Get all your news in one place.
100's of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
Entertainment
Peter Walker, Martin Farrer and Lanre Bakare in New York

David Bowie: legendary rock star dies of cancer aged 69 – updates – as they happened

Bowie in his own words: highlights from his TV interviews

Summary

David Bowie memorial outside his NYC Apartment<br>
David Bowie memorial outside his NYC Apartment
 Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

The tributes are still coming but we’re going to round off the action here. His a summary of what’s happened in the 14 or so hours since news broke that David Bowie had died.

It seems fitting to end on the performance that stands out for so many people: when Bowie beamed himself into households up and down the UK and changed pop music forever. Thanks for all your comments.

David Bowie on Top of the Pops

The Fader have written about all the times Bowie confronted race in America, and made special mention of his appearance on Arsenio Hall

Bowie on Arsenio Hall

“It’s a very strange situation for me because I think with both of us having so called celebrity status, as soon as we step outside of doors we’re known as David and Iman,” he said. “I don’t know what it’d be like for us—you don’t see that many mixed couples in America. In Europe there’s a lot of couples. Over here there still a rarity, it’s still this separatist type of thing over here. I don’t know what it’d be for like for us if we weren’t known in our own right. You get the odd snide remark but, nothing with any weight.”

Def Leppard in concert, Sofiero, Helsingborg, Sweden
Def Leppard in concert, Sofiero, Helsingborg, Sweden Photograph: IBL/REX

A few more tributes from musicians now. Here’s a statement from Mark Guiliana, who played drums on Blackstar:

David, THANK YOU from the bottom of my humble heart for letting me into your life, and in doing so changing mine. It was an absolute honor to create with you. I am forever grateful. Love, Mark

There’s another from Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott who had a tribute act to the Ziggy-period of Bowie:

He’s been a massive part of my life since I first heard Starman in 1972. So many of us came in at that moment, myself, Bono, Boy George, Morrissey, Gary Kemp, Jim Kerr, Brett Anderson, Pete Murphy, Gary Numan, millions of fans, all very different from each other but all with one thing in common, the belief that a true rock & roll alien had landed on earth & he was ours. I own every record he ever made, he was plastered all over my bedroom wall as a kid, he was my very first bootleg, his CDs take up 2 whole shelves in my collection. I have personally recorded over 25 of his songs either on my own, with Leppard or with the Cybernauts. I met him two or three times and always found him charming and engaging. It is said, never meet your heroes, they will let you down. Bullshit. He was open, funny, a good listener and when myself and Phil joined David on stage with Queen, Mick Ronson and Ian Hunter at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Gig in 1992 it became one of the most memorable musical moments of my life. I can’t believe he’s gone. A huge hole has opened up in my heart and it feels like my youth has been further ripped away from me. At least I have a lifetime of his music to comfort me, as we all have, as he left behind one hell of a legacy. The Starman waiting in the sky waits no longer. Rest in Peace David Bowie and thank you for giving us believers something to believe in.”

Updated

Here’s some more on Bowie’s style legacy.

A tribute too far?

Bowie streaming

David Bowie
David Bowie Photograph: Paul Natkin/Getty Images

Unsurprisingly Spotify saw streams of Bowie songs spike by 2700% when news of his death broke. Here are the top five tracks:

1. Under Pressure

2. Space Oddity

3. Life On Mars?

4. Heroes

5. Let’s Dance

Updated

Madonna: 'I’m devastated'

Madonna has shared some thoughts on Bowie on her Facebook page.

Madonna in concert in Zurich
Madonna in concert in Zurich. She said of Bowie: ‘His music was always inspiring but seeing him live set me off on a journey that for me I hope will never end.’ Photograph: Walter Bieri/EPA

I’m devastated.

David Bowie changed the course of my life forever. I never felt like I fit in growing up in Michigan. Like an oddball or a freak. I went to see him in concert at Cobo Arena in Detroit. It was the first concert I’d ever been too. I snuck out of the house with my girlfriend wearing a cape.

We got caught after and I was grounded for the summer. I didn’t care.

I already had many of his records and was so inspired by the way he played with gender confusion.

Was both masculine and feminine.

Funny and serious.

Clever and wise.

His lyrics were witty ironic and mysterious.

At the time he was the thin white Duke and he had mime artists on stage with him and very specific choreography

And I saw how he created a persona and used different art forms within the arena of rock and Roll to create entertainment.

I found him so inspiring and innovative.

Unique and provocative. A real genius.

His music was always inspiring but seeing him live set me off on a journey that for me I hope will never end.

His photographs are hanging all over my house today.

He was so chic and beautiful and elegant.

So ahead of his time.

Thank you David Bowie.

I owe you a lot.

The world will miss you.

Love

M

Updated

'Once in a while, the world lights on fire with the music'

Lady Gaga with her Golden Globe
Lady Gaga with her Golden Globe Photograph: Splash News/Corbis

While on the Hollywood Reporter podcast, Lady Gaga spoke about the influence of Bowie. Billboard reports:

“When I fell in love with David Bowie, when I was living on the Lower East Side, I always felt that his glamor was something he was using to express a message to people that was very healing for their souls,” she recalled to THR’s Scott Feinberg. “He is a true, true artist and I don’t know if I ever went, ‘Oh, I’m going to be that way like this,’ or if I arrived upon it slowly, realizing it was my calling and that’s what drew me to him …

“I just know that you can use the theater of your imagination to entertain people beyond their wildest dreams and then you can put something inside of that that changes the world, and that to me is when you make something truly great as an artist,” she continued as she connected the dots between Bowie’s career and her own.

