recorded

i mean the leon jams are out there for anyone who takes a cursory look but i just find the entire process of making outside fascinating

The OUTSIDE fragments are cool in parts but listening to much of it is like walking in on a raucous in-joke session.

What's the best Bowie biography? Is there a really good one?

― Rod Steel (musicfanatic),

Chris Buckley's Strange Fascination is quite well-reported and has good insights, but Chris O'Leary's published Bowiesongs stuff is the best musical one (he's got a sequel in the works).

er, David Buckley

Terry Gross grates, as ever, but this '02 interview intrigues for the Anthony Newley content and "I wanted to write musicals."

http://www.npr.org/2003/09/19/1436453/musician-and-songwriter-david-bowie

Supposedly there are five more songs from the Blackstar sessions.

Curious to hear them but really like how Blackstar was kept pretty tight, each song has a nice place in the arc of the album.

If you like the Berlin period, Bowie in Berlin was pretty good iirc.

Yes. Good on tracks.

No one to vouch for the Paul Trynka book? I liked the one he wrote about Iggy.

lazarus is a pretty incredible song

Pretty sure all the Leon stuff is bogus as I dug into this all a number of years ago. It pains me to think he and Eno were discussing revisiting that so recently.

Josh OTM about taking him for granted – he's just been with us for so long. It's hard for me to process that my parents (both of whom liked him but are 5-8 years older than Bowie) have outlived him. It seems counterintuitive.

Another vote of love for Al's obit. Fine work.

Know that sounds almost ghoulish about my folks but it does feel weird to me.

https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xap1/v/t1.0-9/12522990_10153166459701891_1724192041819334738_n.jpg?oh=b4edecadc290532bb88244ed26980568&oe=57074D0E

oh man, that photo!!!!!!

In fact, the set lists are impressive ("Up the Hill Backwards," "Sons of the Silent Age," etc).

I wish I could have heard one of those!

Pretty sure all the Leon stuff is bogus as I dug into this all a number of years ago.

the leon jams are discussed pretty earnestly on bowiesongs? their most recent form leaked pretty recently afaict

Another vote of love for Al's obit. Fine work.

― Naive Teen Idol,

thanks

Alfred, this is a wonderful eulogy - especially because it's probably the only one among thousands which links not only to Jump They Say and Fantastic Voyage but to Move On, the first song which gave me some sort of consolation while listening to tonight.
I avoided all the half-assed cobbled together texts (safe for the ubiquitous sharing of personal memories of which I can strangely not get enough of), but I really enjoyed reading this text.

Another vote of love for Al's obit. Fine work.

Yes, great. I like the point that he was a huge fan, he loved music.

To finish this strange day off, and for once to post a video after all, but this piece from The Mainman And The Mainline slays me every time.
After the false starts and despite the sloppy rehearsal stance, out of the blue something clicks and the song is coming together in such an astonishing, affecting, perfectly unperfect way, it might be my favourite version of my favourite Bowie song right now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTy3ryGZQvw

Yoko emotionally moving as usual: http://imaginepeace.com/archives/21641

Was hoping for more from pushing ahead of the dame, but ok. https://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/2016/01/11/david-robert-jones-1947-2016/

i mean it hasn't even been 24 hours

http://www.eonline.com/news/730322/inside-david-bowie-and-iman-s-enduring-love-story

no doubt Bowie Songs is happy for the clicks

btw you guys know he's all over the Eagles listening thread and helped me with the Elton one, right?

I'm still incredibly sad and also in awe. Honestly, I was looking forward to an era of clandestine and inscrutable albums and endless Internet arguments over them. Little did we know...

I mean, who else would you trust to take on the Ultimate Question with the appropriate amount of theatricality?

Did anybody here ever partake of BowieNet? I still have copies of the little ad included in the Virgin reissue series CDs. It looked like a forecast of a bunch of big current web ventures (tumblr, reddit, twitter etc.).

Stephin Merritt tribute:

David Bowie’s importance -- at least in my life, and probably in the lives of most people -- is, in a way, more important than the entire gay rights movement. Bowie is about the freedom to have any identity you want, not just gendered. Space alien, crazy person -- it’s all tied together, and it’s all sorts of fun.

It’s not like Aladdin Sane is depressing. It’s fun! And on Diamond Dogs, it’s the end of the world -- and it’s fun! David Bowie showed everybody that they could have absolutely ridiculous clothing and makeup, and not just that it was androgynous, but that it was pointedly absurd, like a gold circle on your forehead.

