(Image by Masashi Kuwamoto, 1980)
#BowieForever
BOWIE’S CHILDHOOD HOME TO OPEN TO PUBLIC
“You were a talented child, You came to live in our town...”
David Bowie’s childhood home at 4 Plaistow Grove in Bromley, South London will be restored and opened to the public in late 2027.
The terraced house will be used for creative and skills workshops for young people, who will hopefully soak up some of the inspiration that served Bowie from ages 8 to 20 (1955–1967).
Keep reading for the full press release and go here for more information and to watch a video regarding the project:
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The house where David Jones became David Bowie.
Heritage of London Trust has today announced the landmark acquisition of the family home of David Robert Jones - the modest south London terrace where the boy became David Bowie. Located at 4 Plaistow Grove in Bromley, the property served as Bowie’s creative sanctuary from ages 8 to 20 (1955–1967). The property marks the site where Bowie’s musical journey began; it was here that he wrote his formative songs and regularly returned in the following years, as he wrote his breakthrough smash hit Space Oddity, which rocketed him to pop fame.
The heritage project, due for completion in late 2027, will restore the "two up, two down" railway workers’ cottage to its original early 1960s appearance. Working alongside curator Geoffrey Marsh (co-curator of the Victoria and Albert museum’s David Bowie Is exhibition - the definitive Bowie exhibition which was displayed globally) and utilising a never-before-seen archive, the restoration will recreate the interior layout exactly as it was when Bowie’s father commuted to work at charity Dr Barnado’s and his mother worked as a waitress. This immersive experience will center on Bowie’s 9 ft x 10 ft bedroom - the specific site where his "trailblazing spirit" was forged.
The project transcends simple bricks and mortar; it is a living continuation of Bowie’s legacy of "free creative experimentation." Inspired by his 1969 Beckenham Arts Lab, which offered opportunities "for everybody," the site will host creative and skills workshops for young people. Through the Trust’s Proud Places and Proud Prospects programmes, the house will act as a "solid foundation for the next generation," teaching confidence and communication skills in the arts. A major £500,000 grant from the Jones Day Foundation, a charitable foundation funded by attorneys and staff of the Jones Day law firm, has already been secured to anchor the restoration, with a public fundraising campaign launching this month.
The house is near the Edwardian ‘Bowie bandstand’ – where the young musician performed in 1969 – which was restored by Bromley Council and Heritage of London Trust in 2024.
Geoffrey Marsh said: “It was in this small house, particularly in his tiny bedroom, that Bowie evolved from an ordinary suburban schoolboy to the beginnings of an extraordinary international stardom – as he said ‘I spent so much time in my bedroom. It really was my entire world. I had books up there, my music up there, my record player. Going from my world upstairs out onto the street, I had to pass through this no-man's-land of the living room.’”
Dr Nicola Stacey, Director of Heritage of London Trust, said: “David Bowie was a proud Londoner. Even though his career took him all over the world, he always remembered where he came from and the community that supported him as he grew up. It’s wonderful to have this opportunity to tell his story and inspire a new generation of young people and it’s really important for the heritage of London to preserve this site. We are thrilled to have already secured a major grant of £500,000 from the Jones Day Foundation towards the project, and hope that people everywhere will want to be involved.”
George Underwood, artist, musician and David Bowie's lifelong friend, said: “We spent so much time together, listening to and playing music. I’ve heard a lot of people say David’s music saved them or changed their life. It’s amazing that he could do that and even more amazing that it all started here, from such small beginnings, in this house. We were dreamers, and look what he became.”
Caitlin Moran, journalist, broadcaster and author said: "The most exciting place for any fan to visit is their hero's teenage bedroom - because that's the cocoon where they built themselves. All the world-changing started there. The chance for us all to walk through a newly-opened door, and see the suburban launch-pad from which David Bowie almost literally took off into space is beyond thrilling."