“You don’t nail it every time. I definitely don’t, with all my songs, always hit that note. You try. And every once in a while, the world lights on fire with the music.”

Updated

Faddy duddy: Martin Amis
Faddy duddy: Martin Amis Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian

The New Statesman has published Martin Amis’s gig review from 1973 where he predicted Bowie would be a fad …

This incongruity may be responsible for Bowie’s appeal and for what (if anything) is sinister about it. Among certain more affluent hippies Bowie is apparently the symbol of a kind of thrilling extremism, a life-style (the word is for once permissible) characterised by sexual omnivorousness, lavish use of stimulants – particularly cocaine, very much an élitist drug, being both expensive and galvanising – self-parodied narcissism, and a glamorously early death. To dignify this unhappy outlook with such a term as “nihilist” would, of course, be absurd; but Bowie does appear to be a new focus for the vague, predatory, escapist reveries of the alienated young. Although Bowie himself is unlikely to last long as a cult, it is hard to believe that the feelings he has aroused or aggravated will vanish along with the fashion built round him.

Updated

The view from New York

Tribute at David Bowie’s New York home
Tribute at David Bowie’s New York home Photograph: Scott Houston/Corbis

My colleague Jessica Glenza is outside Bowie’s Soho residence where fans are gathering.

Long-time fans and newcomers to Bowie’s music gathered at his home on Lafayette Street in New York’s Soho neighborhood.

Greg Petan, a 52-year-old artist who lives in the Soho area, came to leave a copy of David Live, the 1974 record, among flowers and candles at the artist’s home.

“It’s in the title I guess,” about why he chose the record. “Greatfully, through the medium of recorded music people can live for ever.”

Petan said he’s been listening to Bowie’s music since he was eight years old. Others who came to pay tribute at the doorstep just discovered the artist.

“I’m fairly young but this past year I started getting into his music,” said Adrian Vallejo, a 21-year-old fan. “I just know his impact on everything, he’s not just some random person. He’s someone who is insanely important.”

This is well worth a watch, by the way:

Updated

Alexis Petridis on Bowie

Tributes to David Bowie, Berlin, Germany
Tributes to David Bowie, Berlin, Germany Photograph: Action Press/REX/Shutterstock

Alexis Petridis has written a long read on the enduring appeal and legacy of Bowie. It’s well worth finding the time for. Here’s a snippet:

Dozens of books have been written about him, some of them hugely illuminating, but something unknowable lurked at the centre. Almost from the start, Bowie’s career raised questions to which a definitive answer seemed elusive. If he was, as he loudly claimed in 1971, gay, then what was the deal with the very visible wife and the son he’d just written a touching little song about? If he was, as he dramatically announced from the stage of the Hammersmith Odeon in July 1973, retiring – either from music, or from live performance, or from the character of Ziggy Stardust – then what was he doing back onstage in London three months later, belting out The Jean Genie in full Ziggy drag? How does anyone in the state Bowie was, by all accounts, in by 1975 – ravaged by cocaine to the point where he seemed to have genuinely gone insane; paranoid and hallucinating – make an album like Station to Station: not a messily compelling document of a mind unravelling, like the solo albums of his great idol Syd Barrett, but a work of precision and focus and exquisitely controlled power that’s arguably his best? In a world of cameraphones and social media, how could anyone as famous as Bowie disappear from public view as completely as he seemed to between 2008 and 2013: moreover, how could anyone as famous as Bowie record a comeback album in the middle of Manhattan without anyone noticing or leaking details to the media? How does anyone stage-manage their own death as dramatically as Bowie appears to have done: releasing their most acclaimed album in decades, filled with strange, enigmatic songs whose meaning suddenly pulls into focus when their author dies two days later?

Updated

Kendrick Lamar, whose album To Pimp A Butterfly was said to have influenced Blackstar, has been tweeting about Bowie’s death.

If people are on the look out for a good Bowie-themed film to watch you could to worse than C.R.A.Z.Y from 2005:

Jessica Glenza reports from the scene outside of Bowie’s Soho home.

More from Beckenham and Hannah Ellis Petersen, who reports on a shrine that’s been set up:

A small shrine has been set up in the bandstand in the Beckenham recreation park where Bowie staged his Arts Lab festival in August 1969, performing alongside Tony Visconti. The park is going to be kept open all night so fans can come pay their tributes.

Beckenham Shrine
The Beckenham shrine. Photograph: Hannah Ellis Petersen

Standing on the Beckenham park bandstand next to the Bowie shrine, local Nigel Goodge said: “I came here because it feels nice to stand on the spot where he played when he was just 22, way back in 1969. I was 14 when I saw him do Starman on Top of the Pops – my dad was horrified but it was hugely influential on me. He was this ordinary guy filled with an extraordinary creative spirit. I’ve been reeling since I heard the news this morning, I’m still in shock. But in Bowie style, he went out with a great performance. And we are so incredibly proud that Beckenham, us, has a place in the Bowie story. That such an influential giant of a man started out in this dull suburban town.”

Updated

'He was a real lifeforce'

A very touching tribute from Channel 4 anchor Jon Snow, who - like Cocker - tries to sum up the magic of Bowie.

Updated

Bowie and style

David Bowie
David Bowie Photograph: Carl Court/Getty Images

Bowie’s status as a style icon is well established, and as Jarvis Cocker said his various looks inspired millions around the world to dress differently. Here’s a snippet from Jess Cartner-Morley’s piece today:

There was something pure about David Bowie. This might seem a strange thing to say about a man with Bowie’s reputation for rock-star excess, but it’s true. Through every costume change, every stage persona, he remained authentically, unadulteratedly himself.

