Farewell David Bowie

David Bowie (Jones) died on 10 January 2016, two days after his 69th birthday. According to his son, Duncan Jones, Bowie had cancer for the last 18 months which had been "hidden" from the public.

There is a long, well-written bio of Bowie in Wikipaedia. Mine is very short.

Born in Brixton, south London, on 8 January 1947, David Jones turned to pop in the 1960s, became David Bowie, and produced his first chart hit Space Oddity which hit the British top-5 in 1969. This was a song which lead people like me to follow Bowie.

In 1972 Bowie introduced his androgynous alter ego, Ziggy Stardust, which had a short-lived history. He produced the LP The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars. From 1975 he was Bowie again, and the single Fame and the album Young Americans took off.

In 1980 he completed Ashes to Ashes and in 1981 he and the Queen singer Fred Mercury sand Under Pressure. Bowie's commercial success grew in this decade, some in films and some with his wide music styles.

In 1986 Bowie met Jim Henson who directed a movie, Labyrinth, which told of a 15-year-old girl (Jennifer Connelly) who had to follow the Goblin King Jareth (Bowie) to his strange castle in order to recover her infant half-brother. Most of the rest of the cast were puppets created by Henson. This movie didn't prove to be popular with the audience of those days, but over the years it has become almost as cult-successful as The Rocky Horror Show (1973) which was out before Labyrinth. The movie contained six tracks, five of which were done by Bowie: "Underground", "Magic Dance", "Chilly Down", "As the World Falls Down" and "Within You". The critique of Labyrinth has been re-written in the last couple of decades, reapplying it as "a fabulous fantasy".

Labyrinth wasn't Bowie's only movies, but, for me, is the one of the few I still want to watch.

In the last two decades Bowie experimented with the music styles of soul, industrial, contemporary and jungle. In 1996 he was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and in 2002 he was voted number 29 in the UK BBC's 100 Greatest Britons. Throughout his life he produced 26 albums, including on his birthday, 8 January this year, Blackstar. 

On 10 January 2016 Bowie's Facebook page said "David Bowie died peacefully today surrounded by his family after a courageous 18-month battle with cancer."

RIP, David Bowie. You are and will be remembered.