British music legend David Bowie has died at the age of 69 after a battle with cancer, drawing an outpouring of tributes for one of the most influential and innovative artists of all time.
A notoriously private person, Bowie’s death came as a shock for the world just days after he had released his 25th studio album, Blackstar, on his 69th birthday on Friday last week.
“David Bowie died peacefully today [Sunday] surrounded by his family after a courageous 18-month battle with cancer,” said a statement posted on his official social media accounts on Monday.
Photo: Reuters
The death brings the curtain down on an extraordinary musical innovator and style icon, with a career dating back to his first major hit, Space Oddity, in 1969, about an astronaut called Major Tom who becomes lost in orbit.
Tributes poured in from the world of music, show business and politics for the singer-songwriter, producer and actor hailed as a master of reinvention.
Bowie spanned styles ranging from glam rock, New Romantic, rock and dance music to alternative rock, jungle, soul and hard rock, underpinned by an astonishing array of stage personas from the sexually ambiguous Ziggy Stardust to the Thin White Duke.
Bowie had last performed in 2006 and was rarely seen in public, and it was unclear whether he died in New York or his native Britain.
Fans left flowers and messages at a mural of Bowie’s face painted with a lightning bolt in Brixton, where he was born David Robert Jones on Jan. 8, 1947.
Although he left school with just one qualification, an “O-level” in art, he went on to sell an estimated 140 million records worldwide, with his biggest-selling album, Let’s Dance, selling 7 million copies.
In the first of many reinventions that were to make him a style icon, he named himself David Bowie in 1966 to avoid confusion with Davy Jones, lead singer of The Monkees, and studied Buddhism and mime.
The 1970s saw him dominate the British music scene and conquer the US. It began with the critically acclaimed Hunky Dory, continued with The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, followed by the rock album Aladdin Sane, the apocalyptic Diamond Dogs and a fling with so-called plastic soul, Station to Station.
He then switched gears once more, moving to Berlin to work with the electronic experimentalist Brian Eno to produce a trio of albums — Low, Heroes and Lodger.
The 1980s saw him win over a new generation with Let’s Dance, which yielded the hit singles China Girl and Modern Love.
His chameleon-like ability to reinvent his image, drawing on everything from mime to kabuki theater, was accompanied by a string of albums until heart problems curtailed his productivity in the 2000s.
He also appeared in films in acting and cameo roles, from his striking appearance in the cult 1986 film Labyrinth to playing a prisoner of war in Japan in 1983’s Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence and inventor Nikola Tesla in The Prestige in 2006.
He surprised the world by launching surprise single Where are We Now? on his 66th birthday in 2013 after a decade of silence, hailed by critics as a major comeback.
An innovator to the end, Bowie on Friday released his final album, Blackstar. A dark work marked by tense instrumentation, a sense of dread and lyrics about mortality, the work is cast in a new light by the revelation of how ill he was when he created it.
Its third track, Lazarus, begins with: “Look up here, I’m in heaven, I’ve got scars that can’t be seen.”
Bowie was also one of the first musicians to embrace the potential of the Internet, setting up his own Internet service provider, BowieNet, in September 1998 that gave users access to the Web, their own customizable home page and unreleased tracks and software.
Longtime collaborator Tony Visconti wrote on Facebook that he had known for a year what was coming.
“His death was no different from his life — a work of Art,” Visconti wrote. “He made Blackstar for us, his parting gift.”
Bowie leaves behind his second wife, Iman, a supermodel who he married in 1992 and with whom he had a daughter, Alexandria Zahra Jones. He also had a son, film director Duncan Jones, with his first wife, Angie Bowie.
“I grew up listening to and watching the pop genius David Bowie. He was a master of re-invention, who kept getting it right. A huge loss,” British Prime Minister David Cameron wrote on Twitter.
“David’s friendship was the light of my life. I never met such a brilliant person,” US rock musician Iggy Pop said. “He was the best there is.”
Germany thanked Bowie for what it said was his role in helping topple the Berlin Wall in 1989, in a tweet with a link to a video of his Cold War-era anthem “Heroes” set in the then-divided city.
One tribute came from a real star man: British astronaut Tim Peake wrote from the International Space Station: “Saddened to hear David Bowie has lost his battle with cancer — his music was an inspiration to many.”
Additional reporting by staff writer
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