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Ten Years Since Blackstar

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David Bowie would have been 79 years old today. What a remarkable life he led and what a fabulous career. He filled my life with curiosity and joy. He wasn’t just a singer, songwriter, saxophone, keyboard and guitar player and producer, he was also deeply entrenched in the visual arts and fashion, an innovator on the internet, a thespian and an icon. He was the definitive Rock Star. Blackstar remains a stunning final statement.

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  1. Well said.

    Ten years on, I still find myself occasionally thinking “What a shame Bowie isn’t here.”

    And what a legacy he left behind. I know “We won’t see his/her like again” is a cliché, but in Bowie’s case it’s true. Is there anybody in today’s music firmament who comes close to the Dame in terms of being such a cultural/artistic all-rounder?

    In the age of instant online fixes, likes, and trends, plus social media hatred, I’m not sure whether anybody will ever again be able to develop such a varied and interesting career: writing, making, producing, and performing music; creating and collecting art; acting (no, I don’t Oscar voters were ever waiting with bated breath for his next role, but he was good enough in his own style); and being a general bon viveur and raconteur. I can’t see anybody being given the time and support to build the sort of broad audience that helped keep DB in the public eye in such interesting ways.

  2. 2016 Was a terrible year, losing so many beloved talents. I think at the time I was hit more by Prince passing, but as the years have gone by, I miss Bowie more and more. Isn’t it strange to say you miss someone who you have never met? All his work is available to see and hear yet there is an undefinable something missing. Gary Oldman said “The world’s gone to shit since David’s gone” which is certainly food for thought.

    As for Blackstar, what a final act and gift. Listening to it in the few days between release and his last days, realizing that this was an exceptional piece of work, then transforming into a truly unique and beautiful piece of art on his passing, shows what a incredibly gifted artist he truly was. I Can’t Give Everything Away as the final track, sheer perfection.

  3. Your review was excellent and perceptive, it took me a few listens to appreciate it, was in the middle of that at the time and then ….. bang.

    Subsequently I rather overplayed it, might not be considered the best jogging music, but it’s 41 minute length was perfect for a 5K at the time (am faster than that now!) and long tracks help with running rhythm sometimes . Was probably my most played album of 2016 and 2017, find it harder to listen to now, possibly because of things that have happened in my life since.

    This is just devastating:

    • Wow that is some hardcore running music. I’m sadly predictable and the running playlist is my list of progressive house/trance classic mixes from mainly the late 90s and 00s. Re rhythm I’m aiming for that magic 158 bpm which is my average cadence. But squonky jazz rock.

  4. Bowie was as central in my musical life as (retrospectively) the Beatles (I ‘discovered’ them for myself in the early 70s). However, I have to rather shamefully admit that I wasn’t enamoured of anything much that he made after Scary Monsters and up to Blackstar (which is powerful and quite proggy- that Peter Hammill influence finally coming to the fore but an album tainted with so much sadness at his loss that I can’t bear to put it on the turntable). I think that he was always interesting as a cultural figure and that I admired his continual urge to experiment (and I still loyally bought the albums) but, for me anyway, he largely forgot how to write decent tunes and those post Scary albums, to this day, remain largely unplayed and unvisited. There were one or two good moments along the way obviously (he was Bowie after all) but it would be a brave soul indeed who would argue that his later records deserved to be mentioned in the same swooning breath as those he made from 1969 through to 1980. But, as I say, he was David Bowie. And we were most decidedly not.

    • Most people regard his imperial phase as up to Scary Monsters. In the eighties, he made his money, having been ripped off by previous management. By Black Tie White Noise, he was in his mid forties and no longer a trend setter for the youth, but a mature middle aged man. That album was a celebration of his wedding a reflection on his life. He stopped adopting different personas.

      The albums after are packed with great tunes. Some are more experimental than others. Some work better than others. This is true of his imperial phase, too. I regard Hours as one his most personal, Heathen as a classic and Buddha Of Suburbia as an engrossing left field odd ball. The only post 1990 album I revisit infrequently is Earthling.

      He did great work at every stage of his life, better than I dared to expect.

      • Possibly. Although his hit rate in the 70s in terms of great tunes across albums was infinitely higher. There are no bad tunes (I would argue) on The Man Who Sold the World, Hunky Dory, Ziggy (apart from that weird cover- which doesn’t count!), Aladdin Sane, Low, Station to Station, Heroes or side one of Diamond Dogs (which dies on side two) and, of course, Scay Monsters. Okay, I’ll give you the patchy Young Americans and Lodger. But compared to what he produced after that I’d say it was pretty consistent and untouchable. But, as you say, he got rich and happy. And happiness, as we know, has an annoying tendency to write white.