Because of this, among the millions of people to whom David Bowie was (how strange to write that) special, there will always be some who resent the notion of Bowie as a style icon. This status cheapens his genius; it’s all about the music, they say. And, of course, they are right, in that the music is sublime and extraordinary. But Bowie was bigger than music. He was about individuality, and masculinity, and sex. He was about culture: in 1969, when the rest of the world just watched the moon landings on TV, he wrote Space Oddity, which oh-so-casually skewered the idea of space travel in a format we could relate to, in the persona of Major Tom.

In the UK there are going to be tributes to Bowie on all the major terrestrial TV channels and radio stations. More on that here:

'He was a proper pop star … an umbrella for people who felt a bit different'

Pulp in concert at L’Olympia.
Pulp in concert at L’Olympia. Photograph: David Wolff-Patrick/Redferns via Getty Images

Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker has been talking to BBC 6 Music about the impact Bowie had on young people around the world who were inspired by his do-what-you-like, wear-what-you-like approach to life.

Updated

A picture from Brixton Academy, which is paying tribute to Bowie, and a dispatch from Beckenham, where Hannah Ellis-Petersen reports:

Rows of flowers were also laid in tribute by fans in Beckenham, outside the restaurant which was once home to the Three Tuns pub. It was here, in 1969 and before the release of Space Oddity, that Bowie would play most Sunday nights, hosting a night that eventually became the Beckenham Arts Lab.

Lin Davis, 62, who came to lay flowers at the former pub, recalled coming every Sunday to watch Bowie play when she was 15.

‘In the summer of 1969 we would come to the Arts Lab every Sunday night,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t famous at all then and often it would be David Bowie taking the money on the door himself. I’ll always remember, he once stood on my foot and I never wanted to wash the shoe. He had the most gorgeous golden curls at that time, he was like an Adonis and we all fancied him. It was an open mike night so lots of people would play – it was all part of a scene he was trying to create here in Beckenham to emulate what what was happening in New York. It’s hard to believe now but in 1969 there was such a buzz in Beckenham.’ She added: ‘Bowie’s in my blood. I went to go and see the Bowie show at the V&A six times.’

David Bowie at his home, Haddon Hall, at Beckenham, in April 1971.
David Bowie at his home, Haddon Hall, at Beckenham, in April 1971. Photograph: Alamy

Jessica Glenza is en route to speak to people in New York who have gathered by Bowie’s Soho residence. More on that shortly.

Updated

Robert Fripp, producer, composer and songwriter Brian Eno and singer and songwriter David Bowie at Hansa Tonstudio aka Hansa by the Wall
Robert Fripp, producer, composer and songwriter Brian Eno and singer and songwriter David Bowie at Hansa Tonstudio aka Hansa by the Wall Photograph: Christian Simonpietri/Sygma/Corbis

Here’s an extended tribute from Brian Eno, who previously tweeted his condolences. It is very touching indeed.

Robert Fripp, producer, composer and songwriter Brian Eno and singer and songwriter David Bowie at Hansa Tonstudio aka “’Hansa by the Wall” during the recording of the album Heroes
Robert Fripp, producer, composer and songwriter Brian Eno and David Bowie at Hansa Tonstudio, aka Hansa by the Wall, during the recording of the album Heroes. Photograph: Christian Simonpietri/Sygma/Corbis

Lots of David Bowie’s former band mates are commenting now. Here are a few and a classic anecdote from Robert Fripp who famously came up with the guitar line for Heroes. He describes himself as “a little guitarist from Dorset,” which doesn’t quite cover it.

Updated

The 17th Annual Grammy Awards: David Bowie, Yoko Ono and John Lennon.
The 17th Annual Grammy Awards: David Bowie, Yoko Ono and John Lennon. Photograph: Ron Galella/WireImage

Tributes are pouring in from around the world with El Pais saying Bowie was the world’s most eclectic pop star; meanwhile Yoko Ono has released this statement:

John and David respected each other. They were well matched in intellect and talent. As John and I had very few friends we felt David was as close as family.

After John died David was always there for Sean and me. When Sean was at boarding school in Switzerland David would pick him up and take him on trips to museums and let Sean hang out at his recording studio in Geneva.

For Sean this is losing another father figure. It will be hard for him, I know. But we have some sweet memories which will stay with us forever.

yoko ono lennon

Updated

Sophia Anne Caruso, left, and Michael C Hall perform in a scene from David Bowie and Enda Walsh’s “Lazarus
Sophia Anne Caruso, left, and Michael C Hall perform in a scene from David Bowie and Enda Walsh’’s “Lazarus. Photograph: Jan Versweyveld/AP

Bowie’s jukebox musical, Lazarus, is currently playing in New York. It’s directed by Ivo van Hove and co-written by Enda Walsh, and our own Alexis Soloski struggled with it but ultimately found the talent on stage pulled it through:

At moments apposite or otherwise, the band strike up a Bowie song, familiar, obscure or brand new. There’s a synthpop version of The Man Who Sold the World, an anguished take on Changes, a prettily stripped down “Heroes”. These are inarguably marvellous songs, but few of them are integrated into the script, which can give the play the feeling of a downbeat and occasionally alarming karaoke party. Songs that would seem to be relevant, such as Starman or Rock’n’Roll Suicide, are ignored in favour of All the Young Dudes and This Is Not America.