Greg Harris, President of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame & Museum said: “David Bowie is one of the most significant artists of all time and 2026 is the 30th anniversary of his induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, music's highest honor. Thank you to the Heritage of London Trust and the Jones Day Foundation for supporting the restoration of his childhood home in London – once completed it will provide context for the genesis of Bowie’s creativity and vision and inspire new generations to follow their dreams."
Chris Kelly, President of the Jones Day Foundation said: “ For the last five years, the Jones Day Foundation has been thrilled to support Heritage of London Trust’s Proud Places program, which has involved over 10,000 young Londoners in their local heritage and inspired in them pride in their history and surroundings. The Bowie House project is special because it combines music and heritage in London and will help to preserve the legacy of one of the legends of rock and roll. The Foundation has also been a supporter of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for decades now. We are looking forward to exploring ways we can assist these two wonderful organisations to work in partnership together."
Fundraising for the project will begin in January 2026 and the project is planned to open at the end of 2027.
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📸 David Bowie Estate
#BowiesHouse #BowieInBromley #HeritageOfLondonTrust
★ ALBUM IS TEN YEARS OLD
“We were born upside-down...”
Ten years ago today on 8th January 2016, David Bowie released his 28th studio album ★ (Blackstar) on his 69th birthday.
Today would have been his 79th birthday.
Here follows the text from the post we made back then, which was accompanied by another Jimmy King image from the same session as the one we’ve used today.
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAVID BOWIE AND ★
“That’s the message that I sent...”
Why is this man so happy? Is it because it‘s his 69th birthday or that he has released his 28th studio album today and it’s a corker?
Who knows, but we’re sure you’ll want to join us in congratulating him on both.
Many happy returns of the day to David Bowie and ★
(Fashion fans may like to note that our man is wearing Thom Browne)
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📸 Jimmy King
#BowieBlackstar #BowieBlackstarAlbum
LAZARUS VIDEO IS TEN YEARS OLD
“Everybody knows me now...”
Following the release of the digital single on 18th December 2015 and an exclusive Christmas Day teaser of a Jimmy King still from the set of Lazarus, the Johan Renck-directed video became available ten years ago today on 7th January 2016, the day before the release of Bowie’s 28th album ★ (Blackstar).
Renck, who also directed the 10-minute short film for the album’s title track, commented on the experience of visually interpreting that song and Lazarus:
“One could only dream about collaborating with a mind like that; let alone twice. Intuitive, playful, mysterious and profound... I have no desire to do any more videos knowing the process never ever gets as formidable and fulfilling as this was. I’ve basically touched the sun.”
Watch Lazarus here.
📸 Jimmy King
#BowieBlackstar #LazarusBowie #LazarusSingle #LazarusVideo
‘HEROES’ - THE FINAL SONG IN THE SERIES FINALE OF NETFLIX’S STRANGER THINGS
DAVID BOWIE ‘HEROES’ - THE POWERFUL & EVOCATIVE FINAL SONG IN THE SERIES FINALE OF NETFLIX’S STRANGER THINGS
‘HEROES’ IS AVAILABLE TO STREAM NOW ON PARLOPHONE
WATCH THE HD REMASTERED 'HEROES' VIDEO
New Year’s Day saw the broadcast on Netflix of the final episode of the phenomenally successful and critically lauded Stranger Things. Ten years in the making, the final song of the entire series is ‘Heroes’ by David Bowie, one of music’s boldest innovators and most enduring visionaries.
After the final scene of Series 5 Episode 8 plays, the show doesn’t jump to its typical credits sequence. Instead, it rolls into a nostalgic animated end-credits segment and lets Bowie’s “Heroes” play all the way through.
The decision to end the show with the iconic track was suggested by actor Joe Keery, who plays Steve Harrington on the show and records music under the name Djo. Speaking to Netflix Tudum, the show’s co-creator Ross Duffer says, “Once Joe said that, we immediately knew that was the right song to end the show on because it is, in some ways, an anthem for Stranger Things. To use the original Bowie version just felt right and fitting for the conclusion.”
