“Look up here, I’m in heaven”, sang David Bowie on Lazarus, one of the songs released on his final album, Black Star, which came out on his 69th birthday – just two days before his death on Sunday. One can only assume that when she hears the news, she’ll be just as broken up as the rest of us are.
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“And the fact that David Bowie’s new album Blackstar was on course for number one this week, even before today’s bad news, says everything about his continuing relevance – over 40 years since his first hit records”. Flowers and tributes also popped up in his previous homes overseas. Welby, who holds the most prominent position in the Anglican Church, called Bowie an “extraordinary person”.
“I’ve been asked to do a hundreds of them in the States but I’ve said “no” every time”.
– British Prime Minister David Cameron: “I grew up listening to and watching the pop genius David Bowie”.
Fans of David Bowie flocked to social media Monday to pay their respects to the music legend.
“David Bowie was cool in the beginning, he was cool in the middle, and he was cool at the end”.
With his unpredictable range of styles, his melding of European jadedness with American rhythms and his ever-changing personas and wardrobes, the gaunt and erudite Bowie brought an open theatricality and androgyny to popular music that changed the very meaning of being a rock star.
“Following the very sad news of David Bowie’s death, we can now confirm that Angie Bowie has been informed off camera by her representatives”, said a Channel 5 spokesman.
Friends, fans and contemporaries described the Heroes singer as “iconic”, a “hero” and “one of the greatest performance artists” in history. Never have. I can do it and, if my mind’s on the situation, do it quite well.
Former astronaut Chris Hadfield, who performed “Space Oddity”, on the International Space Station in 2013. He managed to score a record contract, and in 1967 Bowie’s first full length album was released, although it failed to find an audience. He was a master of re-invention, who kept getting it right.
It was one of the few major honors bestowed on Bowie in his lifetime, including Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 1996.
Paying tribute on Twitter, comedian and actor Ricky Gervais, who convinced his long-time idol to star as himself – and ridicule Gervais – in an episode of 2006 sitcom Extras, wrote simply: “I just lost a hero”. It also saw him looking to the future and embracing the new art form of music videos, with an eerie clip in which Bowie appeared as a spectral Pierrot alongside figures from London’s emerging New Romantic scene.
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It was the 25th album from the glam-rock icon, who was born David Jones in South London on January 8, 1947.