This should be a terrible show. It seems unlikely that it is what its collaborators imagined, and what they have created makes perilously little sense. But those collaborators are so extravagantly talented and the performers undertake what’s asked of them – writhing lasciviously against a refrigerator, slipping and sliding in a pool of milk, popping dozens of black balloons – with such dedication and verve that it’s nearly impossible not to be persuaded and baffled and at least a little thrilled.

Updated

As previously mentioned a lot of people have been dissecting Bowie’s lyrics from Blackstar to see if he was offering clues about his illness. The album is looking like it could dominate the charts after Bowie’s death and would see - arguably - his most challenging work find its way into millions of people’s record collections. Here are Alexis Petridis’s opening remarks in his lead album review for Blackstar:

As he reaches his 69th birthday, David Bowie finds himself in a rarefied position, even by the standards of the rock aristocracy. He does not give interviews, make himself available to promote new releases, or explain himself in any way. He does not tour the world playing his hits. In fact, he doesn’t do anything that rock stars are supposed to do. It’s behaviour that theoretically means a one-way ticket to oblivion, with no one but diehard fans for company. But since his re-emergence from a decade-long sabbatical with 2013’s The Next Day, it’s proved a quite astonishing recipe for success. Bowie’s scant public pronouncements are treated as hugely significant. His releases are pored over in a way they haven’t been since the days when his army of devotees would turn up at Victoria station to greet him off the boat train, a state of affairs abetted by the fact that, since his return, Bowie has reverted to writing the kind of elusive, elliptical lyrics that were once his stock in trade. Dense with mysterious references, the words on The Next Day and its follow-up alike have far more in common with the impenetrable mass of signifiers that made up Station to Station’s title track than, say, the Dad-misses-you-write-soon message to his adult son of 2002’s Everyone Says Hi.

Updated

Lanre Bakare here in New York. I’ll be taking over the controls for the next few hours. Alex Needham is writing a piece on Bowie’s time in the states, and here’s a tweet by Our Band Could Change Your Life author Michael Azerrad, highlighting just one of the times Bowie stunned America.

On his blog, Squeeze co-founder Chris Difford has recounted Bowie’s huge influence on himself, another south Londoner with an urge to write songs.

A few years ago i received some tapes recorded in 1971 by a friend of mine who lived down the block from me – these were my first demos. When I listen to them now I can hear how much I leant on David Bowie’s inspiration, even the voice, I was South London with a slight dash of Anthony Newley.

David Bowie gave the me the lyrically voice that started me on my way. I saw Bowie play at Eltham Collage in 1972, the audience were sat on the floor and during the show he came out and shared his guitar with us, we reached out strumming at his blue 12 string.

After the show i walked home with a friend, whatever Bowie had i wanted some too, but like his guitar it all seemed out of reach. One afternoon i stood outside his house in Beckenham, just to see him and to have a chance maybe to say hello. It was a wasted journey, he never showed up, maybe we had the wrong house.

Updated

Elsewhere we’re running the thoughts of artist Grayson Perry, who stresses the impact of Bowie in allowing men and boys of the 1970s to feel they could dress flamboyantly.

At exactly the same time I was experimenting with dressing up, and it felt like Bowie was giving me and a whole generation of kids permission to explore the dressing-up box. The sheer danger of it was what made it extraordinary. I would call it social bungee jumping. Terrifying but thrilling.

Bowie made a great woman – later on, I remember seeing him in the video for Boys Keep Swinging. He looked amazing with long red hair, lipstick and high cheekbones. As a young proto-transvestite I felt very jealous. All I wanted to do at that point was look like a pretty girl and of course Bowie managed it effortlessly.

Another lovely contribution from our Guardian Witness callout – a 1970s Bowie-themed bedroom.

Updated

From another shrine: a video of people leaving tributes in Heddon Street, central London, where the famous Ziggy Stardust album cover shoot took place.

Updated

Hannah Ellis-Petersen has been talking to more people at the mural-turned shrine in Brixton.

Roy Brophy, 57, lay flowers with a note attached reading, “Oh you pretty thing, don’t you know you’re driving our mamas and papas insane”.

Brophy said that the singer had “influenced me tremendously. Being a gay man in the early days and seeing Bowie on Top of the Pops, it was just brilliant and life-changing for me. His willingness to be himself and break down barriers was just a revelation watching him age 16. And of course the reaction of my father made a big difference.”

He added: “Every decade he has changed, a complete chameleon. And he always had style and grace, even in his death. He’s one in a million.”

Our research team have uncovered this gem from our archives: a 1982 review by the estimable Nancy Banks-Smith of Bowie starring in a BBC adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s Baal, possibly the only time in print he was compared to George Formby (the role involved playing a banjo).

She wrote:

David Bowie seems like a nice boy, though people kept calling him ugly and fat (one wonders if Brecht had someone rather different in mind). He has a powerful presence, a voice sandpapered perfectly flat, and he made everyone else look as if they were acting.

You can even watch the complete production.

Updated

Brett Anderson of Suede, a singer himself not averse to a touch of androgyny or dressing up, has paid this tribute to David Bowie:

I had the pleasure of meeting David several times and he was always so charming and warm. To say he was a great artist is a lumpen understatement; his songs became the furniture of mine and so many people’s lives and helped write the book of pop music itself. We are all far poorer without him.

Mourners in Brixton.
Rosie Lowry mourns at the David Bowie mural in Brixton. Photograph: Stefan Wermuth/Reuters

My colleague, Hannah Ellis-Petersen, is in Brixton, where tributes are being left at the David Bowie mural which marks his birth in the south London district:

Rosie Lowry, a 21 year old fashion photography student, came and laid flowers at the Brixton Bowie mural dressed in full Ziggy stardust regalia and face paint.

