David Bowie

Bowie started working on this album on the 8th of January 2015, his 68th birthday. He was working in the same low-key, no publicity way as the Next Day, with Tony Visconti as producer again. What no one, not even the musicians he was working with, realised at the time is that he was suffering from terminal liver cancer while recording this.

The album was released a year later, again on his birthday in 2016. We all stayed up past midnight, hitting refresh in Apple Music waiting for the downloads to appear. What we got was easily one of his best albums, experimental and jazzy, with callbacks to the vocal style of his earliest albums, the haunting sounds of the Berlin trilogy and the world music themes of his later work.

The title track has the line ‘Something happened on the day he died’ and I distinctly remember feeling a shiver go through me the first time I heard this, wondering also exactly what a Blackstar was. The second track, Tis Pity She Was a Whore also caught us by surprise - Bowie said cock! The cheeky scamp!

Lazarus returns to the theme of mortality - ‘Look up here, I’m in heaven. I’ve got scars that can’t be seen’ - accompanied by a haunting saxophone line. The song concludes ‘Ain’t that just like me?’ and is followed by Sue, which sounds like one half of a cryptic conversation with references to x rays and saying goodbye, sounding like someone putting their affairs in order, saying things that needed to be said, accompanied by a frantic jazz beat that builds to a wail of feedback.

Girl Loves Me gets even stranger with lyrics in a mix of gay Polari slang and the Nadsat constructed language from A Clockwork Orange. ‘Where the fuck did Monday go?’ he asks and we feel like time is running out. Dollar Days combines a soulful sax arrangement with lyrics wondering about never seeing the English evergreens again and the lines about ‘I’m trying to, I’m dying to …’ as the song builds to a pitch, crossfading into a beat as we reach the final track.

‘Seein’ more and feelin’ less Sayin’ no but meaning yes This is all I ever meant That's the message that I sent’

As the music faded out with one final, endless chord, we knew we’d heard something extraordinary, a message from someone we’d known all our lives.

Two days later we woke up to the news that he’d died.

We came together on our social accounts, sharing a mix of disbelief, grief and also appreciation for a lifetime of music that had soundtracked our lives from those early days on Top of the Pops, to teenage discos, to discovering hidden gems and scouring them for hidden meanings, to 80’s cool (and cheesy pop), the blast of Tin Machine and the Buddha of Suburbia, and then rediscovering it all again.

Rest in peace Starman.

After Reality, David Bowie pretty much disappeared from public view. Unlike some aging rock stars on endless money spinning greatest hits tours, Bowie was happy to quietly spend time with his young family. However, he had a surprise for us - some time in 2011 he started working with old pal Tony Visconti on a series of tracks, with recording sessions kept low key and private, until the unexpected release of the single ‘Where are we now?’ on the 8th of January 2013, Bowie’s birthday.

The album cover is based on the classic picture from Heroes, partially obscured by a white square with the album title in stark, black text on top. The songs continue the theme of picking up where he left off, as if no time had passed. The lyrics are as bold and challenging as ever, and if the music sounds familiar it’s because at this point Bowie is free to draw from over forty years of experience. He was also able to draw the ire of church leaders in his pointed criticism of religious hypocrisy on the title track and especially in the accompanying music video featuring Gary Oldman as a corrupt priest.

For this album, Bowie was focused on pulling together a set of songs that could be played live and form the heart of an extensive live tour, calling on regulars Mike Garson and Gail Ann Dorsey amongst others. Also returning as producer was Tony Visconti, as reliable as always, playing bass on the recording sessions as well.

The tracks are all solid rock songs, and sound pretty much timeless with callbacks to the 70s, 80s and 90s. There are two covers - one from the Modern Lovers and a George Harrison song from 1973. The lyrics seem to be about Bowie’s thoughts on aging, not really surprising as he approached the mid point of his 50s. The title track is an absolute banger, as he sings about his failing eyesight and mortality. The jazz themed Bring Me the Disco King is another highlight for me, with some of Garson’s best piano work accompanying some of Bowie’s most introspective lyrics.

The Reality Tour was the biggest that he’d ever attempted, running from 2003 into 2004 and generally acknowledged to be one of the best he’d put together. It was unfortunately cut short near the end when Bowie suffered a heart attack on stage in Prague requiring an emergency angioplasty to clear a blocked artery. Fortunately he seemed to make a good recovery from surgery, but all future appearances were cancelled.

After that, all went quiet and we thought that he’d retired …

Bowie had just become a dad again at the age of 55 when he wrote this, so there is a mix of introspection, worries and looking to the future on this album. He’d reconciled with Tony Visconti after their falling out, so they were able to work together for the first time in over twenty years. There is an assured mix of styles, including some interesting choices of songs to cover from Pixies, Neil Young and Legendary Stardust Cowboy.

The two tracks that really stood out for me were Afraid, which is one of his very earliest songs that he had been working on for the Toys project, and A Better Future which was obviously written with his newborn daughter in mind.

