sat 14/12/2024

David Bowie

Albums of the Year: Blackstar - David Bowie

A year on, what can be said about Blackstar that hasn’t been said already? The answer is: what I have to say about it. That’s not to claim any special insights, it’s simply because the artist designed it that way. Even though Bowie said not a word...

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Lazarus, King's Cross Theatre

When David Bowie first met with the producer Robert Fox to discuss Lazarus back in 2013, you now have to wonder if he was seriously contemplating his own mortality. The clue, of course, lies in the title, and that of Bowie's extraordinary last album...

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Bowie/Collector, Sotheby's

David Bowie needs no introduction, yet he kept one aspect of his life largely hidden away: his art collecting. Now Sotheby’s, which is auctioning off around 400 items of his private art collection in a three-part sale on 10 and 11 November, is...

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Prom 19: David Bowie Prom

“I’m here, I’m here, I’m here,” sang John Cale in the droning voice of Major Tom. Whether the spirit of David Bowie was indeed hovering over the Albert Hall for this impromptu memorial late-night Prom is not easily answered. The shape-shifting Bowie...

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CD: Iggy Pop - Post Pop Depression

From the late Eighties to the early 2000s, Iggy Pop turned out a succession of sassy rock albums that ranged in quality but usually contained a greasy, dirt-ingrained gem or three. These albums appeared with a garage-punk lack of self-consciousness...

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When Bowie Came to Beckenham

This extract from Mary Finnigan’s book Psychedelic Suburbia describes events leading up to the creation of the Beckenham Arts Lab, during the early period after David moved into her flat in Foxgrove Road, Beckenham in April 1969. The book was...

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theartsdesk Radio Show: Bowie Tribute

That purveyor of everything from crazy cosmic jive and plastic soul to epic disco and elegant Berlin ambient gloom made a hell of an exit last week. His last release, his “parting gift” Blackstar, was a dazzling curtain bow unlike any other. He...

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When Bowie and Boyd hoaxed the art world

In 1994 the art magazine Modern Painters invited fresh blood onto its editorial board. The new intake included a novelist, William Boyd, and a rock star, David Bowie. "That’s how I got to know him," says Boyd. "We’d sit at the table with all these...

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David Bowie: Unforgettable and Unrepeatable

If each man's death diminishes us, we're all about a foot shorter today. When Elvis Presley died, his manager Colonel Tom Parker said "this won't change anything!", and he promptly set about ensuring his client's immortality by turning him into a...

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David Bowie, 1947-2016

He knew.18 months of dealing with cancer, and rather than withdraw and rest – as he'd done before – David Bowie knuckled down made a record as intense and disturbing as anything he's done before. The Next Day was a worthy return to the fray but...

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Disappears perform David Bowie's Low, 100 Club, London

The 100 Club is dark. Really dark. People are shrouded in the ink-light. I think it’s to save their embarrassment as they order a drink and realise they’ll have to either apply for a loan or sell a child in order to get drunk. In any case, the...

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The 11 Best Gigs on Film (after Stop Making Sense)

In the arts there is never a best of anything. There is good, great and glorious. But best? There is, however, Stop Making Sense. Talking Heads invited the director Jonathan Demme to film them in performance over three nights in December 1983 at...

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