Ziggy & Mick reunited again, pass the fuckin glitter boys

In listening back to old stuff I have to say I reaaaaaally love the percussion/bass sound from the Ziggy era

dont ask me to describe it or explain why i just do

Chris Frantz: http://nypost.com/2016/01/11/from-one-hall-of-famer-to-another-thank-you-david-bowie/

Years later, in 1982, we had the good fortune to meet David when we played the Montreux Jazz Festival with Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club. He had a home nearby, and he decided to drop into our dressing room to say hello.

Dressed very unpretentiously in a brown anorak and a Shetland wool tweed cap, he was friendly and a little bit shy. By this time, we knew, through our mutual collaborator Brian Eno, that our music had been an influence on his, and I can tell you this was a great honor.

David looked at the spread of snacks the promoter had provided for us and asked, “Are you going to be eating that cheese?”

“No,” we said, and he wrapped it up in a napkin and put it in the pocket of his jacket.

Then he asked. “Are you going to be eating those nuts? “No,” we said, and he wrapped those up and put them in his pocket, too. He giggled as he did so.

interviewed him in 2003 for…yeah, Reality, right before his long break. Like JiC sez up there a bit, in the late '90s-early '00s, he released so many records and played around the NY area so often that you possibly could take him for granted. Saw the 50th birthday show at MSG in 1997, which was a clusterfuck, and so much preferred Roseland with his 90s band in 1996.

Was pants-shittingly nervous for the interview, and for that matter anticipated that he would be wearing an exquisite suit from some avant garde japanese designer. uh uh: had on a rugby shirt and chinos. Could not have been more pleasant and less self involved.

Stephin Merritt tribute🔗:

I think one of the most touching testimonials to Bowie, one that I suspect the man himself would have appreciated, is that his passing has inspired so many genuinely insightful and moving tributes from those whose opinions might otherwise be ordinary or unremarkable.

The Lennon comparison upthread may not be far off.

that Lorde thing made me cry all over again

and yes the last "pop" star loss that was this personal and painful for me was Lennon (I was 14 in Dec 1980)

he was like this super cool uncle, I have no idea how I would have dealt with high school bisexuality if he hadn't been there with his advice and maturity.

If you like the Berlin period, Bowie in Berlin was pretty good iirc.

2nded

Rest easy Bowie

This is really going to take a while to assimilate, maybe even forever, because it was never possible to assimilate "Bowie" really, is it? His M.O. was to show up obliquely. His personas were in dialogue with the culture, but we often didn't know what the substance of that dialogue was, so that in the narrative of pop culture he appeared as a non sequitur, or what we might call in these parts a "WTF" generator. And this is so bullshit, even to talk about him that way... but how else? I was eight when "Starman" hit the airwaves, and I never forget the pang it triggered in me, that sense of enormous, empty, yearning space. For years thereafter, he was always there, surveying us, curating us, and biding his time for his next entrance. This distant, unsettling creature was comforting to me, without my really noticing, because he made the world larger and kept the possibility of (weird) rebirth alive.

Thank you Mr. Bowie, and don't forget about us.

Thank you Mr. Bowie, and don't forget about us.

Madison Square Garden about ten minutes after Elvis hit the stage. I had the humiliating experience of walking down the center aisle
Handsome Dick Manitoba just said that he and Scott Kempner paid eight dollars each to go to that show and they sat very close to Bowie. After the show SK made his way up to Bowie and asked him what he thought of the show to which the answer was the one word "undeniable."

great post collardio

watched "The Prestige" tonight. it was great. David Bowie electrifies a cat in it:

http://lolpics.se/pics/9025.gif

I was trying to parse through just WHY I felt so empty and shitty last night and this morning, I haven't taken a celeb death this hard ever.

Initially I thought that it had something to do with the fact that Bowie occupied this kind of past-tense-yet-still-existing role in the world since my introduction to him, but of course, he continued to exist as an album-maker and actor and curator and video game character and so on and so on.

