David Bowie leaves a parting gift

David Bowie

STARMAN David Bowie has left the planet but his legacy continues with what his long-term producer Tony Visconti calls the star’s parting gift, Blackstar.

Bowie died on January 10 after living with cancer for 18 months. Released on Bowie’s 69th birthday just two days before he died, Blackstar is described by The New York Times as “at once emotive and cryptic, structured and spontaneous and above all, wilful”.

The goal was to avoid rock and roll, said Visconti.

While it was rare for Bowie to embrace clear meaning in his songs, track titles such as Lazarus and I Can’t Give Everything Away suggest he looked his own mortality in the eye.

“It’s a rich, deep and strange album that feels like Bowie moving restlessly forward, his eyes fixed ahead: the position in which he’s always made his greatest music,” says a review in The Guardian’s review.

Politicians, entertainers, actors and astronauts have posted tributes for the rock legend.

“Bowie WAS The Man Who Fell to Earth,” said Bette Midler.

“Curious, brilliant, enigmatic and sweet. We needed him and he appeared, changing our perceptions forever.”

Yoko Ono said she and John Lennon had very few friends so the couple felt Bowie was as close as family.

“Sweet memories will stay with us forever.”

“He has left us for another world, beyond the darkness of this present one vividly so depicted in the shadows of his last video,” said Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens).

“I truly pray he’s welcomed to the light by his Maker in that great today, which has no tomorrow.”

Even the German Foreign Office paid its respects.

“Good-bye, David Bowie. You are now among #Heroes. Thank you for helping to bring down the #wall.”