David Bowie learned he had terminal cancer just three months before his death
Supremely talented star died before his final album was released and the story of his death will feature in a new documentary
DAVID Bowie only found out his liver cancer was terminal three months before he died, a documentary reveals.
The musician was filming the music video for Lazarus when told his treatment would be stopped, its director said.
Johan Renck tells David Bowie: The Last Five Years, on BBC2 tonight: “The week we were shooting is when he found out that it is over.
“We’ll end treatment or whatever that means, that his illness has won.”
Bowie died on January 10 last year, just days after turning 69.
Renck added the video, which shows the star with his eyes covered by bandages, was not about the illness.
He said: “That was only because I liked the imagery of it.”
The Last Five Years looks at the singer’s acclaimed A Reality Tour in 2003 as well as the last four years of his life in which he returned with two albums after a 10-year absence and helped produce hit musical Lazarus.
It includes rare and never-before-seen footage of Bowie and interviews during his Ziggy Stardust characterisation and is a follow-up to the acclaimed David Bowie: Five Years, which was broadcast in 2013.
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In one early interview, Bowie is asked if he always wanted to be famous, to which he replies: “Yeah. It’s more than being a star.
“What it is really is that I want to be productive.
“I’m not content to just be a rock ‘n’ roll star all my life.
"I am trying to be one at the moment because I need it at the moment for a particular reason so I can get off and do other things.”
Visconti, the man behind more than half of Bowie’s studio albums including The Man Who Sold The World and Heroes, added: “David had great, grand ideas.
“To become well known, famous, for him was initially to have the resources to realise what his ideas were.
“He really does come from that spirit, he just didn’t want to be famous per se.”
- David Bowie: The Last Five Years airs on Saturday January 7 at 9pm on BBC Two.