If long term Bowie fans were surprised by Tin Machine then the drum ‘n’ bass opening to this will have knocked their Union Jack socks off. This is Bowie at his most confident, surfing the wave of Britpop cool and pushing boundaries again. This probably has the ultimate Bowie backing band for me - Reeves Gabrels, Carlos Alomar, Mike Garson, Zack Alford and Gail Ann Dorsey are super tight on this. Bowie produced this himself and seems to have been focussed on getting the most out of his cut-up process for song writing and experimenting with new sounds. He also broke new ground as the first artist to release a track on the internet in September 1996 with a 250,000 downloads - an amazing number for the era of slow dial up modems.

This is another hidden gem of Bowie’s, and one that almost didn’t get released - there were various bootleg versions of this floating around and the record company were very reluctant to release it or give it any promotion.

He re-united with Brian Eno for this one for the first time since the mid 70’s, leaning into the oblique strategy cards again and tying the songs together with a Twin Peaks style narrative of a detective called Nathan Adler investigating the murder of a young woman. The story is non-linear and told through spoken narration between the tracks (including one that sounds like The Laughing Gnome!) as well as copious liner notes. The music harks back to the Berlin trilogy in places (naturally enough) while also bringing in some absolutely banging beats on Hallo Spaceboy and some sublime jazz piano from Mike Garson underpinning it.

This one feels like a secret album, only known to a handful of us, and definitely one of his best.

Despite the title track, this is not really a soundtrack to the BBC TV series of the same name. It’s more of an album inspired by the themes of the book - sex, religion, queer identity and growing up feeling like an outsider in south London. It didn’t make much impact at the time but Bowie said it was one of his favourite albums and who am I to argue with him. I love the jazzy bits, the ambient soundscapes and especially the track Strangers When We Meet.

Two things inspired this album, firstly Bowie’s marriage in 1992 to Iman and their experience of seeing the LA riots at first hand the next week. The music sounds bold and confident, and definitively Bowie, featuring guest appearances from Mike Garson and Mick Ronson as well as anticipating the rise of Britpop and 90’s dance. The highlight is a down tempo cover of I Feel Free, which expresses Bowie’s new found artistic confidence.

In 1988 Bowie was in need of a boot up the backside, so he teamed up with Reeves Gabrels and old pals Tony and Hunt Sales to put a band together. They needled each other in just the right ways, performed unannounced gigs in small clubs and recorded two albums worth of raw, swaggering, good old fashioned rock ‘n’ roll. A Bowie fan I worked with at the time absolutely hated this, I absolutely love it. The standout is Under the God which is just as relevant now.

After a lacklustre album of mostly covers where he was just singing, Bowie returned to playing instruments and writing new material again. However, something went badly wrong somewhere and Bowie said later that he felt that he ended up just being a session musician on his own album. The production is peak 80’s with overly compressed drums, brassy synth stabs and warbling sax. I’ve still no idea what Glass Spider is supposed to be about!

It’s generally acknowledged that Bowie was pretty much burnt out at this time, exhausted from touring and out of ideas. This album has only two original songs, the rest being covers and reworkings of earlier collaborations with Iggy Pop. The experiment with reggae is deeply ill advised, and even a duet with Tina Turner can’t save the title track (which has a xylophone part that sounds uncannily like the Monkey Island theme).

Looking on the positive side with the two original songs, Loving the Alien is a haunting classic and Blue Jean (and the accompanying Jazzin’ for Blue Jean mini movie by Julien Temple) is a fun 50’s pastiche.

The early 80s were a busy time for Bowie. After Scary Monsters, he’d spent a lot of time on acting and other artistic pursuits. He was also deeply affected by the murder of his friend John Lennon, cancelling a planned tour. When he came back to music in 1983, he was looking for another change of direction and picked Nile Rodgers as producer. Unfortunately he didn’t tell Tony Visconti, who found out about it from a third party, which led to the two men falling out for nearly twenty years.

This is Bowie’s biggest selling album and it propelled him into the mainstream as one of the biggest rockstars in the world, with some of his biggest hit singles. Going back to it now shows some problems - the production is that bright, brassy, radio friendly 80s style that doesn’t really suit David’s voice. Apart from the hits, the other songs are not that memorable. Oh, and I’m only giving China Girl (which manages to be both racist and sexist) a pass because he was doing it to help out his old friend Iggy who had got himself into financial trouble and needed the royalties.

It’s incredible to think that there were only ten years between Space Oddity and Ashes to Ashes, which brings back the Major Tom character (and also firmly established Bowie as the figurehead of the New Romantic scene). After being aware of Glam Bowie when I was young, I’d missed the Berlin years so this album was my re-introduction to him as an icon of 80s cool. However, he was already kicking back against this label with the sharply cynical Fashion.

This is the often overlooked conclusion to the Berlin trilogy, but I think that it easily stands comparison with the other two. If Low was a wail of despair and Heroes reaching out for a way forward, then Lodger is Bowie set free and playing with his artistic process. The experiments here are playful, venturing into world music and setting the tone for much of what was to come in the 80s. My highlight is the motorik beat inspired Red Sails.

