Legendary Musician David Bowie Dies at 69, Rest in Peace

THIS MORNING I WOKE UP STUNNED AND SADDENED …

David Bowie, one of my all-time favorite musicians, has passed away at the age of 69. According to reports, Ziggy Star Dust died after an 18-month battle with cancer. Honestly, I never knew he had it. Bowie had just released his last album, “Blackstar,” this past Friday on his birthday. His music spanned so many generations and Bowie kept reinventing himself and his music. See David Bowie in concert was more than a concert, it was an epic event. The man was a music legend with more fantastic songs than most band have songs. In 1975, Bowie achieved his first major American crossover success with the number-one single “Fame” and the hit album Young Americans. But that is not before the glam rocker had such huge hits as  ”Space Oddity” and “Star Man.” However, probably my favorites are probable “Changes” and “Heroes”. But there are just too many to pick from. Then there was the MTV years where Bowie hit it big with “Let’s Dance,” “Modern Love” and “China Girl.”

You will be missed, Rest in Peace.

David Bowie – Space Oddity

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.

Mr. Bowie’s death was confirmed by his publicist, Steve Martin, on Monday morning.

He died after an 18-month battle with cancer, according to a statement on Mr. Bowie’s social-media accounts.

“David Bowie died peacefully today surrounded by his family,” a post on his Facebook page read.

Mr. Bowie wrote songs, above all, about being an outsider: an alien, a misfit, a sexual adventurer, a faraway astronaut. His music was always a mutable blend: rock, cabaret, jazz and what he called “plastic soul,” but it was suffused with genuine soul. He also captured the drama and longing of everyday life, enough to give him No. 1 pop hits like “Let’s Dance.”

David Bowie – Changes

The Guardian – The legendary musician known for musical innovation and experimentation with his image died 18 months after being diagnosed with cancer.

The singer’s death was confirmed in a Facebook post on his official page: “David Bowie died peacefully today surrounded by his family after a courageous 18-month battle with cancer. While many of you will share in this loss, we ask that you respect the family’s privacy during their time of grief.”

Writing on Twitter, Bowie’s son, the film director Duncan Jones, 44, said: “Very sorry and sad to say it’s true.” The news came as a shock to some, who were initially sceptical, but Bowie’s publicist, Steve Martin, told the Reuters news agency: “It’s not a hoax.”

David Bowie – Heroes

More from the NY Times obit:

Born David Robert Jones on Jan. 8, 1947, in South London, Mr. Bowie was a person of relentless reinvention. He emerged in the late 1960s with the voice of a rock belter but with the sensibility of a cabaret singer, steeped in the dynamics of stage musicals. He was Major Tom, the lost astronaut in his career-making 1969 hit “Space Oddity.”

He was Ziggy Stardust, the otherworldly pop star at the center of his 1972 album “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.”

He was the self-destructive Thin White Duke and the minimalist but heartfelt voice of the three albums he recorded in Berlin in the ’70s, often considered his greatest work: “Low,” “ ‘Heroes’ ” and “Lodger.”

The arrival of MTV in the 1980s was the perfect complement to Mr. Bowie’s sense of theatricality and fashion. “Ashes to Ashes,” the “Space Oddity” sequel that revealed “we know Major Tom’s a junkie,” and “Let’s Dance,” which offered, “Put on your red shoes and dance the blues,” gave him worldwide popularity.

Mr. Bowie was his generation’s standard-bearer for rock as theater: something constructed and inflated yet sincere in its artifice, saying more than naturalism could. With a voice that dipped down to baritone and leaped into falsetto, he was complexly androgynous, an explorer of human impulses that could not be quantified.

 David Bowie – Starman (1972)