Initially released in September 1977, ‘Heroes’ is the title track of the second instalment of Bowie’s hugely influential ‘Berlin Trilogy’ of albums produced by Bowie and Tony Visconti and featuring Brian Eno. Recorded at Hansa Studios in West Berlin, which was situated only 150 metres away from the Berlin Wall and co-written with Eno, the song references the East German soldiers that could be seen from the studio’s control room and a love affair between a couple kissing in the shadow of the Wall.
The song, which has become an iconic anthem, was recorded by Bowie in English, German and French and has been covered by artists such as Oasis, Prince, Coldplay, Yungblud, Lady Gaga, Arcade Fire, Smashing Pumpkins, Depeche Mode, Blondie, Neil Finn, Peter Gabriel, King Crimson, Bon Jovi, Motorhead, Miley Cyrus, Aurora, Moby, David Byrne & St Vincent and The Wallflowers, who took it into the US top 10.
A decade after the 1977 release of ‘Heroes’, Bowie brought his Glass Spider Tour to Berlin during the Summer of 1987. He performed as part of a series of shows at the Reichstag, a poignant symbol of the divided city just metres away from the Wall. The concert was held near the border, where many East Berliners crowded along to listen to music forbidden by the Soviet government, allowing the two halves of the city to hear the same show, with ‘Heroes’ as the emotional highlight for both sides.
Bowie later remarked, “We kind of heard that a few of the East Berliners might actually get the chance to hear the thing, but we didn’t realise in what numbers they would. And there were thousands on the other side that had come close to the wall. So it was like a double concert where the wall was the division. And we would hear them cheering and singing along from the other side. God, even now I get choked up. It was breaking my heart. I’d never done anything like that in my life, and I guess I never will again.”
During the shows, the East German authorities cracked down on the fans, attacking them with water cannons and arresting hundreds. The shows helped change the mood around the Wall, which had stood for over a quarter of a century, and was now seen with renewed anger. Within two years, the Wall came down, and it has long been believed that the Concerts For Berlin were a turning point in the East. When Bowie died in 2016, the German Foreign Office confirmed as much by posting a live version of ‘Heroes’ on social media and declaring, ‘Good-bye David Bowie. You are now among #Heroes. Thank you for helping bring down the #wall’
#StrangerThings #BowieHeroes
DAVID AND IMAN IN HOLLYWOOD
Among the most popular images we’ve posted on socials in 2025 are photographs of David and Iman. So, it seemed appropriate to close the year with one here.
This shot was taken by Jim Smeal and here’s the caption that accompanied it back in 1992...
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JANUARY 12, 1992:
The National Academy of Cable Programming hosted the 13th Annual ACE Awards during a live televised ceremony from the Pantages Theater in Hollywood, Ca. Awards for excellence were presented in multiple categories.
One of the special celebrity presenters was model/actress IMAN who attended with her fiancé, rock superstar DAVID BOWIE. The duo are set to wed in June.
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Thanks again for your support throughout 2025, it’s hugely appreciated. Here’s to a great 2026.
📸 Jim Smeal
#DavidAndIman #EternalLove
A SEASONAL MESSAGE TO YOU
This year we’ve lifted a message from an old card sent by David to friends and family...
WISHING YOU
THE JOYS OF
THE HOLIDAY SEASON
AND PEACE IN
THE NEW YEAR
DAVID BOWIE
We’ve accompanied it with a shot of David looking particularly joyful in February 1997, when he received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard.
Thanks for all your support throughout 2025 with much love from all of us here at David Bowie HQ.
📸 Jim Smeal
#Bowie2025 #BowieForever
LAZARUS DIGITAL SINGLE RELEASED GLOBALLY TEN YEARS AGO TODAY
“Ain’t that just like me...”