I realized that what I was experiencing was less so the death of a single man but the death of an institution-- the best analogy I could think of would be Doctor Who. We had Ziggy Stardust and The Thin White Duke and Jareth and 90s Renaissance Man and Tesla and dotage-Bowie, same as we had Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker and Peter Davison and Christopher Eccleston and so on. But the idea of Doctor Who actually DYING is ludicrous and that's what I think I'm experiencing. That this continuously changing and evolving and active shapeshifter is now dead is really tough to digest

otm

the last time i felt anything like this was when paul hester from crowded house committed suicide, and that was partly because of how confronting & tragic the death itself was.

this is different, obv. the sadness runs a lot deeper, and it's going to hang around a lot longer

it definitely feels like a more monolithic loss that goes beyond just a person who sang songs

http://payload430.cargocollective.com/1/16/514318/10917782/Im-a-Blackstar-gif-600-945.gif

Martin Gore, from FB:

David Bowie - Where does one start? Is it too obvious to state that he was the most influential artist for people of our generation and younger? Ziggy Stardust was the first album I owned and his ability to innovate meant that I was waiting patiently for the release of Blackstar just a few days ago.

I have heard Bowie blasting from Mr. Gahan’s dressing room way too many times to begin to count. Heroes was the first song that we ever played as the original Depeche Mode. We were all much more than casual fans.

He is the only artist who compelled us to rush to a record store on day one of a release back in the days of vinyl and beyond. His music is what grabbed us but he was so much more than just a musician.

To follow Bowie, to be one of his fans, was to be led on a magical, winding journey. He constantly pushed boundaries and introduced us to styles and genres we were unaware of or didn’t exist before he invented them.

He was a star - the star of stars. For us, he was the greatest legend. A legend who never rested on his laurels but continued to experiment up until his death.

We, along with the rest of the world, mourn the loss of our greatest talent. This will be a hard one to recover from.

^that is awesome

(I'd love Karl Malone maken a complimentary one of the cover of Low in which the clouds would be moving ever so slightly)

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Photo spread from Rock Scene shared by Devo on FB:

https://scontent-dfw1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xaf1/v/t1.0-9/12439328_10153885596069136_6353212039980039986_n.jpg?oh=b9963a7ddd4900230f4cda4d257ed63c&oe=574A08E1

Since hearing this profoundly sad news I keep thinking about a Leonard Michaels quote I love very much and how graciously and elegantly Bowie has, by all accounts, exemplified it: "Courage is continuing to perform your daily tasks, and being hopeful despite the odds, not inflicting your fears on others, and remaining sensitive to their needs and expectations, and also not supposing, because you're dying, nothing matters any longer."

Sort of agree with FGTI that what's so emotionally rug-pulling about this is not the death of a man but the death of an Institution.

But at the same time feeling that the Institution is, in so many ways still so alive, and that's what hurts so much. That ~Bowie~ is not some edifice that happened a long time ago, but an archetype, a mode of being/creating/performing. The Idea of Bowie was something I was really glad to have alive in the cultural slipstream. It's not even about Fandom or about Being A Fan, it's this thing where Pop Music and Pop Culture is intensely tribal, and the sense of... even without performing fandom or participating in a fandom (I didn't do either; but funnily enough, he kept turning up in fandoms I was in) there was a massive sense of this is ~The Tribe I Belonged To~ and the sense that that tribe's benevolent leader is gone.

That analogy isn't v good. Replace Dr Who with Bond and it gets worse.

http://pitchfork.com/news/62847-nile-rodgers-reflects-on-david-bowie/ - touching interview with Nile Rodgers about Bowie. Some good stories in there and some more evidence of his genius/overall decency as a human.

How familiar was "The Man Who Sold the World" when Nirvana covered it? I figured it took real crate digging for Cobain to own its host album. It wasn't even a hit in America.

Bowirheads knew it. I didn't ever recall hearing it, not being one.

You people sure think about music a lot.

*bowieheads

welcome to the board i love music

i thought TMWSTW was more or less disowned or ignored in terms of the DB canon until the nirvana cover. bowie's version is still the weaker one.

He was so good at putting people together, like who else would have dreamed of pairing sweaty, up and coming roadhouse blues revivalist Stevie Ray with the very out of fashion king of disco Nile? But it worked

This thread (& the stuff it links to) has been a great companion in the last 30 hours.