She said: “he was just a huge influence on me because without him I wouldn’t have had that strength to be whoever I wanted to be. His music makes you feel like he’s talking directly to you. My dad was a massive fan and I grew up listening to Bowie in the house, it’s been there my whole life.

“So I just couldn’t believe he was gone when I woke up this morning. I owe so much to him, he’s helped me through so much that I didn’t have to even think about coming down here today. I just got out of bed and got the face paint on. It felt fitting to do it as Bowie would do it.”

Jane Maloney, 44, came and laid flowers and showed off a Ziggy Stardust tattoo on her back. She said she has grown up listening to Bowie and that the tattoo had been her way of paying thanks to the singer for having such an impact on her life.

“I feel like I’ve lost a member of my family” she said. “I’ve followed him since I was a kid and have seen him live five times. The world is so much emptier without him here. He was such an independent spirit and unique human- there’s never been another person like him.”

Alison Baker, 44, was another fan who came to lay flowers at the Bowie mural. “I don’t usually take on board all of this collective mourning but I woke up this morning and heard the news and I couldn’t believe it.

“I guess David Bowie has been really influential in my life and the way I approach things. I grew up in Perth in Australia, the suburban beachside, and it wasn’t the dome thing to be different. So when Bowie came into my life as a teenager, that just changed everything.

“He was the one that people followed, he never followed anyone, and that’s just extraordinary. He was completely original and outrageous but at heart he was just this humble normal guy- he completely transcended the whole celebrity charade.

“I was listening to Blackstar this morning and you realise that it’s his farewell. For him to have looked death in the eye and then create that, what an artistic way to go. He skidded into that grave didn’t he?”

Bowie tributes
Bowie tributes

Updated

Here’s a video tribute to David Bowie by various Guardian culture and music writers. I particularly appreciate the confession by Michael Hann that, while growing up in the 1980s, it could be tricky to correlate the genius talked of in such hushed, reverential tones with the man in the raincoat and mini-mullet prancing around with Mick Jagger on Dancing in the Street. Very true.

Updated

Summary

Almost seven hours after the announcement was made, here’s where we are following the announcement of David Bowie’s death.

Another space-related tribute, this time from the Twitter feed of the European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe.

The tributes – and media – are starting to mass at the Bowie mural in Brixton, south London, where he was born.

Bowie mural Brixton

In not entirely unexpected news, Bowie’s newly-released final album looks set to go to number one. This from the Press Association:

David Bowie’s new album Blackstar has charged into the number one spot following news of his death.

The singer’s 25th studio album was released on Friday to coincide with his 69th birthday and had already taken an early lead.

Blackstar has combined sales of more than 43,000, which puts Bowie 25,000 ahead of his closest competitor, Elvis Presley, and almost guarantees a number one when the charts are announced on Friday, according to the Official Charts Company.

If it achieves the feat, Blackstar will be Bowie’s 10th chart-topping album.

A woman is comforted next to a book of condolences at the Groninger Museum in Groningen, Netherlands, which is currently showing items from the V&A’s Bowie exhibition. The museum is usually closed on Monday but opened specially.

Groninger Museum in Groningen

Two more reasons why Bowie was such an innovator:

BowieNet and online music

As my colleague Keith Stuart recounts, Bowie not only set up his own internet service provider in 1998, he was the first major artist to distribute a song online-only.

Bowie Bonds

In a hugely innovative 1997 scheme, Bowie sold the rights to future royalties to his songs in the form of securitised bonds. The FT has more here.

Here’s David Cameron giving his tribute to David Bowie. Asked for a favourite track he slightly wimps out and opts for a whole album – Hunky Dory. But to be fair Cameron is a politician who, as his Desert Island Discs appearance showed, has some grasp of and interest in popular music.

Updated

Further to my précis below of David Bowie’s film career, the far better-informed Peter Bradshaw has penned his own tribute of Bowie’s life in acting. Bradshaw notes:

Pop singers from Sinatra to Elvis to Madonna have dabbled in the movies, with varying results, but David Bowie always convinced his public that every role he accepted was an artistic decision and an artistic experiment, governed by his own idealism.

Finally, the story you’ve all been waiting for, via Guardian Witness and the efforts of my colleague, Elena Cresci: how a Guardian reader’s mother cooked David Bowie a Fray Bentos pie in 1969. And he didn’t eat it. This collection of photos might help overseas readers understand why perhaps he didn’t.

Updated

As several people have pointed out on social media, Bowie’s acting career was strictly a sideline, and yet he still worked with a pretty impressive range of directors. These included Martin Scorcese (The Last Temptation of Christ), Nagisa Oshima (Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence), Nicolas Roeg (The Man Who Fell to Earth), David Lynch (Twin Peaks), Julian Schnabel (Basquiat), Jim Henson (Labyrinth), and Tony Scott (The Hunger).

Oh yes, and he was in Spongebob Squarepants.

Time for some more music from the great man. As mentioned below, for all the (merited) attention on some of Bowie’s other periods, I’ve got a huge soft spot for his brief, unexpected and astonishing mid-70s foray into soul. Here’s Fame, part-written by none other than John Lennon.

Updated

The Royal Albert Hall (or more accurately someone working there) has tweeted to say they believe it was the venue for Bowie’s last-ever UK live appearance, in May 2006, when he sang guest vocals on Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb during a show by the band’s David Gilmour.

Here’s a video of the song.

Updated

Some more great submissions to our Guardian Witness page for readers’ memories of Bowie.