Following the UK premiere of David Bowie’s Lazarus single on BBC Radio 6 Music’s Steve Lamacq show on 17th December 2015, Lazarus was released worldwide as a digital single the following day on the 18th.
No images from the video were available at this point, as that wasn’t released until the following month.
📸 by Jimmy King
#LazarusSingle #LazarusBowie #BowieBlackstar
LAZARUS OPENED TEN YEARS AGO TODAY
“By the time I got to New York...”
LAZARUS by DAVID BOWIE & ENDA WALSH
Directed by IVO VAN HOVE
Inspired by the novel The Man Who Fell to Earth by WALTER TEVIS
Following nearly three weeks of previews, public performances of Lazarus began ten years ago this evening at the New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW).
David Bowie attended the opening night, and it was to be his final public appearance.
See the official Bowie socials (FB, IG, X) for a random selection of pictures, including photos from rehearsals, the opening night, and images we used at the time for the build-up and reviews.
Image of Bowie at Lazarus rehearsal taken by Jan Versweyveld.
#Lazarus #Lazarus10 #LazarusNYTW #TJNewton #TMWFTE
STATION TO STATION 50TH ANNIVERSARY VINYL DUE JANUARY
“The return of the thin white duke...”
DAVID BOWIE ’STATION TO STATION’ 50th ANNIVERSARY HALF-SPEED MASTERED LP 50th ANNIVERSARY PICTURE DISC LP WITH POSTER
LIMITED EDITION RELEASES AVAILABLE 23rd JANUARY 2026 ON PARLOPHONE - Pre Order here.
23rd January 2026 marks the 50th anniversary of the release of David Bowie’s tenth studio album, STATION TO STATION.
On the exact day of its Golden Jubilee, STATION TO STATION will be issued as a limited edition 50th anniversary half-speed mastered LP and a picture disc LP pressed from the same master with a reproduction of a poster used to advertise the album 50 years ago.
The album saw Bowie relocate to Cherokee Studio in Los Angeles and incorporate elements of his 'Plastic Soul’ period, coupled with much more experimental elements, which would become more prevalent over his next couple of albums. The first single from the album GOLDEN YEARS, released in November 1975, would give Bowie a top ten single on both sides of the Atlantic. The second single, TVC 15, would, a decade later, be heard and seen by almost 2 billion people when Bowie chose it to open his set at Live Aid.
The sound of STATION TO STATION was partly influenced by Bowie’s burgeoning interest in the electronic music and driving rhythms of bands coming out of Germany, such as NEU! and Kraftwerk, most notably on the ten-minute title track, while still embracing dancefloor-friendly grooves in songs such as STAY and GOLDEN YEARS.
Harry Maslin, who had worked with Bowie on some of the tracks on his previous album, YOUNG AMERICANS, was chosen as Bowie’s co-producer. They entered the studio in September 1975 with a tight stripped-down band featuring Carlos Alomar & Earl Slick on guitars, George Murray on bass, Dennis Davis on drums, David’s Childhood friend Geoff MacCormack (under the nom de plume Warren Peace) on backing vocals and on loan from Bruce Springsteen’s E-Street Band, Roy Bittan on piano and organ. Maslin has since said that the vocals on the standout track WILD IS THE WIND and GOLDEN YEARS were both Bowie’s first takes.
Ten days after the album’s release, David started the ISOLAR TOUR, which visited over 65 dates in 11 countries and is cited as being hugely influential for its use of banks of fluorescent white light set against black backdrops. At the end of the tour, Bowie started work on Iggy Pop’s debut solo album, The Idiot, when the pair and producer Tony Visconti moved to Berlin to mix the record. David settled there, ready to begin his next groundbreaking musical adventure.
This new pressing of STATION TO STATION was cut on a customised late Neumann VMS80 lathe with fully recapped electronics from 192kHz restored masters of the original Record Plant master tapes, with no additional processing on transfer. The half-speed was cut by John Webber at AIR Studios.
