gordon_r_d | RIP David Bowie

"David Bowie - Station to Station (Live 1978)" (Watch on YouTube)

I first encoutnered Bowie's work in a roundabout way, in 1977, the London Symphony Orchestra did an album of mostly instrumental versions of classic rock songs. Life On Mars was one of those and the tune fascinated me as I was already deep into science fiction by the age of five. Then the Ashes To Ashes video hit around the time I was into Visage and Gary Numan and it fit right in there.

I dipped into Bowie now and then, I'd hear a new track or an old one and go on a bit of a binge. I was still discovering new favourite Bowie tracks as recently as a couple of years ago, the above being one of them.

Then there were his rare, but memorable movie performances, Labyrinth being the most obvious, but The Man Who Fell To Earth was also amazing and I loved him popping up is Nikolai Tesla in The Prestige.

Quite apart from his amazing musical career, references permeated the culture I was inbterested in. Numerous jokes and references in The Venture Bros, leading up to him turning up as the leader of a super villain group (sadly not played by himself) with Iggy Pop as one of his sidekicks. Then there were the Metal Gear Solid games, with Major Tom being used as a codename in 3 and V hsving you leading the Diamond Dogs and featuring The Man Who Sold The World as a story theme and as the opening music, albeit the Midge Ure cover version to fit with the eighties setting.

I'd kept things together until I saw something that didn't have anything to do with Bowie, but us intensely music related. The comic Phonogram deals a lot with music and how it can change and influence peoples' lives and the current, final part of the trilogy has coveres inspired by eighties music videos ands the very final issue is out next week and the cover's inspired by the video for Peter Gabriel & Kate Bush's song £Don't HIve Up" which gets me emotional at the best of times, but seeing the image just tipped me over and I welled up quite a bit.

Because David Bowie never gave up, he kept changing, doing what he wanted and still releasing amazing work rught until the end. Blackstar came out on his Birthday last Friday and in hindsight, definitely feels like a final farewell to everyone.