Glastonbury founder Michael Eavis said the star – who played the Somerset festival twice before retiring from live shows in 2006 – said: “He’s one of the three greatest in the world, ever – Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and David Bowie”. It quickly turned into a Bowie memorial with songs and stories from throughout his brilliant career.
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“Blackstar”, co-produced by Bowie’s long-time collaborator Tony Visconti, features only seven songs, but critics praised the latest work, with Britain’s Guardian newspaper calling it “a spellbinding break with (Bowie’s) past”.
“He was an extraordinary man, full of love and life”, Visconti wrote.
Blackstar was the top-selling album on Apple’s iTunes U.S. and United Kingdom platforms on Monday morning.
People could collect a few records, maybe grab on to his trilogy of albums from 1970s Berlin or his spectacular early career as a glam rock Ziggy Stardust, but most people I knew who were into David Bowie were into David Bowie.
“I find it extremely hard to write for me. And he wanted to do it his way and he wanted to do it the best way”.
DAVID Bowie has “died peacefully” from cancer aged 69 after releasing his final album Blackstar last Friday. The singer sings from a hospital bed, blindfolded with buttons for his eyes.
To the end, even as he battled the cancer that would take his life, Bowie helped us see music, fashion and performance in new forms as he always looked ahead.
Bowie’s body levitates and his arms flail as the screen switches to the singer at his desk singing: “You know I’ll be free / Just like that bluebird”.
In between Aladdin Sane and Diamond Dogs, Bowie released an album of covers titled Pin Ups. In 2013, he suddenly returned with “The Next Day” after a decade-long absence that led many fans to presume he had retired. Or to paraphrase “Space Oddity”, thanks to David Bowie, pop’s premiere source of sound and vision, the stars look very different today.
Bowie’s Off-Broadway musical, “Lazarus“, is playing in the East Village.
She said the death has had a major impact on her life.
Saxophonist Donny McCaslin was quoted as saying Bowie wrote the song about the Islamic State group, although others around the singer said they were not sure. There was no wireless in 1996 and it would have taken fans more than 10 minutes to download it over dial-up. “I embrace the idea there’s a demystification process going on between the artist and the audience”, he says, describing the internet as “a communal power” that was helping media become more and more about the audience and less about monolithic era-defining artists like The Beatles.
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She first encountered him in the movie The Labyrinth when she was five: “Since then, I’ve just been obsessed”.