DAVID BOWIE - STATION TO STATION - TRACKLISTING
SIDE ONE
Station To Station
Golden Years
Word On A Wing
SIDE TWO
TVC 15
Stay
Wild Is The Wind
#StationToStation50
★ BLACKSTAR SINGLE IS 10
“In the centre of it all, Your eyes...”
Ten years ago today, following the video premiere the day before, the ★ Blackstar digital single was released.
Jason Draper has written an in-depth piece regarding the recording and release of the track: ★ (‘Blackstar’): Behind The Cryptic Song That Announced Bowie’s Stellar Final Phase
As usual with Jason’s work, it’s a very well researched piece, keep reading for the full thing.
Watch Johan Renck’s remarkable video here:
#BowieBlackstar #Blackstar10thAnniversary
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★ (‘Blackstar’): Behind The Cryptic Song That Announced Bowie’s Stellar Final Phase
The title track to David Bowie’s final album, ★ (‘Blackstar’) demanded attention yet evaded all attempts at scrutiny…
By Jason Draper
When ★ (pronounced “Blackstar”) lit up an otherwise uneventful autumn day in 2015, it served notice of another bold new direction for David Bowie. Running just shy of ten minutes, it was Bowie’s second-longest song, after ‘Station To Station’, and it contained more than enough invention to tide fans over until the release of its parent album, scheduled to hit the shelves a little under two months later. Also picked as the opening song and title track of what would become Bowie’s final record, ★ shouldered a great responsibility – one which Bowie knew it could carry with ease.
“The one thing I think is important is to not go into any second guessing or analysing what these images mean, because they’re between you and me,” Bowie told Johan Renck, the director of the ★ video. “People are going to go head over heels to try to break it down and figure it down across the spectrum, and there’s no point in even engaging that.”
And yet, in wrapping knowing references to his past within a jazz-infused sound that found him exploring new territory, Bowie all but challenged fans to seek meaning in the song. “You make of it whatever the fuck you want,” Renck told CBC Music. “I’m not going to push any of my ideas onto you.”
The recording: “It might even have been the first take”
The ★ album sessions had been underway for two months before Bowie tackled the record’s title track. Working incognito at New York City’s The Magic Shop studio with saxophonist Donny McCaslin and his acclaimed jazz ensemble, which included keyboardist Jason Lindner, bassist Tim Lefebvre and drummer Mark Guiliana, plus auxiliary guitarist Ben Monder, Bowie and his longtime producer Tony Visconti laid down the song’s backing track in a single day, 20 March 2015.
“We recorded it pretty quickly – it might even have been the first take,” McCaslin told this author, in an interview for ‘Record Collector Presents: Bowie: Blackstar: 1981-2016’. Having received Bowie’s home demo recordings in advance, the musicians arrived at the studio prepared to lay down a song that featured two disparate sections: one characterised by propulsive drumming and funereal saxophone, the other by elegiac synths and spectral guitar. They were also ready to meet the challenge of connecting the two by coming up with an experimental segue that Bowie trusted them to devise on the spot.
“We had all learned our parts,” McCaslin confirmed in his ‘Record Collector’ interview. “We’d gotten together and rehearsed once, and we all knew what we were going to do.” Indeed, when it came to the improvised passage, the group members were so in tune with each other that they nailed it in one take.
“I would describe the band at that time as exploring the intersection between improvisation, drum’n’bass and ambient electronica music as we understand it,” McCaslin said. “And that last [session], in March, was when Ben came in. He was killing it, adding that atmospheric stuff in the middle.”
“Somehow we did that dissolution perfectly on the first attempt, and that’s what you’re hearing on the album – no punching-in or anything,” Monder told ‘Premier Guitar’. “We did the middle section separately, but the way it all dissolves into it was totally improvised.”