Last weekend was Bowie weekend in my family: on Saturday we all (parents, siblings, their children, some friends, 15 in total!) visited the Bowie Is exhibition. The two days we spend together felt so…I don’t know, it was more than family. Then yesterday morning when I parked the car at work, the weekend came full circle when 5 text messages arrived nearly simultaneously… taking my breath away. It was a weird day, doing hardly any work (shit job that’ll be finished in two weeks), texting with family and friends, going outside for a smoke and listening to “Lazarus”… Left early, picked up the Blackstar LP, closed the curtains and had a great evening listening, texting, calling, reminiscing, ripping the ’93 singles collection to my gf’s ipod…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyFAnA9oPRE

i thought TMWSTW was more or less disowned or ignored in terms of the DB canon until the nirvana cover.

Americans have some funny ideas.

but they are ours.

kinda funny in the NPR interview how he says things later echoed by Stephin Merritt: 1) i'd rather someone else was singing my songs, 2) I wouldn't play live if i didn't have to.

one thing that keeps circling back for me is how he was kind of the coin of the realm for many different circles of outsiders - the burnout hippies who i hung out with for a while would listen to bowie with awe and wonder, but then i'd be traveling in vastly disparate social circles - ostensibly normal people with secret lives in high school; the people at the underage queer niteclub that saved my life in '85/'86; board game geeks - and no matter what they were genuinely into, everybody'd come into contact not just with bowie as a celebrity, a fixture, but with the music, the albums, the stuff in there. on the few occasions where I'd meet somebody with no opinion about Bowie, it would seem odd - really almost a religious attitude from me: how can you not care about this?

A few years ago I was watching the news and there was some piece about Bowie & Iman. My mother happened to pass though the living room and remarked "Isn't he that Alvin Stardust guy?". I couldn't believe that someone could be so ignorant. It was like a teenager from the US saying "Who's this Abraham Lincoln dude?".

After I saw the Chicago Bowie Is ... exhibit I got into a few arguments/debates with friends as to who else could support a similar exhibit. Beatles, of course, probably Bob Dylan. But during the course of our discussions the only person I could come up with as a possible successor to Bowie was Madonna, someone else who proved throughout her career a really smart synthesizer of someone else's ideas, a recognizer and savvy poacher of talent, an icon that changed the direction of the cultural dialogue. (And, coincidentally enough, overlapped with Bowie's commercial/public peak thanks in no small part to the very next record Nile Rodgers produced). But she's far less creatively restless, I think, or at least far more concerned with what other people think, though in a sense her career right now maybe parallels Bowie c. "Hours" or something like that. A transition/holding pattern. Live performance is also much more important to Madonna, too. She needs that energy, which is why she works so hard to get that. But Bowie got all his energy from ideas. That was enough, and possibly explained why, no matter what he did, it always seemed so natural and effortless. No stories as far as I know of Bowie laboring in the studio. That was his happy place.

Listening to "Lust for Life" right now, still perhaps or at least often enough my favorite Bowie-related project.

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'Had no idea he had been still alive', girl at office, 22yrs.

Madonna's his greatest heir.

I got into a few arguments/debates with friends as to who else could support a similar exhibit.

Yeah, but it got panned as BS, iirc.

Madonna may be his offspring but she didn't inherit his soul.

tbf Bowie has a thirty year head start on Björk, but she's more of a spiritual heir than Madonna imo.

Bill Buckley's former mag:

Millions of words will be written about the death of David Bowie, the theatrical pop singer who died of cancer at the age of 69. He was famous for the various dramatis personae he adopted over the years—Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke—and for his experiments in androgyny, having surfed a wave of sexual indeterminacy (the rumored affair with Mick Jagger, etc.) right up until the moment that wave crested, at which point he married a famous supermodel and adopted a somewhat more conventional aesthetic. Very few men will ever be able to say that they aged as gracefully.

Bowie was an influential figure in music, art, and fashion, but he was a pretty good armchair economist, too, having chosen a necessarily entrepreneurial occupation. He was quick to appreciate the cultural importance of the Internet, and in 2002 he gave a famous interview with the New York Times in which he made some predictions about the future of the music industry: the decline of labels, the emergence of the utility model of music distribution, the blurring of previously clear lines of ownership and authorship, the decline of effective copyright (he wasn’t quite right in predicting that copyright would simply cease to exist in a decade) and the return of performance as the central economic activity for musicians.

He was a financial innovator, too, raising $55 million via the now-famous “Bowie bond,” in which he traded future royalties for cash money in hand. (This turned out to be a much better deal for Bowie than for his investors.) That wasn’t entirely successful, but the idea clearly influenced subsequent projects such as Kickstarter. No one has quite figured out what business models are in fact going to be effective for cultural undertakings such as music, publishing, and journalism, but Bowie was ahead of the curve in identifying the underlying problem.

