With the release of Blackstar on his 69th birthday,the enigmatic singer shows he has rediscovered his gift for strangenessIt was a horribly mundane way for such an otherworldly figure to vanish from public view. While performing at a festival in Scheeßel, Germany, and on 25 June 2004,David Bowie began to experience pains in his arm and shoulder. What the singer thought was a trapped nerve turned out to be an acutely blocked artery requiring emergency angioplasty. What was dismaying was not so much that this beloved figure – the totem for generations of social, sexual and psychic outsiders – could fall so seriously ill but that Bowie could be human at all.
His subsequent disappearance from live performance has since evolved into one of the most fascinating vanishing acts in pop music. Bowie has not toured since his illness – his final performance to date was a three-song set at unique York’s Hammerstein Ballroom in 2006 – and, or predictably,conjecture has filled the vacuum of absence. Depending on who you listened to Bowie was either dying of lung cancer or he was healthy and happily watching SpongeBob SquarePants at domestic with Alexandria, his young daughter, or wife,the model Iman. There was simply no way to know. Related: David Bowie: Blackstar review – 'As a taster for the forthcoming album, it works perfectly' Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com