David Bowie

The man who fell to Earth has finally returned to where he came from: "Look up here, I'm in heaven, I've got scars that can't be seen, I've got drama, can't be stolen, everybody knows me now". That opening line, from the new single "Lazarus", becomes the epitaph of a life lived as a work of art, the exit of a prescient musician who, like no one else, knew how to play with rock's clichés, tearing down its barriers and forging an aesthetic all his own.

He did it by creating memorable characters, which took hold of the collective imagination in a way that was, if anything, even more forceful than his songs (and what songs!). "There's old wave, there's new wave, and there's David Bowie", read the RCA label's poster in the year "Heroes" was released, and no advertising slogan was ever more fitting, since Bowie was an antenna able to pick up signals, reprogram them, and hand them back to the world in dazzling new shapes. Bowie was, and is, the eternal third way that, like it or not, everyone had to and will have to reckon with.

With him, folk became theatre, glam became bisexual and cosmic, soul became androgynous and plastic, crooning became icy and emaciated, ambient and kraut-rock suddenly became accessible, new-pop became romantic and made-up, funk became teased and white, drum 'n' bass stopped being fodder for pilled-up dancefloors and became material for glossy magazine covers - and the list could go on.

Over fifty years of career we've had to reckon with the psych-folk minstrel, with Ziggy (there are no characters comparable to him... Ziggy is Ziggy, and no one else...), then came the turn of the thin, drug-addled White Duke, the Teutonic existentialist, the new romantic pierrot, the frontman who couldn't possibly be more stylish, the well-dressed rocker, the post-industrial hero, and finally, over the last decade or more, the artist who removes his mask to reveal himself as a man, with an ever more imperceptible, ever less transfigured, sense of modesty.

And indeed, slowly, progressively, over the last twenty years, a different kind of unease began to take hold in his music: an obsession with the passing of time, a growing awareness that the world was no longer a stage on which to stage brilliant, dazzling productions.

But even though the mirror no longer gave back characters to invent, nor trends to spread, David Bowie even managed to make us believe that the serious illness that struck him in 2004 was also part of his show: staying behind the scenes for almost ten years, and coming back after hiding behind absolute silence - first subdued with "Where Are We Now?" and then lively with the album that followed - had, in a way, eased the tension.

"Did you see that? Bowie's back, this time too...!". That's what we told ourselves again when "Blackstar" was announced, and, reassured once more, we went back to putting down all the shadows it contains to yet another of his disguises. Instead, no: this time he was telling us it was really over, that this was a farewell, but that, once again, it would be him deciding how and when.

David Robert Jones really did decide it his own way, two days after his birthday, two days after the release of his artistic testament: the hero for one day also managed to choose the manner in which he would deliver himself to eternity.

Major Tom, begin the countdown, start the engines, check ignition, and may God's love be with you.

Ride the wave of great music

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