Updated

Yet another Bowie shrine – floral tributes left beneath the plaque in Heddon Street, the small central London road where the famous cover shot for the Ziggy Stardust album was taken in 1972.

Floral tributes in Heddon Street, London.
Floral tributes in Heddon Street, London. Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

The latest in today’s series of unusual co-habitués of a live blog panel: Nato’s secretary general and the Rolling Stones.

Our Guardian Witness page for your memories and thoughts is gathering some very touching personal stories about what David Bowie meant to people.

Updated

We mentioned below (see here) how on re-listening to Bowie’s final single, Lazarus, after his death the lyrics hinted strongly at his imminent demise. My colleague Tim Jonze has revisited Blackstar, the album from which the song comes, to assess if the singer was saying goodbye.

My colleague David Taylor has directed me to a website which chronicles the set lists of concerts. For David Bowie, it spans 118 pages from a July 1966 gig at the Lion Hotel in Warrington to his final appearance, in New York in November 2006.

David (Taylor) says news of Bowie’s death sent him reminiscing about this 1983 show he attended with an older cousin.

Updated

Among his minor achievements, Bowie also produced possibly the most stylish police mugshot ever taken, after his arrest on drug-related charges in New York state in 1976.

David Bowie police mugshot.
David Bowie police mugshot. Photograph: Rochester Police

Updated

Another slightly less obvious tribute, from the Arsenal manager, Arsène Wenger.

Updated

If you’ve not yet seen it, here is our main news story about Bowie’s death.

The tributes are growing at the David Bowie mural in Brixton, south London.

A woman and child place a flower by the mural of David Bowie.
A woman and child place a flower by the mural of David Bowie. Photograph: Matt Dunham/AP

Bowie played at the Glastonbury festival twice, with something of a gap – in 1971 and then in 2000. The founder of the festival, Michael Eavis, told the BBC about the first appearance:

He had lovely, long, flowing hair, a right hippie-looking lad. Fantastically beautiful he looked, actually.

Nobody knew who he was, he played at 4 in the morning, at sunrise, songs we’d never heard before.

He’s one of the three greatest in the world, ever – Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and David Bowie. There’s no one else even close.

Eavis said the festival organisers had tried to book the star again after 2000, but were told to “stop ringing” several years ago because he had retired from performing.

Eavis’s daughter, Emily, who co-runs the festival, paid her tribute:

Updated

A photo of Bowie from 1977.

David Bowie in the workshop of Hungarian-French artist Victor Vasarely in 1977.
David Bowie in the workshop of Hungarian-French artist Victor Vasarely in 1977. Photograph: Christian Simonpietri/Sygma/Corbis

Here’s a lovely piece from Suzanne Moore about the sheer immensity and breadth of what David Bowie could mean to you growing up.

From a small town and what my teachers called “a broken home” Bowie would guide us. We could give up trying to be normal now that we entrusted ourselves to him. He sang of space and drugs and floating above the world. He could be so tender (Letter to Hermione) and then swagger like a brute. He was tapped right into something mystical that we recognised but could not grasp as we were too busy preening and dancing and wanting.

But all the time he was passing on secret knowledge. I would learn about Burroughs, Kemp, Crowley, Berlin, Sakamoto, Roeg and so many others through him. I would have my first proper boyfriend because of him – working-class lads started wearing eyeliner and nail varnish because he did, which made them vaguely interesting.

Updated

Another lovely tribute in Brixton, where Bowie was born, from the local Ritzy cinema.

Now this is a tribute:

Updated

Our Guardian Witness callout for your David Bowie memories is getting some fantastic contributions. Did you know Bowie was a big fan of A Country Practice? Well, you do now.

Updated

Bowie performs live in Germany in June 1987.
Bowie performs live in Germany in June 1987. Photograph: Harald Menk/AFP/Getty Images

The BBC broadcaster Bob Harris – who has met more or less everyone in the rock music world – has shared some reminiscences of Bowie on BBC Radio 5 Live. I have taken the transcribed quotes from the BBC website’s excellent rolling update of Bowie tributes.

I first met David in 1967. He was part of a mixed media group called Feathers. David was very into his mime expression at that moment. He was hugely influenced singing-wise by Anthony Newley...

There’s something quintessentially English about his music as well, isn’t there, particularly the early days. You know that some artists are going to be very, very special indeed and you just knew that about David. He had a great sense of PR as well. He knew how to get himself noticed.

But he could back it up with just sensational music. I think one of the moments that propelled him – that made possible the phenomenal success that he had – also was his partnership with Mick Ronson. Mick was the rock ‘n’ roll expression of the ideas David had in his head.

Updated

A tribute from another close Bowie collaborator, Iggy Pop. Bowie co-produced the album Raw Power by Pop’s band, The Stooges, before helping resurrect Pop’s career by co-writing and co-producing his solo albums The Idiot and Lust for Life.

The contributions are coming in on our Guardian Witness page for your thoughts and memories about Bowie.

Updated

These are being shared a fair bit on Twitter – the isolated vocal tracks to two of Bowie’s most celebrated songs, Space Oddity and Ziggy Stardust. A fantastic listen, both of them.

Updated

Our obituary is now up. You can read it in full here. This is an extract:

Until the last, David Bowie, who has died of cancer, was still capable of springing surprises. His latest album Blackstar appeared on his 69th birthday on 8 January, and proved that his gift for making dramatic statements as well as challenging, disturbing music hadn’t deserted him.

