I just feel like an era has ended with his passing… I was one of the first people to encounter him in the studio since I arrived first. It was as amusing as always, and as surreal, looping through word games and allusions and all the usual stuff we did.
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The only thing missing from the montage were the high-caliber performances Bowie brought to the Late Night stage: A stripped-down acoustic take on Earthling’s “Dead Man Walking” that’s perhaps more cherished than the album version itself, as well as a sterling rendition of Neil Young’s “I’ve Been Waiting for You” from Heathen. We signed off with invented names: some of his were Mr Showbiz, Milton Keynes, Rhoda Borrocks and the Duke of Ear.
Rod Stewart has described David Bowie as the “fearless leader of the pack”. “They will never rot”. I realise now he was saying goodbye. Van Hove said Bowie was desperate to finish “Blackstar” and “Lazarus” before it was too late.
It was adapted into the 1976 movie starring Bowie.
On Friday, two days before his death, Iman helped celebrate his 69th birthday and the release of his new album, “Blackstar”, with several posts and reposts of photos of her husband.
Michael Azerrad pointed out on Twitter that certain types of cancer lesions are referred to as “black stars” by radiologists looking for evidence of the disease. “It ended with this sentence: “Thank you for our good times, Brian. they will never rot”, Eno said. “I had incredible respect for that”.
“[It] was very humbling to receive some lovely messages from David Bowie fans who have been very touched by the musical tributes”, he told ITV News.
In recent months, after years of relative silence, he went on a prodigious streak, inspired in part by his fading health, said those who knew.
Songs from the album as well as classic Bowie hits such as “Heroes“, “Let’s Dance” and “Under Pressure” – performed with Queen – also entered the charts of streaming leader Spotify, with Bowie’s catalog ascending especially quickly in France. With the music video littered with references to death and lyrics such as “Look up, I’m in heaven” that clearly denoted that this was his swansong.
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On Monday, Bowie’s producer, Tony Visconti, wrote on Facebook: “He always did what he wanted to do”. In Columbia, many artists offered their own remembrances – such as Daniel Machado of the band The Restoration and Trustus Theatre artistic director Chad Henderson, who both posted pictures of themselves performing in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, which draws much of its musical sensibility and subversive sense of style from Bowie’s mutating persona.
