David Bowie: “Master of reinvention” leaves unmatched legacy

The rock star had just released his 25th studio album, Blackstar, hailed by fans as an intriguing, experimental offering.

Few knew that the publicity-shy Bowie had been battling terminal cancer for the last 18 months.

For a singer who spent 50 years reinventing himself, pushing boundaries and surprising listeners, it was the final shock.

The early years

Bowie was born David Robert Jones in south London on 8 January 1947. He shared a birthday with Elvis Presley.

In the early 1960s he began performing as David Jones with a number of rock and roll and blues bands, recording a string of unsuccessful singles.

By 1967 he had changed his name to avoid being confused with Davy Jones of the Monkees and put out an eponymous debut album which failed to chart.

An embarrassing novelty single from the same period, The Laughing Gnome, also flopped on release but was reissued two years later and made the Top 10.

The breakthrough

Bowie’s big break came in 1969, when Space Oddity was released shortly before the Moon landings. Bowie would return to the imagery of space travel for the rest of his career.

The early 70s saw global success, with a string of ground-breaking albums: The Man who Sold the World, Hunky Dory, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and Aladdin Sane.

Bowie had been training as a theatre performer, and he began to adopt different personae, beginning with Ziggy Stardust, a bisexual alien rock star.

The music was matched by a flamboyant stage show, with an increasingly androgynous Bowie performing caked in make-up and wearing women’s clothes.

Conservatives were outraged but the singer was attracting a devoted following in the UK and in America.

Controversy

Bowie claimed he was gay in a 1972 interview, just five years after the homosexuality had been decriminalised in the UK. He later said he was bisexual, but by 1983 was describing himself as “a closet heterosexual”.

He married Angie Bowie in 1970, but she was forced to share him with countless other lovers.

Drug abuse became a theme in his lyrics, and by the mid-70s it was obvious that the singer was struggling with a major cocaine addiction.

He gave television interviews in which he appeared emaciated and incoherent, the rambling speech accompanied by constant sniffing.

Nile Rodgers, who produced two Bowie albums, said the singer confessed to him that there were years of his life that he could not remember.

He said, “I know that’s me singing, I know that’s my record and my picture, but I don’t remember writing the songs, I don’t remember going into the studio.”

Bowie later recalled: “I blew my nose one day in California. And half my brains came out. Something had to be done.”

He also blamed drug-induced psychosis for a notorious phase in his Thin White Duke period where he was quoted as saying that Britain “could benefit from a fascist leader” and was accused of making the Nazi salute to fans.

Renaissance

His drug use under control, Bowie experienced a creative renewal from the late 1970s, working with Brian Eno on the classic Berlin trilogy of albums, then developing a funk-pop sound that brought him massive commercial success with Let’s Dance in 1983.

By the mid-80s Bowie was a global superstar, recording duets with Queen, Mick Jagger and Tina Turner.

By now, he had become a respected stage and screen actor, critically acclaimed on Broadway for his portrayal of Joseph Merrick in The Elephant Man, and putting in a memorable performance as the Goblin King in the children’s film Labyrinth.

One of his last major roles, as the inventor Nikola Tesla in the well-received 2006 movie The Prestige, earned Bowie critical acclaim.

His producing credits included Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life and Lou Reed’s seminal Transformer, and he had a growing reputation as a painter and art collector.

In 2013 a retrospective exhibition, David Bowie Is, brought together objects that demonstrated the breadth of his talent, from song lyrics to set design, fashion, photography and art.

Bowie continued to surprise musically, fronting the confrontational but uncommercial hard rock band Tin Machine in the late 80s and experimenting with house, drum and bass and other contemporary styles in the 1990s.

In 2013 he surprised the world with the unannounced release of The Next Day on his 66th birthday, scoring his first UK number one album since 1993. It was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize and a Grammy Award.

Blackstar was released on 8 January, on Bowie’s 69th birthday, two days before he died. Critics have described his final album as “extreme”, “urgent”, “intriguing” and “perhaps the most extraordinary in his amazing career”.

The centrepiece track Lazarus begins with the words: “Look up here, I’m in heaven, I’ve got scars that can’t be seen, I’ve got drama, can’t be stolen, everybody knows me now.”