David Bowie dies; his music? Never!
David Bowie, the infinitely changeable,
fiercely forward-looking songwriter who taught generations of musicians about
the power of drama, images and personas, died on Sunday, two days after his
69th birthday.
His last album, “Blackstar,”
a collaboration with a jazz quartet that was typically enigmatic and
exploratory, was released on Friday — on his birthday. He was to be honored
with a concert at Carnegie Hall on March 31 featuring the Roots, Cyndi Lauper
and the Mountain Goats.
He had also collaborated on an Off Broadway musical, “Lazarus,”
that was a surreal sequel to his definitive 1976 film role, “The Man Who Fell
to Earth.”
Bowie wrote songs, above all, about being an outsider: an alien, a misfit, a sexual adventurer, a faraway astronaut.
He was Major Tom, the lost astronaut in his
career-making 1969 hit “Space Oddity.”
Bowie was married for more than 20 years to the international model Iman,
with whom he had a daughter, Alexandria Jones.
Leave it to Bowie to release his own requiem on his birthday, a week before
dying.
David Robert Jones was born in London on Jan. 8, 1947, where as a
youth he soaked up rock ’n’ roll. He took up the saxophone in the 1960s and
started leading bands as a teenager, singing the blues in a succession of
unsuccessful groups and singles. He suffered a blow in a teenage brawl that
caused his left pupil to be permanently dilated.
He moved to the United States in 1974.
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