Waking up this morning, the very last thing I expected to find on the various newsfeeds I look in on was the news that, a mere couple of days after his 69th birthday and the release of Blackstar, his latest album, David Bowie had passed away.

If you’ve followed this blog for any length of time or even casually know me, then you know that David Bowie is my all time favorite musician.  I discovered David Bowie’s music back in 1983 and while in High School with the release of his biggest selling album, Let’s Dance.  There was something about that music, suave and sexy and danceable yet also mysterious, that immediately gripped me.

So intrigued I was with Let’s Dance that I started looking backwards and buying up his catalog of past albums.  To my surprise, there were a great many songs he wrote which I was familiar with but had never put artist and art together.  You see, unlike many others I never really got into music -and music purchasing- until I got into David Bowie.

While I was familiar with and loved the works of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd and (remember the times!) the Bee Gees, but up until I discovered David Bowie I never really considered music -and albums- as something to purchase and collect.

With David Bowie front and center and his previous albums available, I realized I was familiar with many of his songs but hadn’t connected them with him.  The usual popular songs were there, Suffragette City, Lady Stardust, Space Oddity, Changes, Rebel Rebel, The Jean Genie, Young Americans, Heroes, etc. etc.  They all popped up on the radio from time to time and it was both a surprise and delight to find the man responsible for Let’s Dance had produced so much other really, really good stuff.

But what turned me from fan to David Bowie fanatic was the discovery of the album The Man Who Sold The World.

You have to put yourself in my shoes back in the mid-1980’s and understand that at that time this album was a rarity and could barely be found in the record stores (this was way before the advent of the internet and MP3 songs).  To me, The Man Who Sold The World -album and song- was and is David Bowie’s first true masterpiece and I played the hell out of it back in the day.  Even today, I considered the title track my all time favorite David Bowie composition…

And when Nirvana famously covered the song some years later and it had a popularity rebirth (or, one could argue, it was finally getting the recognition it deserved), I couldn’t help but nod and smile.

After the extreme success of Let’s Dance, however, David Bowie appeared artistically lost.  The mega-success he achieved (the album and song competed head on with Michael Jackson’s Thriller.  I believe the song displaced Beat It from its #1 position for a week or so) left him in a strange state and his follow up album, Tonight, while featuring some very good songs felt like a lesser effort.

He would follow that album up with what many, including Mr. Bowie himself, felt was his very worst album, the ironically titled Never Let Me Down.  Again, there were some good songs in the album but the overall work was terribly unsatisfying.  Perhaps sensing doldrums, Mr. Bowie moved into other directions, becoming part of a hard rock/heavy metal band Tin Machine for two albums.  Once again, there was good material to be found here, but critics were very harsh.  When Tin Machine folded, Mr. Bowie returned with Black Tie White Noise, a soulful/jazzy album that received plenty of good reviews but was essentially ignored by the public at large.  It was at about this point that whatever magic David Bowie conjured for each new musical release was gone and audiences in general seemed not as interested in him anymore.

Which is really too bad because Mr. Bowie was about to begin the last third of his career in grand style.  Starting with 1993’s Buddha of Suburbia, Mr. Bowie found his groove and from that moment on he released one album after another, until Blackstar (his eighth and last album since Buddha) which were all of very high quality.

Sure, some albums were better than others but David Bowie’s later output could never be accused of being half-cocked or indifferent.  Unlike Tonight and Never Let Me Down, it appeared Mr. Bowie was trying mightily to release works that lived up to his talent and reputation.

After the release of 2003 album Reality, Mr. Bowie would go on a tour (captured excellently on the 2010 release A Reality Tour CD and Video) and, sadly, it would turn out to be the very last major tour Mr. Bowie would ever do.  In June of 2004 and while touring, he experienced what he thought was a pinched nerve in his shoulder.  It turned out he had an acutely blocked coronary artery and underwent emergency surgery to repair the blockage.

For ten years after this Mr. Bowie kept a low profile.  Many thought him gravely ill.  Morbid rumors spread that he didn’t have long to live.

Yet in 2013 and on the date of his 66th birthday, he surprised the world with the release of The Next Day, his first album in 10 years.  The album was critically well received and I enjoyed it tremendously, but not nearly as much as the next one.

His last one.

Blackstar, in retrospect, was meant not to be so much another step in Mr. Bowie’s “return” but rather a self-made tribute, one last major work he wanted to gift his audiences before he left the stage.  Suddenly the sadness in many of the songs, in particular Lazarus, take on new poignancy.

When Mr. Bowie stopped touring, I suspected he wasn’t doing well.  And when a year passed, then another, and then another with no new music, I feared the worst.  But when he released The Next Day and looked good on the videos made for the songs, I hoped he had recovered and was about to come back strong.

But when the videos for Blackstar and Lazarus showed up, I couldn’t help but notice Mr. Bowie looked so very old in them and now, with the news of his passing, it sadly makes sense.

I noted in my review of the album Blackstar (you can read it here) that the song Blackstar reminded me of a mix between the early Bowie song Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud and Loving the Alien, perhaps the best song on the album Tonight.

I stand by that statement and further point out that in an interview Mr. Bowie stated he considered Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud to be the first song which pointed in the direction he would eventually go…

In this song, the focus is on the soon to be executed “wild eyed boy”.  In Blackstar, we turn our attention from the one who dies to the town itself.  I can’t help but feel that Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud and Blackstar, are meant to be bookmarks on the career that David Bowie had, one song circling into the other, with so many beautiful songs in between.

Rest in peace, Mr. Bowie.  Words cannot express the amount of joy you’ve given me.