EVEN David Bowie’s death was “a work of art”.
So says producer Tony Visconti, his most trusted friend, in describing the
passing of a British music icon.
We now know that Bowie’s final album Blackstar, released last Friday on his
69th birthday, was made by a man who knew he was running out of time.
Visconti was Bowie’s producer on and off for 47 years, beginning with 1969’s
Space Oddity album and ending with the strangely compelling Blackstar.
The 71-year-old American took to Facebook yesterday to say: “His death was no
different from his life . . . a work of art.
“He made Blackstar for us, his parting gift.
“I knew for a year this was the way it would be. I wasn’t, however, prepared
for it.
“He was an extraordinary man, full of love and life.
“He will always be with us. For now, it is appropriate to cry.”
Though Bowie kept his cancer battle from all but his nearest and dearest,
clues to his imminent demise are littered across Blackstar and the videos
for its two singles, the title song and Lazarus.
The Blackstar film shows a skeleton in a space suit. Is this the death of the
creator of Major Tom and Ziggy Stardust?
Bowie opens Lazarus, the biblical name for a man raised from the dead, with an
impassioned: “Look up here, I’m in heaven. I’ve got scars that can’t be
seen.”
In the dark and disturbing footage, he strains his neck and clenches his
fists, knuckles white, as he continues: “Look up here, man, I’m in danger.”
A frail-looking Bowie lies in an iron, white-painted hospital bed, his head
bandaged with black buttons placed over the eye sockets.
As the song draws to a close, he steps into a huge coffin-like wardrobe,
shutting the door behind him, clearly his visual representation of departing
this earth.
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Fans have latched on to two further lines from the song and are sharing them
on social media in their thousands. “This way or no way, you know I’ll be
free.”
But perhaps the most telling scene from Lazarus is when, towards the end of
the video, we see Bowie frantically scribbling — because he knows there’s
not much time left.
Since the release of 2013’s surprise comeback album The Next Day, he became a
man possessed.
Visconti, interviewed
by The Sun recently about Blackstar, said: “Since The Next Day, he
didn’t stop and, even unbeknownst to me, he was writing a musical.
“When we were recording Blackstar, he threw that at me at the last minute. So
we did a few songs that ended up in the musical.”
The off-Broadway show Lazarus features the plight of Bowie’s alien Newton from
the acclaimed 1976 film The Man Who Fell To Earth as he remains stranded on
this planet.
Belgian theatre director Ivo van Hove, who worked on the musical with him, had
been sworn to secrecy about the singer’s cancer fight.
He said he saw Bowie crying on opening night at the New York Theatre Workshop
last month.
He told The Times: “I was very aware that this perhaps would be the last time
I would see him. He was really weak and when we came off stage he had to
take a seat.
“I could see the tears behind his eyes because he was not a man to show of his
emotions. He was really deep in fear.”
He added: “He was still writing on his deathbed. I saw a man fighting. He
fought like a lion and kept working like a lion through it all. I had
incredible respect for that.”
As for Visconti, working with Bowie in the last months was a source of great
pride and joy. “I always got the best seat in the house,” he said. “David’s
baritone was stronger than ever and the phrasing beautiful. I couldn’t stand
next to him when he’s singing like that. It’s too loud! I had to back off.”
Visconti was asked if Bowie was much different to the lanky, tousle-haired
hopeful he met in the late Sixties. “He’s just a lovely, dear friend who
hasn’t changed much,” he replied.
“He’s obviously a much happier man now and he’s really much more solid as a
human being. He doesn’t practise any of those indulgences that he did in the
Seventies. None of us do. We’d be dead.”
If The Next Day’s song structures were more conventional, the free-form
jazz-rock Blackstar is more groundbreaking — similar in spirit to, say, the
experimental Berlin Trilogy from the late Seventies.
It features a New York modern jazz band led by saxophonist Donny McCaslin, the
invitation coming after Bowie watched them play the small 55 Bar in
Greenwich Village.
“He’s got a great sense of humour and he was really happy with what was
happening musically,” McCaslin said.
“Just to see the joy on his face when we arrived at the right take. He was
feeling what I was feeling.”
Concerns for Bowie’s well-being began in the early years of the millennium.
After 2003’s Reality album and tour, he had his fabled decade in the
wilderness, making rare public outings at gigs by Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour
and the Canadian band he admired, Arcade Fire.
Many feared the retirement of a major, much-loved creative force.
Visconti recalled: “It was probably 2012 when he phoned me, very excited, and
said, ‘I think I’ve got a new album.’ That was The Next Day and I was just
gobsmacked.
“I had been in contact with him over the years and during that time I’d say,
‘How are you doing? Are you going to record again?’ And he goes, ‘No, I
don’t really care’.
“For about ten years, he took a holiday but I can’t blame him. He’d worked so
hard all his life.”
As fans continued to clamour for Bowie concerts, not knowing just how ill he
was, Visconti said: “He’d done thousands and thousands of shows, and what
always got to him was the travelling and the hotels.
“All his work is here in New York and his central focus is here, his family is
here and, let’s face it, he’s a citizen of the world now.
“But he’s very much an Englishman and doesn’t talk with an American accent. If
he has feelings about the UK, it’s certainly in his lyrics. And we talk
about Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, the iconic British comedians. There’s a
place in his heart for them.”
Evidence of this last sentiment comes in Blackstar’s Dollar Days with its
line: “If I never see the English evergreens I’m running to.”
But does the title track Blackstar also foreshadow Bowie’s imminent death? It
begins with his quasi-Gregorian chanting, giving the ten-minute song a
religious feel.
Bowie’s wife Iman posted this simple message yesterday: “The struggle is real,
but so is God.”
In the Blackstar song, Bowie summons the image of a solitary candle, lit in
mourning in a vast religious building “on the day of the execution”.
It sounded third person but now perhaps not. Then there’s the final song of
his final album, I Can’t Give Everything Away. “I know something’s very
wrong,” he croons. And the imagery is plain to hear as he goes on: “With
skull designs upon my shoes/I can’t give everything away.”
Musically, the album fades to electric guitar, which Visconti says is Bowie’s
nod to his past.
He reveals: “We discussed that we were going to get a little bit of a Mick
Ronson (the singer’s great Spiders From Mars guitarist) sound on the end of
that track and we did. It’s the only time we alluded to the past on the
whole album. It sounded a little bit Ziggy or Aladdin Sane.”
Bowie was always the master of surprise. Just like he kept his 2013 comeback
album a massive secret, so he did with his death.
Shrewd deal landed £38m
By CAROLINE IGGULDEN
BOWIE was a financial innovator as well as a musical one.
In 1997 he came up with a scheme which saw him issue “Bowie Bonds’’ allowing
people to invest in his future earnings.
He had to give up the royalties on his back catalogue for a decade but the
issue meant he received £38million.
Bowie’s wealth is estimated at £158million. He and wife Iman owned a £3million
New York penthouse and a 64-acre home in upstate New York.
Iman and daughter Lexi, 15, are likely to inherit his fortune.