TRIBUTE DAVID BOWIE A hero, for ev


ALAN EDWARDS, OUTSIDE ORGANISATION FOUNDER AND PR TO DAVID BOWIE FOR 35 YEARS


For once it’s hard to know what to say. It’s been a very long and sad week and I still find it hard to believe it’s all happened. But as the week has gone on I’ve had so many amazing calls and


messages from people across the world sending their love and reminding me of times we’ve spent with David. There have been so many stories of the wonderful support and inspiration he gave to so many people, both individually and also collectively. David is, of course, a musical master who transformed the cultural landscape, but he was much, much more than that. The effect he had on everybody, from prime ministers to artists to the millions of fans, was incredible. When you reflect on the speed and the brilliance and the sheer unexpectedness of the musical changes he made, you realise that much overused word ‘genius’, really does apply to David Bowie. I’ve no doubt whatsoever that, if we had a time machine and went forward 500 years, there would be recitals of his music, clothes ranges inspired by him and constant re-issues of his songs. It is no way an overstatement to say he will be ranked up there with the most famous artists in the human race like Beethoven and Picasso. I remember seeing him as a school kid on the Ziggy


Stardust tour, with a couple of hundred people in an assembly room and marvelling at his performance. The room was so sparsely occupied that he got on Mick Ronson’s shoulders and, whilst Mick walked around the crowd, David sang. I could never imagine I would meet him, let alone work for him for 35 years. What an absolutely incredible privilege. It’s a privilege not just for me, but for all of us on the planet, to have had David in our lives.


DAVID BOWIE 1947-2016 THE MUSIC WEEK OBITUARY


T


hroughout his career, David Bowie seemed to be such an otherworldly figure that it was hard to imagine him being affected by something so ordinary, so human as illness or death.


So the news that broke first thing on January 11, via his official Facebook page, that he had died peacefully after a courageous 18-month battle with cancer, came as a truly seismic shock. The almost-unprecedented – at least for a rock star – outpouring of grief, issued from pop stars and prime ministers alike, marked the loss not just of an iconic


Last week, the world said goodbye to David Bowie. Now, in a four-page Music Week special, the Bowie as Ziggy Stardust


musician, but of someone so stitched into the fabric of British and worldwide culture that it’s still almost incomprehensible to imagine life without him. As the world continues to try and do just that, however, even the most cursory glance at Bowie’s career shows you a life’s work that puts all the usual clichés offered when a musician passes away into stark perspective.


The bald facts of his career are, of course, impressive. The 68 UK Top 75 solo singles, including five No.1s. The 60 solo Top 75 albums, including 10 No.1s – the 10th being this week’s chart-topping swansong, Blackstar. The 150 million-odd career album sales. The three BRITs, two Mercury Prize


nominations and two Grammys.


But Bowie’s true importance can’t be measured with barcodes or on sales charts. It can only be seen in his unsurpassed influence on the music that followed his; in the countless brilliant artists he inspired; in the way he helped changed attitudes to everything from image and how to make a pop video; to sexuality and gender; and in the way he dedicated himself to constant reinvention. His was a career spent in perpetual forward motion; even Blackstar, recorded during his illness, showcases an artist determined to push the envelope of his creativity. Born David Robert Jones on January 8, 1947 in Brixton, south London – where the Bowie mural


JANUARY 18


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MUSIC Week


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