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Davy Jones in 1965, before he changed his name to David Bowie.
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Bowie seen in portrait in 1967 (left) and as a mime artist in London in 1968.
Bowie, reflecting on his youth, in an interview withThe Daily Telegraph in 1996:
“We know what can happen… you can get a job, go to work, you can follow that line of perceived security. But I think there’s a different kind of security, which is trusting to and living by a code, of almost drifting where the wind takes you. And I spent well into my 20s doing that – throwing myself wholeheartedly into life at every avenue and seeing what happened.”
Via telegraph.co.uk
Bowie at home in Beckenham in 1969.
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Posing for a portrait in 1970.
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At the Disc and Music Echo Valentine Awards in London, 1970 (left). At home in Beckenham in 1972 (right).
Posing as alter ego Ziggy Stardust for a portrait in 1972.
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Bowie performing with Mick Ronson in 1972.
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Bowie seen on the day of the release of his album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spider from Mars at the premiere of Live and Let Die, Odeon Leicester Square, London, 6 June 1972.
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From an interview with the New York Daily News:
“What I have is a malevolent curiosity. That’s what drives my need to write and what probably leads me to look at things a little askew. I do tend to take a different perspective from most people.”
Via nydailynews.com
Onstage in London, 1973.
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Performing as Ziggy Stardust at the Odeon Theatre in London, 1973.
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Performing onstage at Earls Court Arena in 1973 during the Ziggy Stardust tour.
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Performing his final concert as Ziggy Stardust at the Hammersmith Odeon, London, in 1973.
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Twiggy posing with Bowie in Paris for the cover of his Pin Ups album, 1973.
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Justin De Villeneuve / Getty Images
Posing for a portrait with dyed red hair and a mustard yellow suit in 1974.
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Performing “Rebel Rebel” on the TV show TopPop in 1974 in Hilversum, Netherlands.
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Bowie interviewed on television programme in 1973.
“I find that I am a person who can take on the guises on different people that I meet. I always found that I collect. I am a collector, and I always seem to collect personalities, ideas. I have a hotchpotch philosophy which is very minimal.”
Via youtube.com
Posing for a portrait in 1976.
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Starring in Nicolas Roeg’s film The Man Who Fell to Earth in 1976.
British Lion Film Corporation
British Lion Film Corporation
Posing for a portrait in 1977.
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Performing at Aire Crown in Chicago, Illinois, April 1978.
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At Earl’s Court, London, during his 1978 world tour.
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Backstage while acting in The Elephant Man in Broadway in 1980.
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Performing at the Rosemont Horizon theatre, Rosemont, Illinois, in 1983.
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As Jareth the Goblin King in Labyrinth with Jennifer Connelly in 1986.
Tristar Pictures / ©TriStar Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection
Tristar Pictures / ©TriStar Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection
Tristar Pictures / ©TriStar Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection
Reading a copy of Viz on the train in 1990.
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Bowie recollecting about playing at the Berlin Wall in 1987, according to a book written by Bill DeMain.
“It was one of the most emotional performances I’ve ever done. I was in tears. They’d backed up the stage to the wall itself so that the wall was acting as our backdrop. We kind of heard that a few of the East Berliners might actually get the chance to hear the thing, but we didn’t realize in what numbers they would. And there were thousands on the other side that had come close to the wall. So it was like a double concert where the wall was the division. And we would hear them cheering and singing from the other side.”
Playing in Toronto, Canada, in 1991.
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Bowie meets Diana, Princess of Wales and patron of the National AIDS Trust, in 1993.
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Bowie with his wife Iman in 1995.
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Posing for a portrait at age 50 in 1997.
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Bowie marks his 50th birthday with a celebration concert alongside 90s indie rock stars.
Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, Dave Grohl, Robert Smith, David Bowie, Billy Corgan, Pat Smear, Kim Gordon and guests. Kevin.mazur / WireImage
Bowie receiving his star on Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1997.
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Performing at Glastonbury in 2000.
Reuters Photographer / Reuters
Bowie and Iman in 2002.
Yui Mok / PA WIRE
Performing on stage during his A Reality Tour in Montreal, 2003.
Shaun Best /
Performing onstage on the A Reality Tour in Prague, 2004.
Reuters Photographer / Reuters
Bowie interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row in 2013:
“It’s not the age itself. Age doesn’t bother me… It’s the lack of years left that weighs far heavier on me than the age that I am. I feel pretty good frankly. I do what I’ve always wanted to do, I’m a writer, yet it’s having to let go of it all.”
Via BBC Front Row / bbc.co.uk
Flowers are left below a mural of David Bowie on the wall of Morley’s store in Brixton, London, the singer’s birthplace, after his death in 2016.
Anthony Devlin / PA WIRE
buzzfeed.com
David Bowie – Lazarus
David Bowie – Blackstar
David Bowie‘s final album, released just days before his sudden death, perhaps provided clues no one initially recognized about his losing struggle with cancer.
Blackstar opens with the lyric, “Look up here, I’m in heaven.” The accompanying video for “Lazarus,” also released in the days before Bowie’s death yesterday at age 69, found him confined to a hospital bed, his eyes obscured by bandages.
Later, perhaps in reference to efforts to complete Blackstar, Bowie is seen frantically working at his desk. The song title itself recalls a Biblical character who rose from the dead, and Bowie clearly alludes to life’s passages: “This way or no way, you know, I’ll be free. Just like that bluebird, oh I’ll be free.”
Tony Visconti, Bowie’s longtime producer, has confirmed that he was aware of Bowie’s fate as they worked on the album. “He made Blackstar for us, his parting gift,” Visconti said in a Facebook post. “I knew for a year this was the way it would be. I wasn’t, however, prepared for it.”
It’s hard not to hear allusions to that sad destiny everywhere on Blackstar. The title track, which features a video filled with the dark imagery of burial, includes the line “Something happened on the day he dies / Spirit rose a meter and stepped aside.” The end seems much closer on “Dollar Days,” however, as a longing Bowie ends the song by repeating, “I’m dying to. I’m trying to.”
Later, on the album-closing “I Can’t Give Everything Away,” Bowie seems to wrestle with his diagnosis: “I know something is very wrong / The pulse returns the prodigal sons / The blackout hearts, the flowered news, with skull designs upon my shoes.” Soon, he appears ready to put everything into a broader perspective: “Seeing more and feeling less, saying no but meaning yes – this is all I ever meant / That’s the message that I sent.”
Elsewhere, Blackstar is filled with verses and symbolism that couldn’t go further afield from his cancer battle. (“Girl Loves Me,” for instance, includes words from the language Anthony Burgess created for the teen marauders of A Clockwork Orange.) This, too, was in keeping with the way Bowie lived out his final days, according to Brian Eno.
“I received an email from him seven days ago,” Eno told NME. “It was as funny as always, and as surreal, looping through word games and allusions and all the usual stuff we did. It ended with this sentence: ‘Thank you for our good times, Brian. They will never rot.’ And it was signed ‘Dawn.’ I realize now he was saying goodbye.”
Review: David Bowie’s ‘Blackstar’ Is Adventurous To The End
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