Building on Low, for this album Bowie added the amazing guitarist Robert Fripp, formerly of King Crimson, who brought shimmering guitar chords into the mix with his unique style. The title track was constructed from Fripp’s improvised guitar tracks, looped and combined with Eno’s synths by producer Tony Visconti. The song was almost an instrumental until Bowie caught sight of Tony Visconti with his new girlfriend standing by the Berlin Wall and was inspired to write about this striking image. As seems to be traditional with Bowie’s best work, the single didn’t do particularly well on first release and was only recognised as a classic in retrospect.

It’s no exaggeration to say that Bowie’s friendship with Iggy Pop saved both their lives. They moved from America to France to escape the drugs scene, working first on Iggy’s album the Idiot, and then Bowie threw himself into experiments with the soundscapes and cut up vocals that would become Low. He worked with the legendary Brian Eno and co-producer Tony Visconti doing more on this record than many people realise.

The final production and mixing for the album then moved to Hansa Studios in Berlin giving a much needed focus for this album and the next two that form the Berlin Trilogy.

Another transitional album, opening with the ten minute title track that starts with the sound of a hissing train and toys with prog krautrock beats and icy electronica. At this time Bowie was deep in the middle of an extended period of cocaine addiction, burnt out and paranoid, and morphed into the new persona of The Thin White Duke, a repellent European aristocrat with some very troubling opinions to say the least.

Thankfully Bowie quickly clarified that this was just an act that did not reflect his actual beliefs and the Duke didn’t hang around. The rest of the tracks build on the previous soul sound, with the highlight for me being Golden Years, one of his best.

Off to Berlin next!

Even in 1975, America wasn’t quite ready for an androgynous alien with wonky teeth, so Bowie transformed again into a matinee idol and took his love of American soul music into the studio with Luther Vandross and Carlos Alomar to produce this great album. We also get a great cover of Across the Universe and a sharply observed collaboration with John Lennon on the final track that once more points to where we are heading next, warning about the poisonous effects of fame and celebrity.

Another radical shift, with this album opening with a sci-fi introduction and going into a dystopian narrative inspired by George Orwell’s 1984. This was Bowie’s last glam album, and has some great examples of stomping rock to enjoy with Rebel Rebel being a highlight for me. It’s not quite up to the level of the previous ones, but you get the sense that Bowie is itching to move on again, and the funky guitar on 1984 gives us a clue where he’s heading next.

A contractual obligation covers album of 60s music, six months after Aladdin Sane and coming off the back of an emotionally draining tour doesn’t sound promising. However, as the cover of Let’s Spend the Night Together proved, Bowie is the consummate chameleon and absolutely smashed this compilation of 60s R&B, psychedelia and Merseybeat numbers. Highlights are a Brechtian See Emily Play and a slowed down Can’t Explain.

Even while he was in the middle of a tour with the Spiders From Mars, Bowie was keen to move on from his Ziggy persona. This album saw him transform into Aladdin Sane with the iconic lightning bolt makeup and name alluding to his fear of the schizophrenia that his brother had suffered from.

The sound also noticeably changed with the addition of pianist Mike Garson, giving this album a mix of hard rock, glam, soul, experimental avant-garde jazz and Brechtian opera. I was lucky enough to see Mike Garson playing this album in full a couple of years ago and he really is an astonishing pianist.

The lyrics also push the boundaries particularly the bit about falling wanking to the floor on Time. I remember being in our local Co-Op where they would allow the staff to play their own choices over the in store speakers and somebody picked this album - can’t go wrong with cuddly old David Bowie, right? - but they’d evidently forgotten about this one!

I think that seeing David Bowie singing Starman on Top of the Pops is one of my earliest musical memories and was certainly the first time I thought that music could be transgressive and thrilling, even if I couldn’t have expressed it in those words at that age. I just knew that here was something new and different, and that it would be part of my life forever more. This album still moves me more than fifty years later and is still astonishingly prescient.

Another album that didn’t really sell much on first release - the record company really didn’t know how to cope with Bowie! So many classic tracks on this album, but the one I keep coming back to is Kooks, written shortly after the birth of his son. It’s just such a warm and lovely song, summing up how those early, chaotic days with a new born in the house feel. I also want a bipperty-boppity hat!

One of Bowie’s talents is attracting musicians to his band that reflect precisely what he wants to do. This album saw the first appearance of Mick Ronson and Woody Woodmansey immediately shifting this album into a hard rock/prog sound, accompanied by Tony Visconti with a solid bass. It was around this time that Bowie got his band to wear superhero costumes on stage and more or less invented glam. The cover photo is also fabulous!

This is the one that caught the zeitgeist of the space race and established Bowie as an otherworldly musician unlike any of his contemporaries. I listened to the 2019 remix by Tony Visconti which sounds fabulous in Dolby Atmos bringing out details that were muddied in the original release. Aside from the iconic opener, the highlight is Memory of a Free Festival with Bowie playing a flawless harmonium.

This is a really unusual debut album that at first hearing seems quite at odds with the better known tracks to come. However, there are themes here that will crop up at different times over the next 25 albums, especially on Blackstar. This is not a rock album - it’s much closer to the older traditions of music hall with some unusual instruments and a lot of humour. You can also hear David’s distinctive vocal style developing in real time.