Throughout the 1970s, Bowie was a trailblazer of musical trends and pop fashion. Having been a late-60s mime and cabaret entertainer, he evolved into a singer-songwriter, a pioneer of glam-rock, then veered into what he called “plastic soul”, before moving to Berlin to create innovative electronic music.

In subsequent decades his influence became less pervasive, but he remained creatively restless and constantly innovative across a variety of media. His capacity for mixing brilliant changes of sound and image underpinned by a genuine intellectual curiosity is rivalled by few in pop history. Blackstar was proof that this curiosity had not diminished in his later career.

Even football clubs are paying tribute.

Edward Helmore has an update from New York:

Makeshift memorials outside Bowie’s apartment are simple and heartfelt. “Thank you David. May the Gods bless us all,” read one message. Another:‎ “Love to a hero up there or down there, wherever you are.”

The lights at Bowie’s penthouse were on through the night. A doorman at his building, 285 Lafayette, said‎: “I’ve worked here since 2001 and we never knew he was sick.”

But Bowie’s decade-long absence from public view proved fertile ground for rumours. After his heart attack on stage in 2003, it was said he would no longer tour. Music business rumours said that after the heart attack he’d had two strokes.

Only later did word of cancer begin to surface. He was said to sit quietly working in his apartment, or at his house upstate near Woodstock where he and wife Iman had purchased land on top of a mountain, and was an avid reader of the UK papers, delivered to him each day.

Updated

Yet another place of pilgrimage is Bowie’s former home in Berlin.

Tributes to David Bowie outside his former home in Berlin’s Hauptstrasse.
Tributes to David Bowie outside his former home in Berlin’s Hauptstrasse. Photograph: Odd Andersen/AFP/Getty Images

Bowie did not leave Beckenham the moment he achieved fame. This wonderful 1971 photo shows the singer at his home there, Haddon Hall.

The now-demolished Victorian pile was where Bowie wrote songs for The Man Who Sold the World, Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust.

David Bowie at his home, Haddon Hall, at Beckenham in April 1971.
David Bowie at his home, Haddon Hall, at Beckenham in April 1971. Photograph: Alamy

There are many places of pilgrimage for Bowie fans today. As well as Brixton and New York there is Beckenham, the south-east London suburb where he grew up from the age of six. The first floral tributes have already been laid outside what was the Three Tuns pub – now a branch of the pizza chain Zizzi – where the singer set up the self-styled Beckenham Arts Lab in the late 1960s.

By coincidence, two days ago the BBC ran an interview with Bowie’s former landlady and lover in Beckenham, Mary Finnigan.

Updated

So many people have their own memories of what David Bowie meant to them. As well as commenting below, readers can pay tribute via GuardianWitness through this assignment or by clicking on the blue “contribute” button on the live blog. You can also share your memories, photos and videos with the Guardian via WhatsApp by adding the contact +44 (0) 7867 825056.

Updated

Another set of tributes from people who rarely feature together in a story, Madonna and Jeremy Corbyn.

The leader of the Labour party told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:

As soon as I heard of his death, very, very sad, Life On Mars comes flowing back into my mind. Wonderful song, wonderful guy.

My colleague Edward Helmore in New York, where Bowie was based in his later years, sends this.

Tribute outside David Bowie’s apartment building.
Tribute outside David Bowie’s apartment building. Photograph: Edward Helmore for the Guardian

An hour after the news broke, Kate Corman stopped by Bowie’s apartment on Lafayette Street in Soho, leaving a candle and flowers – the first offerings of a substantial memorial that’s sure to follow. “First Lou Reed, now David Bowie. It’s so sad. Unbelievable. New York is really over now.”

At Puckfair, a bar over the road from Bowie’s apartment which the singer frequented, the barman played a string of hits – Jean Genie, Let’s Dance and Heroes. “It’s hard to put into words what he gave us in his songs,” said late night drinker Bill Marlborough. “If you don’t feel it, I can’t explain.”

“It was his sensibility, his feeling,” said Eylul Akinci, 27. “I am shocked and sad. I am part of the last generation of his fans.”

Akinci said her favourite song was The Motel from his mid-90s Outsider album.

Updated

This blog is so far a bit short on music. Here’s Heroes, from 1977, chosen as it’s one of the David Bowie tracks many people might have been exposed to recently, given its heavy use during the 2012 London Olympics. And it’s a fantastic song, featuring Robert Fripp’s famous sustained guitar motif.

Updated

In 2009 the Letters of Note website ran a 1967 letter written by the then-20-year-old Bowie in response to his first piece of fan mail from the US, via a 14-year-old in New Mexico. Bowie wrote:

In answer to your questions, my real name is David Jones and I don’t have to tell you why I changed it. “Nobody’s going to make a monkey out of you,” said my manager. My birthday is January 8th and I guess I’m 5’10”. There is a Fan Club here in England, but if things go well in the States then we’ll have one there I suppose. It’s a little early to even think about it.

I hope one day to get to America. My manager tells me lots about it as he has been there many times with other acts he manages.

Updated

Hundreds of people on Twitter are sharing this animated montage of the many looks and incarnations of David Bowie.

It’s based on these pictures by the illustrator Helen Green.

Tributes have come in from two close collaborators of Bowie, Tony Visconti and Brian Eno.

Visconti, who produced a series of Bowie’s albums, including Young Americans and his seminal ‘Berlin trilogy’ of Low, Heroes and Lodger, wrote this on his Facebook page:

He always did what he wanted to do. And he wanted to do it his way and he wanted to do it the best way. His death was no different from his life – a work of art. He made Blackstar for us, his parting gift. I knew for a year this was the way it would be. I wasn’t, however, prepared for it. He was an extraordinary man, full of love and life. He will always be with us. For now, it is appropriate to cry.

