Music legend Bowie succumbs to cancer at 69
Print Edition
BRITISH music legend David Bowie has died at the age of 69 after a secret battle with cancer, drawing an outpouring of tributes for one of the most influential and innovative artists of his time.
A notoriously private person, Bowie’s death came as a shock for the world just days after he had released his 25th studio album “Blackstar” on his 69th birthday last Friday.
“David Bowie died peacefully today (Sunday) surrounded by his family after a courageous 18-month battle with cancer,” said a statement posted on his social media accounts yesterday.
The death brings the curtain down on an extraordinary musical innovator and style icon, with a career dating back to his first major hit “Space Oddity” in 1969, about an astronaut called Major Tom who became lost in orbit.
Tributes poured in from the world of music, show business and politics for the singer-songwriter, producer and actor hailed as a visionary and master of re-invention.
The Rolling Stones hailed Bowie as an “extraordinary artist.” Collaborator Iggy Pop called his friendship “the light of my life” while Madonna commented: “Unique. Genius. Game Changer.”
Bowie spanned styles ranging from glam rock, New Romantic, rock and dance music to alternative rock, jungle, soul and hard rock, underpinned by an astonishing array of stage personas from the sexually ambiguous Ziggy Stardust to the Thin White Duke.
Fans left flowers and messages at a mural of Bowie’s face painted with a lightning bolt in Brixton, the London district where he was born David Robert Jones on January 8, 1947.
Bowie sold an estimated 140 million records, with his biggest-selling album “Let’s Dance” selling 7 million copies.
In the first of many re-inventions that were to make him a style icon, he named himself David Bowie in 1966 to avoid confusion with Davy Jones, lead singer with Beatles rivals The Monkees, and studied Buddhism and mime.
The twice-married Bowie was notorious in the 1970s for his hedonistic lifestyle and ambiguous sexual orientation.
The 1970s — the decade that saw him dominate the British music scene and conquer the US — brought forward a string of successful albums.
It began with the critically acclaimed “Hunky Dory,” continued with “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars” — whose hits included “Starman” and “Suffragette City” — followed by the rock album “Aladdin Sane,” the apocalyptic “Diamond Dogs” and a fling with so-called plastic soul, “Station to Station.”
He leaves behind his second wife Iman, a supermodel who he married in 1992 and with whom he had a daughter, Alexandria Zahra Jones. He also had a son, film director Duncan Jones, with first wife Angie Bowie.
Bowie had last performed in 2006 and was rarely seen in public. BBC News reported that he died in New York.
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