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Ziggy Stardust, The Thin White Duke, Aladdin Sane, The Goblin King – David Bowie was a man of many faces.  Yet ultimately his most haunting performance may have been as himself.  Late 2015 was a period of remarkable and ever-innovative artistry for a man who released his first single in 1964.  He revisited his film performance in The Man Who Fell to Earth by writing an off-Broadway musical, depicting its central character, the alien Newton (portrayed onstage by Michael C. Hall), as trapped in his life and hoping for the final escape of death.  Joining Lazarus was the announcement of his 25th solo album, Blackstar, which featured the musical’s title song with its first line, “Look up here, I’m in Heaven…” and its concluding cry of release, “Oh, I’ll be free/Just like that bluebird/Oh, I’ll be free/Ain’t that just like me…”

We just never thought we would be looking up there so soon.  David Bowie got his freedom from an eighteen-month cancer battle late last evening, January 10, having left his fans a series of remarkable, harrowing, beautifully chilling parting gifts.  (If you haven’t seen the music video to “Lazarus,” prepare for the tears to flow.)  David Bowie died the same way he lived: uncompromisingly, with style, intelligence, grace, grit and a remarkable gift of charisma and communication that allowed him to fearlessly break down barriers of sexuality, fashion, and art.

The music of David Bowie has long been a touchstone for The Second Disc, as it has for his fans around the world.  My very first published post here, on April 3, 2010, was a review of that year’s Deluxe Edition of his quirky, formative 1967 Deram Records solo album.  That came in the midst of his retirement following 2004’s album Reality and its subsequent tour which I count myself so very lucky to have seen.  On May 13, 2004 at the Star Pavilion at Hersheypark Stadium, Bowie seemed to be singing directly to my friend and I in our eighth-row seats over the course of a crackling setlist that opened with “Rebel Rebel” and ended with “Ziggy Stardust,” along the way taking in “The Man Who Sold the World,” “Let’s Dance” and “Heroes,” not to mention tributes to The Velvet Underground (“White Light/White Heat”) and The Pixies (“Cactus”) and reminders of his famous collaborations (“All the Young Dudes,” “China Girl,” “Under Pressure”).  For a long while it seemed as if Reality marked the end of David Bowie, recording artist – but  who could have been truly disappointed when he had already given us so much by that point?

And then, The Next Day arrived in 2013 and Bowie was back.  But it wasn’t as if he had never left.  The Next Day was of the moment, not the work of a veteran artist trying to revisit past glories.  “Where Are They Now” was, indeed, a gorgeously elegiac rumination of days gone by, but it was also the calm before the storm.  The album found Bowie as electrifying and thrillingly relevant as ever.  Even as he underscored the past as a conduit to understand the present, name-checking artists from Vladimir Nabokov to Joan Baez, he took on current themes of violence, war, even celebrity culture.  Time, and retirement, hadn’t mellowed David Bowie.

Today, we mourn the loss of an influential artist who redefined what it meant to be a “rock star,” and what one looked like.  The music of David Bowie represented freedom from convention, freedom to be oneself, and freedom to defy expectations – whether the song was passionately sensual, deliciously raunchy, or chillingly distant.  Though 69 years was far too little a time for him to walk this earth, David Bowie did it all.  His music and art will inspire and resonate the next day, and the next, and another day.