      • Adding to your post Black Tie, White Noise summary (Heathen is indeed a diamond in the rough), I would add The Next Day getting a few enjoyable listens
        (and I still maintain Tin Machine is better than critical credit suggests)

        • I was excited by The Next Day for a few weeks but then it never got played again. I was similarly semi-excited by Heathen. But only for a few days in that instance. I suppose, crucially, it’s mainly to do with not being thirteen anymore and being thrilled by the sight of a pretty bloke in tights pointing at you on Top of the Pops whilst draping a casual arm over his guitarist. Pop becomes less interesting as we get older. It becomes just music as we become wiser. And wisdom is nowhere near as exhilarating as the possibility of some sort of vague danger. (See also Sex Pistols.)

      • I thought hours was very flat. Heathen was really good, I enjoyed Black Tie, White Noise, but to be honest never really came to terms with Outside (I still try occasionally). Reality was a step down from Heathen and The Next Day had some wonderful moments, but was a bit of a mess. Same for the earlier Earthling. I quite like Buddha, but I consider it a minor work. Blackstar surpassed all of these albums for me.

  5. I’m not one for missing people I’ve never met, but can’t think that Bowie is the exception. Even with Prince I don’t feel that there was an era of unrealised great music. With Bowie definitely a possibility.

  6. Bowie was an enthusiastic cultural curator who opened us up to all sorts of artistic possibilities; his curiosity allowed those of us not from homes with significant cultural capital, to look to where he was pointing, and not think we were up ourselves or betraying some kind of self-defeating class tribalism. To like Bowie was to be permitted to like anything – intelligently. That’s a good lesson. He encouraged openness, and was one of the few artists to unite tribes. Many of us were improved because of his influence. There are few pop artists who can really do that.

    I personally think his creative work had been done by “Scary Monsters”, but I’m glad he had his 80s, and also had his later artistic friction to restart his mojo; I don’t think he would have wanted it any other way. Better to be a struggling artist with ideas, than a complacent one doing the same old, same old. He’d had the fame and wealth, drug Hell, etc, and could go back to the drawing board without worrying he’d not drunk from those cups.

  7. What really irritates me (with all due respect to @eddie-g) is the number of people who have said, and continue to say, that they can’t bear to listen to Blackstar, and/or have never played it. Of course everyone has the right to do whatever they want, but to me it’s kind of insulting to Bowie and his artistry. He might well have considered it to be his farewell statement – although there is plenty of evidence that he had more ideas on the go – but he certainly wouldn’t have known that he would die two days after its release. He created the album with all the powers left to him, was rightly proud of such an outstanding piece of work, and obviously wanted to share it with the world. Had he died weeks or months later, all those people would definitely have listened to and absorbed it. I think he’d be horrified that people still haven’t played it. For me, I think those people are being performative in their ‘grief’, implying that their loss is somehow deeper than that of other fans, as signalled by this conscious omission. Is their sadness really greater than that of Tony Visconti, who was integral to the creation of the album and who described it as Bowie’s ‘final parting gift’? Or that of Iman and Lexi, who I can guarantee have listened many times to the album?
    So, my advice: he wanted you to listen to it, so get over yourselves and do so. Sure, it’ll be heartbreaking in parts, but it’s also thrilling and joyful. Experiencing these emotions in the way he intended is ultimately cathartic.

    • Grief is not a competition. I was genuinely upset by Bowie’s sudden and unexpected death. He meant so much to me as I was growing up although, as I admit, less so as I grew older but that’s to do with the latent potency of pop music and the adolescent brain more than with Bowie himself. But hey, sorry if my continued inability to play Blackstar ‘irritated’ you…

      • So you were genuinely upset – weren’t we all? I have personally retained my ‘adolescent’ admiration and passion for the man way up to and beyond his death, not just up to 1980, so I don’t think mine or any other fan’s sense of grief or loss would be any less genuine than yours. And even if that was the case back then, which I can understand to an extent, why do people make it so very clear that they still can’t possibly play the album all these years later? Like I said, I think it’s performative. What’s the worst that can happen if you did listen? You’d probably be quite upset and no doubt very moved. That’s how you felt at his death, so nothing of any greater import is going to happen to you now. One of the essential functions of music is to move and console the listener.
        Sorry if you’re offended by my genuine irritation.

