Dezo Hoffmann/REX/Shutterstock/BuzzFeed
Davy Jones in 1965, before he changed his name to David Bowie.
Potter / Getty Images
1996-98 Accusoft Inc., All Rights Reserved / Getty Images
Ray Stevenson / Ray Stevenson/REX/Shutterstock
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.
Ray Stevenson/REX/Shutterstock
Posing for a portrait in 1970.
Popperfoto / Getty Images
Hulton Archive / Getty Images
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.
Michael Ochs Archives / Getty
Bowie performing with Mick Ronson in 1972.
ITV/REX Shutterstock
Ilpo Musto/REX Shutterstock
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.
Pa / EMPICS Sports Photo Agency
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.
Michael Putland / Getty Images
Performing as Ziggy Stardust at the Odeon Theatre in London, 1973.
Keystone-france / Getty Images
Performing onstage at Earls Court Arena in 1973 during the Ziggy Stardust tour.
Gijsbert Hanekroot / Redferns
Hulton Archive / Getty Images
Performing his final concert as Ziggy Stardust at the Hammersmith Odeon, London, in 1973.
Steve Wood / Getty Images
Express / Getty
Twiggy posing with Bowie in Paris for the cover of his Pin Ups album, 1973.
Justin De Villeneuve / Getty Images
Justin De Villeneuve / Getty Images
Posing for a portrait with dyed red hair and a mustard yellow suit in 1974.
Terry O’neill / Getty Images
Performing “Rebel Rebel” on the TV show TopPop in 1974 in Hilversum, Netherlands.
Gijsbert Hanekroot / Redferns
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.
Michael Ochs Archives / Getty
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.
ITV/REX/Shutterstock
Performing at Aire Crown in Chicago, Illinois, April 1978.
Paul Natkin / Getty Images
At Earl’s Court, London, during his 1978 world tour.
Evening Standard / Getty Images
Backstage while acting in The Elephant Man in Broadway in 1980.
Keystone-france / Getty Images
Performing at the Rosemont Horizon theatre, Rosemont, Illinois, in 1983.
Paul Natkin / Getty Images
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.
Dave Hogan / Getty Images
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.
Tony Bock / Toronto Public Library
Mike Slaughter/Toronto Star via Getty
Bowie meets Diana, Princess of Wales and patron of the National AIDS Trust, in 1993.
Martin Keene / PA
Bowie with his wife Iman in 1995.
Sean Dempsey / PA WIRE
Posing for a portrait at age 50 in 1997.
PAT POPE/REX Shutterstock
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.
Mirek Towski / The LIFE Picture Collection / Getty
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
Top 20 David Bowie Videos