With overdubs – including strings, guitar and McCaslin’s flute parts – being added at a later date, and Bowie recording his vocals at Human Worldwide Studios across a handful of days in April and May, the song had a depth and scope that demanded careful attention at the mixing stage. Impressed by the work of engineer Tom Elmhirst, who’d mixed Kendrick Lamar’s similarly dense and expansive ‘To Pimp A Butterfly’ album, Bowie and Visconti took the ★ recordings to Elmhirst’s facilities at Electric Lady Studios and enlisted him to help with the record’s final mix.
Despite telling Grammy.com that the process was “quite painless… because it was recorded and produced so well”, Elmhirst was forced out of his comfort zone by the title track. “It took a couple of days, which for me is quite long,” he admitted. “Obviously, not a lot of people put out ten-minute singles. So you have to approach it slightly differently. You can’t give it all away too early. You have to allow the natural dynamics to come through.”
Recalling the first time that he heard the finished recording, which morphed through skittish drum’n’bass, louche balladeering and doomy free jazz while maintaining an improbable cohesion, McCaslin “felt a range of emotions”, he told ‘Record Collector’. “There were definitely tears of joy, of: this sounds fucking great. And also the recognition that it really is what we played together in the studio… I could really hear the layers. There’s a lot in there.”
The release: “Putting it out as a single – that’s pretty ballsy”
Although the recording originally ran past the 11-minute mark, Bowie trimmed the finished track to nine minutes and 58 seconds, in adherence with iTunes’ guidelines – what Visconti would describe as a “bullshit” rule that limited a single’s running time to ten minutes. “But David was adamant it be the single,” Visconti told ‘Rolling Stone’, “and he didn’t want both an album version and a single version, since that gets confusing.”
In the event, listeners found track length to be the least puzzling thing about ★ when its video premiered on 19 November 2015, the day before the single’s release and six weeks ahead of the album with which it shared its name. To ‘The Telegraph’ it was an “avant jazz sci-fi torch song” deserving of a full five marks out of five, while ‘Pitchfork’ piled on the descriptors when they praised it as a “wonderfully odd and expansive… ten minutes of interstellar art-rock and ritualistic chanting and melodramatic balladry and even some playful funk”.
Speaking to ‘Mojo’ magazine, bassist Tim Lefebvre was rather more succinct: “Putting it out as a single – that’s pretty ballsy.”
With its structural complexity and genre-defying shifts in style, not only was ★’s music a challenge to the pop single format, but its lyrics, too, demanded more than average engagement from a listener. True to Bowie’s prediction that fans would scrutinise the song for meaning, the internet was soon flooded with attempts to decode everything from its title on down to Bowie’s nod to his own shape-shifting past (“I’m not a gangstar/… I’m not a flam star”), with each new theory spawning multiple alternatives. As ‘Pitchfork’’s Ryan Dombal noted in his review of the ★ album, such labour only played into Bowie’s cheerful “poking fun at our need to explain the inexplicable while remaining as perplexing and powerful as ever”.
Among the countless hypotheses were those that traced links to Bowie’s sci-fi interests (Black Star was an ancient Judaeic name for Saturn and an alternate term for a black hole) and to Elvis Presley, with whom Bowie shared a birthday and whose 1960 song ‘Black Star’ mused on mortality (“Every man has a black star/A black star over his shoulder/And when a man sees his black star/He knows his time, his time has come” the ‘King Of Rock’n’Roll’ sings). Meanwhile, “the villa of Ormen” – originally rendered “all men” in Bowie’s handwritten lyrics – was found to be rife with allusions – to a Norwegian village, a Viking longship and the Swedish word for “serpent” – and further lyrical references to birth, execution and the swapping of spirits spurred a hunt for clues as to Bowie’s feelings about his own death, particularly when fans heard that he had passed on 10 January 2016, just two days after the ★ album’s release.