As any entrepreneur will tell you, recruiting the right people is an enormous challenge. Bowie had the good sense to spot Stevie Ray Vaughan, whose contribution to “Let’s Dance” was simply irreplaceable. Bowie in fact had nearly impeccable taste in guitarists: Reeves Gabrels, Adrian Belew, etc. He was an excellent personnel man.

And without being cynical, there was a fair amount of marketing savvy behind his enigmatic image and his penchant for playing a new character every few years: He was like a fine restaurant with no fixed menu, where the atmosphere “isn’t painted on the walls,” as they say. He wasn’t all things to everyone, but his portfolio was well-diversified.

The artist was admirable, to be sure, but the businessman wasn’t half bad, either. The free market isn’t only about investment bankers and factories. Increasingly, it isn’t even mainly about that. It is about human flourishing. David Bowie’s career was a reminder that business can be beautiful.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/429557/david-bowie-was-brilliant-businessman

He's only got a 20 year start on her, really. Which feels mad to say. I feel like time is compressing.

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brendanOB • 21 hours ago

He was also a pretty good dad, if an unconventional one. There are interviews with his son, director Duncan Jones, that make this clear. Good dad, entrepreneurial, wore a lot of suits... he's a conservative icon!

Avatar The Old Man brendanOB • 17 hours ago

Although showing up late to his wedding because he was engaging in a three-some (with his wife-to-be) isn't exactly Bill Buckley behavior. But he had many conservative attributes.

Has this been posted yet? This is bonkers. http://www.theuncool.com/journalism/david-bowie-playboy-magazine/

Wow @ Bowie as businessman obit. I mean, we all KNOW this, but eurgh, that's crass.

eh the madonna thing is overrated IMO, i mean i get it on a certain level but i agree that bjork could be perhaps a better comparison

this is a cool bit from the Let's Dance Wiki

Rodgers later recalled that Bowie approached him to produce his album so that Bowie could have hit singles.[7] Rogers reported that Bowie came into his apartment one day and showed him a photograph of Little Richard in a red suit getting into a bright red Cadillac, saying "Nile, darling, that’s what I want my album to sound like."[8]

Bowie, having just signed with EMI Records for a reported $17.5 million, worked with Rodgers to release a "commercially buoyant" album that was described as "original party-funk cum big bass drum sound greater than the sum of its influences." The album's influences were described as Louis Jordan, the Asbury Jukes horn section, Bill Doggett, Earl Bostic and James Brown.[1] Bowie spent three days making demos for the album in New York before cutting the album, a rarity for Bowie who, for the previous few albums, usually showed up with little more than "a few ideas."[9] Despite this, the album "was recorded, start to finish, including mixing, in 17 days," according to Rodgers.[10]

Stevie Ray Vaughan met Bowie at the 1982 Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. After Vaughan's performance, Bowie was so impressed with the guitarist he later said "[he] completely floored me. I probably hadn't been so gung-ho about a guitar player since seeing Jeff Beck with his band the Tridents." Of Bowie, Vaughan said, "to tell you the truth, I was not very familiar with David's music when he asked me to play on the sessions. ... David and I talked for hours and hours about our music, about funky Texas blues and its roots - I was amazed at how interested he was. At Montreux, he said something about being in touch and then tracked me down in California, months and months later."[1] In a contemporary interview, Vaughan described the recording sessions for the album:

David Bowie is real easy to work with. He knows what he's doing in the studio and he doesn't mess around. He comes right in and goes to work. Most of the time, David did the vocals and then I played my parts. A lot of the time, he just wanted me to cut loose. He'd give his opinion on the stuff he liked and the stuff that needed work. Almost everything was cut in one or two takes. I think there was only one thing that needed three takes.[11]

Has this been posted yet? This is bonkers. http://www.theuncool.com/journalism/david-bowie-playboy-magazine🔗/

yeah it's a lil nuts

PLAYBOY: Last question. Do you believe and stand by everything you’ve said?

BOWIE: Everything but the inflammatory remarks.

In his book Niles talks about hearing all the "Let's Dance" demos and thinking there was nothing there at all, then being amazed as it all came together.

I don't see Bjork as heir or anything to Bowie at all.

Madonna's his greatest heir.

which hair?

Seen quite a lot of "Me and Bowie" type pics, funny how Bowie gives good face in all of them.