  8. My first thought was – my God, ten years – really? Where the fuck did those 520 Mondays go?

    Coming down in the morning to hear the news, and everyone discussing it all day at work is still as memorable to me as that dreadful day Lennon died.

    There was much discussion in the following months I recall about whether Blackstar was really that great or was it just the circumstances that made everyone think it was. Oh, it was. It absolutely was and is. It was the Afterword’s best album so far of the 21st century when we had a poll a few years ago and I suspect it still would be.

  9. It would have been a masterful collection of songs even had he lived to make more music. I understand it was made in the knowledge that he was seriously ill and might not live to make another record, but it wasn’t until November 2015, by which time it had been recorded, he was told his condition was terminal.

    So, the album wasn’t fully intended as a swan song, neither was it made by a healthy man with no thoughts of impending (im)mortality. And it’s still magnificent. The title track alone, with that eerie, revelatory shift in the middle, Sue’s bone-chilling noir, Lazarus’s anguished climax, the wistful Dollar Days, the valedictory I Can’t Give Everything Away etc etc – it’s built along similar lines to Station to Station, and with similar focus and full tilt commitment.

    I’ve been organising an event at The British Library on the 17th, a day of talks and music to commemorate not only Blackstar but Bowie’s own relationships with ‘time’, something that seemed to pop up er, time and again throughout his career. We will have a ‘Blackstar’ panel, with Donny McCaslin, Jonathan Barnbrook and Leah Kardos which should be really interesting. And Tony Visconti will be coming to talk to Nicholas Pegg and will no doubt, be reflecting on his part in the album’s creation and legacy. Getting this event together, it’s become clear so many people, from those that worked with him to besotted fans are still very much in thrall to this strange beautiful brilliant record and want to talk about it!

  10. I think of Bowie as a great hitmaker, one of the best. That’s a measure of him as an act for me. He has more to offer in the 80s than in any period after in that respect. After that great singles are harder to find.

      • Jump They Say, The Buddha Of Suburbia, The Hearts Filthy Lesson, Strangers When We Meet, Little Wonder, I’m Afraid Of Americans, I Can’t Read, Thursday’s Child, Seven, Slow Burn, Everyone Says “Hi”, Never Get Old, Where Are We Now?, The Stars Are Out (Tonight), Blackstar, Lazarus, I Can’t Give Everything Away are all excellent in my view.

            • A curious choice for a single yes. But sometimes, as in the case of the equally strange case of Bohemian Rhapsody, it kinda worked out against all odds. I was always intrigued by the song’s origins as a kind of sulky response by Bowie to the fact that his translation of My Way was rejected. Turns out that the Dame’s effort was massively superior in the long run. Although funeral directors and certain guests on Desert Island Discs might disagree…

  12. It’s a game of two halves. I play side one a lot (the raspy breathing at the start of Tis a Pity.. is one of his great moments, letting you know you’re in for a thrill ride). Side two makes me sad so I don’t listen to it.

    But what a way to go out.

  13. I pre-ordered the limted edition clear vinyl of Blackstar and as it arrived after his passing I have never opened it but then bought the standard issue to listen to. These first clear editions are of course pretty scarce now and originally came with exclusive lithographs.

    • I’m not really a fan of Eamonn Forde’s overtly quantitative analytical style…it seems to suck the joy out of any consideration of the music. I felt the same when he was a major Friend Of The Word.
      In the end, does it matter if younger and future generations are not affected by Bowie’s legacy, or that of any of his contemporaries or forebears for that matter? The important thing is that the generations who lived alongside these artists have had, and continue to have, untold joy from listening to them and seeing them perform. They will pass away, as will those close to them, as will we. The music will still be around in some form for those who are curious, but it will cease to matter in the grand scheme of things.

    • As ever that which is most popular is not necessarily the best. I think Bowie retains his reputation for his music as art, with documentaries and books about his oeuvre. He endures there. His records are not instant mass singalongs like Queen. They are a bit strange and limited in appeal often despite the ‘hits’. He is not a corporation, his music can be odd but brilliant. He represents what is a bit outsider and that’s a big part of the appeal.

  15. I just listened to the whole album, I don’t think I’ve listened to it since it was released. I have been reminded on FB that I said it was brilliant and then the next day how devastated I was at the news – which I got from Twitter (as it was back then, and to which I subscribed – since X no longer just btw) from his son who said something like “it’s all true”.

    Anyway it is an extraordinary album. How he got that together given he was so unwell is amazing. The band is really really good

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