As if anticipating the scrutiny, Bowie left signposts to his past, repeating the lyric “At the centre of it all” in ★’s opening verses, doubtless in the knowledge that fans would recognise the phrase from its use in the similarly portentous song ‘Slow Burn’, from his 2002 album, ‘Heathen’. ★’s promo video would contain similar Easter eggs, even as its visuals compounded complications for the would-be sleuth.
The video: “His ideas are deep and founded and interesting”
Opening with shots of a dead astronaut on an unnamed planet experiencing a solar eclipse, the ★ promo was directed by Johan Renck, the Swedish filmmaker who had already made dramatic use of the song when a bespoke edit played over the opening credits of Renck’s TV crime drama The Last Panthers. To Renck, the dead astronaut – whose skull is encrusted with jewels and salvaged for use in a mysterious ceremony – was “100 per cent Major Tom”, while dancers in the video also briefly mimicked gestures made by club-goers in an altogether different Bowie promo, the David Mallet-helmed ‘Fashion’.
The dancers’ ritualistic movements, choreographed by Kira Alker and Elke Luyten of the dance company Zus Performance, were inspired by an unlikely source: a quirky animation trick employed in vintage ‘Popeye’ cartoons, in which stationary characters appeared to vibrate. Bowie’s own drawings also provided guidance for the promo, which, as well as cutting between enactment of the ceremony and shots of writhing scarecrows affixed to crosses, found Bowie playing the roles of three distinct characters, one for each section of the song.
There was, Renck told ‘Vice’, Button Eyes, who, wearing bandages over his face, with two black buttons where his eyes would be, is “introverted, a sort of tormented blind guy”. Then there was “a flamboyant trickster in the middle of it, selling us the message in the other part of the song”, and also “the priest guy” who appears silently brandishing a time-worn book embossed with a black star, as a trio of dancers look on in awe – or perhaps entrancement.
For Renck, the visuals can be interpreted in “a million different ways”. Yet, true to Bowie’s own stance – “I can’t answer why/But I can tell you how” he sings towards the song’s end – the director gave little away, allowing only that the tail on the woman who retrieves the astronaut’s skull was included at the behest of Bowie, who found it “kind of sexual”, and that Bowie was “the least pretentious guy I’ve ever met, but at the same time his ideas are deep and founded and interesting”.
“I’ve worked with a lot of artists, a lot of actors, a lot of people,” Renck asserted. “But very few are that true.”
The legacy: “It affirmed the values I’d always held dear”
Opening its namesake album and commanding almost a quarter of that record’s running time, ★ was the perfect scene-setter for a work in which Bowie took some of his most fearless creative risks. “The whole experience was so transformative for me as a musician and as a person,” Donny McCaslin told this writer. “It affirmed the values I’d always held dear as an artist. And then seeing the power with which he inhabited those values and articulated them, and his generosity of spirit and all that stuff – it was such a landmark experience in my life.”
Now leading the Blackstar Symphony – among many other pursuits – McCaslin has taken the ★ music into a new realm. Performing it live with a 65-piece orchestra, often including the musicians that recorded the album, plus longtime Bowie collaborators such as Gail Ann Dorsey, McCaslin has reimagined the song – and those it shares space with – as “a new piece of art”.
“Seeing that music presented live, seeing it grow, seeing the legacy of what I think is [David’s] creative vision – the courage, looking for the unexpected, not being afraid to take chances. All of those things are part of the aesthetic of the Blackstar Symphony,” McCaslin told ‘Record Collector’.
★ may have dealt with mortality and uncertainty – themes which have only become more pronounced since Bowie’s death – but, more than anything, it remains a testament to its creator’s determination to ask life’s biggest questions and to continue to push himself into new places as he did so. “When we were in the music, we were just in it and playing off each other,” McCaslin said. “He was always present and in it and ready to go.”
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Buy the ‘I Can’t Give Everything Away (2002-2016) box set here.