He's only got a 12-year start on Madonna, surely? 69 vs 57, 1970 vs 1983

photograph of Little Richard in a red suit getting into a bright red Cadillac

I want to see this picture.

not sure about today, but in the 80s, prince and madonna were the obvious heirs IMO.

prince more so than madonna IMO (charles shaar murray seemed to think so).

Listening to Song For Bob Dylan and getting chills all over hearing it as a narrative for Bowie's own, cosmic "retreat."

He recognizes a certain valor/heroism in that "dead" poet's self-invention and holds this quality in the highest esteem, credits it for deranging perspectives and terrifying the norms.

Obv. DB himself was already at it by then and embarking on his own, dramatized version of that trip, only more calibrated, more generous....and now nearly a half-century later, subbing in [David Jones] and [alias of choice] we're right there again.....

Oh, hear this Robert Zimmerman
I wrote a song for you
About a strange young man
called Dylan
With a voice like sand and glue
His words of truthful vengeance
They could pin us to the floor
Brought a few more people on
And put the fear in a whole lot more

Ah, Here she comes
Here she comes
Here she comes again
The same old painted lady
From the brow of a superbrain
She'll scratch this world to pieces
As she comes on like a friend
But a couple of songs
From your old scrapbook
Could send her home again

You gave your heart to every bedsit room
At least a picture on my wall
And you sat behind a million pair of eyes
And told them how they saw
Then we lost your train of thought
The paintings are all your own
While troubles are rising
We'd rather be scared
Together than alone

Ah, Here she comes...[etc.]

Now hear this Robert Zimmerman
Though I don't suppose we'll meet
Ask your good friend Dylan
If he'd gaze a while
down the old street
Tell him we've lost his poems
So they're writing on the walls
Give us back our unity
Give us back our family
You're every nation's refugee
Don't leave us with their sanity

Ah, Here she comes....[etc.]

don't feel like you need to give this attention, but this is the stupidest thing i've read yet:

http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2016/01/11/david-bowie-as-the-right-wing-artist/

"he had a flirtation with fascism but people still liked him!"

BOWIE: I really wanted Norman Rockwell to do an album cover for me. Still do. I originally wanted him for the cover of Young Americans. I got his phone number and called him up. Very quaint. His wife answered and I said, “Hello, this is David Bowie,” and so on. I asked if he could paint the cover. His wife said in this quavering, elderly voice, “I’m sorry, but Norman needs at least six months for his portraits.” So I had to pass, but I thought the experience was lovely. What a craftsman.

How familiar was "The Man Who Sold the World" when Nirvana covered it? I figured it took real crate digging for Cobain to own its host album. It wasn't even a hit in America.

I learned about it through the Sound and Vision box on release in 1989, which had the salutory effect of making a whole lot of his seventies work, famous or deep cuts, seem like they were on an equal level. So there's that. But there's another less-remarked link: Richard Barone covered the song in 1987 on his live album Cool Blue Halo, more pointedly with a prominent cello part from Jane Scarpantoni. Yesterday I dug up my copy of Barone's autobiography Frontman -- great read in general BTW -- because I remembered a particular anecdote:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CYfvLxRUMAAdDdI.jpg:large

A friend added on FB: "My brother and I saw Richard Barone play "The Man Who Sold The World" at The Backstage (now an upscale homewares store) in Seattle in 1990." So he wasn't blowing smoke in his book -- it seems to have been just enough of a local hit to trickle down that way.

I don't see Bjork as heir or anything to Bowie at all.

OTM.

on the few occasions where I'd meet somebody with no opinion about Bowie, it would seem odd - really almost a religious attitude from me: how can you not care about this?

I was a teenager from Station to Station thru Scary Monsters (the latter of which is the sole Bowie LP i remember being in our house, bcz my younger sister bought it). I simply didn't get into what was on the charts, consumerwise -- I only started to burrow into the Beatles albums at 15 or 16. (The only album purchases i specifically remember from 1980 were End of the Century and Argybargy.) I was an outsider and wanted to stay so, with no desire to liberate myself with makeup. I probably preferred to keep my distance from people who hated OR loved Bowie, at least until i joined drama club as a junior. Staying in my room watching baseball or old films, or listening to comedy LPs, was a good enough day for me. Whenever Bowie surfaced on TV or radio I liked him well enough; that was all.

Should add, here is Barone's version for comparison:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-m0sWVO3NM