Rock legend David Bowie dies at 69

One of the most influence musical artistes of his generation, Bowie is known for his camelion-like qualities

David Bowie, the infinitely changeable, fiercely forward-looking songwriter who taught generations of musicians about the power of drama, images and personas, died on Sunday, two days after his 69th birthday.

Bowie’s death was confirmed by his publicist, Steve Martin, on Monday morning. He died after having cancer for 18 months, according to a statement on Bowie’s social-media accounts. “David Bowie died peacefully today surrounded by his family,” a post on his Facebook page read.

His last album, Blackstar, a collaboration with a jazz quartet that was typically enigmatic and exploratory, was released on Friday — on his birthday. He was to be honored with a concert at Carnegie Hall on March 31 featuring the Roots, Cyndi Lauper and the Mountain Goats. He had also collaborated on an Off Broadway musical, Lazarus, that was a surreal sequel to his definitive 1976 film role, The Man Who Fell to Earth. Bowie wrote songs, above all, about being an outsider: an alien, a misfit, a sexual adventurer, a faraway astronaut. His music was always a mutable blend: rock, cabaret, jazz and what he called “plastic soul,” but it was suffused with genuine soul. He also captured the drama and longing of everyday life, enough to give him No 1 pop hits like Let’s Dance.

Bowie earned admiration and emulation across the musical spectrum — from rockers, balladeers, punks, hip-hop acts, creators of pop spectacles and even classical composers like Philip Glass, who based two symphonies on Bowie’s albums Low and Heroes. Bowie’s constantly morphing persona was a touchstone for performers like Madonna and Lady Gaga; yet throughout Bowie’s metamorphoses, he was always recognizable. His voice was widely imitated but always his own; his message was that there was always empathy beyond difference.



Bowie was a person of relentless reinvention. He emerged in the late 1960s with the voice of a rock belter but with the sensibility of a cabaret singer, steeped in the dynamics of stage musicals.

He was Major Tom, the lost astronaut in his career-making 1969 hit “Space Oddity.” He was Ziggy Stardust, the otherworldly pop star at the center of his 1972 album “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.” He was the self-destructive Thin White Duke and the minimalist but heartfelt voice of the three albums he recorded in Berlin in the ’70s.

The arrival of MTV in the 1980s was the perfect complement to Mr. Bowie’s sense of theatricality and fashion. “Ashes to Ashes,” the “Space Oddity” sequel that revealed “we know Major Tom’s a junkie,” and “Let’s Dance,” which offered, “Put on your red shoes and dance the blues,” gave him worldwide popularity.

Bowie was his generation’s standard-bearer for rock as theater: something constructed and inflated yet sincere in its artifice, saying more than naturalism could. With a voice that dipped down to baritone and leapt into falsetto, he was complexly androgynous, an explorer of human impulses that could not be quantified. He also pushed the limits of “Fashion” and “Fame,” writing songs with those titles and also thinking deeply about the possibilities and strictures of pop renown.

A REVOLUTIONARY STAR

Music legend David Bowie, who died on Monday at 69 after battling with cancer for 18 months, was a successful entrepreneur, too. Here are four unconventional things the music star is known to have done as a businessman:

 
1) Entering the market

In 1997, Bowie pioneered a new investment vehicle — celebrity bonds — when he created Bowie Bonds. Bowie, along with David Pullman, came up with asset-backed securities of current and future revenues of his catalogue of songs and albums. According to Forbes, the collection was worth $55 million and investors received interest at the rate of 7.9 per cent in instances like Microsoft purchasing Bowie’s music for its advertisements. The bonds expired in 2007.
 
2) Banking on celebrity

In 1999, Bowie opened an online bank. According to mtv.com, the bank — Bowiebanc.com — gave its depositors ATM cards, cheques and other banking paraphernalia emblazoned with Bowie’s name and image.

 
3) Riding radio waves

Bowie also launched his own radio station in 1999. The station — the David Bowie Radio Network — was launched on the Rolling Stone Radio website. The station runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
 
4) On the information highway

Bowie set up his own internet service provider — Bowie.net — in 1998. Bowie.net later went on to transform into davidbowie.com.
  Compiled by Bhaswar Kumar