Eno, who collaborated with Bowie on the Berlin albums, was equally heartfelt if more brief.

UPDATE 12.39pm: We have been told @dark_shark is not an official Twitter account of Brian Eno, but an account that follows news about him. So the above tribute is from that account, not from Eno himself.

Updated

Tony Blair, who once harboured his own ambitions of a career in the music industry, has released a statement in tribute:

I am so sorry to hear the news of David Bowie’s death. I was a huge fan. From the time I saw his Ziggy Stardust concert as a student, I thought he was a brilliant artist and an exciting and interesting human being.

It was a great privilege when I got to meet him later in life. My thoughts are with his family and friends. He will be deeply mourned.

My colleagues on the photo desk have compiled this collection of some of the more famous images of Bowie.

Also worth a read is this profile of the singer we ran just over a week ago, to coincide with the release of what was to be his final album, Blackstar.

Bowie was also an occasional actor, even if his renown in that field was arguably more mixed than as a musician. Here he is in perhaps his greatest film role, in Nicolas Roeg’s 1976 film The Man Who Fell To Earth.

David Bowie in The Man Who Fell To Earth
David Bowie in The Man Who Fell To Earth Photograph: Allstar/British Lion/Studiocanal

It’s not just the English-speaking world who are reeling from the news.

Yet more tributes, this time featuring a Briton actually in space (rather than composing era-defining songs about it), and a more modern musical self-reinventer.

Updated

You could ask 100 people and get 100 different answers, but in 2014 our music website took on the onerous task of condensing Bowie’s music for our “10 of the best” series. It includes All the Young Dudes, which the singer famously gave to Mott the Hoople, one of a series of fellow acts whose careers he revived.

It also features Young Americans, from Bowie’s sometimes less focused-on but utterly remarkable “plastic soul” (as he called it) period.

Updated

On our politics live blog, my colleague Andrew Sparrow has rounded up various UK politicians’ reactions to the death.

Yet more tributes, this time from two actors and an archbishop.

Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that he too was a fan of the singer:

I’m very, very saddened to hear of his death. I remember sitting listening to his songs endlessly in the ‘70s particularly and always really relishing what he was, what he did, the impact he had. Extraordinary person.

David Bowie in 1973 with his then-wife, Angie.
David Bowie in 1973 with his then-wife, Angie. Photograph: Smith/Getty Images

Can we just get one thing straight before we go on? It’s pronounced Bowie as in “oh”, not as in “ow”. There’s plenty of footage of him saying his own name, as here. This wouldn’t have been an issue if he’d remained David Jones, but the singer changed his name to avoid being confused with the newly famous Davy Jones of the Monkees.

Bowie was born on 8 January 1947, in Brixton, south London. A mural of the musician in his Ziggy Stardust guise was unveiled in central Brixton in 2013.

Some tributes have already begun to appear at the mural.

Updated

The tributes are coming thick and fast.

Three days ago, Bowie’s official YouTube channel released the video to a song from his new album, Blackstar. It is called Lazarus – the biblical character who was raised from the dead – and begins with Bowie, lying prone and bandaged in a hospital bed, singing, “Look up here, I’m in heaven.”

Updated

The singer was such an enigmatic and perennially reinventing figure that the first reaction of some people was to hope the news of his death was not true. Reuters was quick to confirm that this was definitely not the case. “It’s not a hoax,” Steve Martin, from Bowie’s publicity company, told the news agency.

Updated

This file photo from 2005 shows Bowie with his wife of 23 years, Iman.

David Bowie and Iman.
David Bowie and his wife Iman pose at an awards show in New York in 2005. Photograph: Stuart Ramson/AP

Much of social media right now (at least in the anglophonic world) is devoted to this one piece of news. And the tributes could hardly be more varied. Here are two of the newer ones, from 80s pop star-turned torch song exponent Marc Almond, and the EU’s trade commissioner, Cecilia Malmstrőm.

Updated

This is Peter Walker in London taking over from Martin, with the latest reaction to the death of David Bowie.

There will be endless tributes today, many of which will stress the sheer range of Bowie’s incarnations, and career stages. As one way to emphasise this, let’s remember that when, in 2013, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London staged an exhibition charting the visual scope of his career, including some of his most famous outfits, it became the museum’s fastest-selling attraction ever.

Updated

Bowie will be remembered for any number of looks and styles in his 50 years in the music business. We’ve already posted a couple of pictures from his 70s and 80s styles.

Here are some more to remember him by.

Bowie in Paris in 2002.
Bowie in Paris in 2002. Photograph: Crollalanza/Rex/Shutterstock
Bowie with Syone Rome in 1977
Bowie with Syone Rome in 1977. Photograph: Sipa Press/Rex/Shutterstock

This picture below is from 1969. Our archive caption says he is called ‘David Robert Jones, but he is also known as David Bowie’ and that he is a musician, actor and record producer.

David Robert Jones, aka David Bowie.
David Robert Jones, aka David Bowie. Photograph: ITN/Rex/Shutterstock

Updated

It’s an eclectic mix of tributes coming in, from the broadcaster Jon Snow to the prime minister, David Cameron, who said on Twitter how he grew up listening to the great man.

Updated

The singer had had cancer for 18 months, according to the official Twitter confirmation of his death.

He had released a new album, Blackstar, only last week, which was hailed as a return to form by the Guardian’s rock critic Alexis Pretidis. His review described it as “ambiguous and spellbinding”.

Updated

Here is the official Twitter confirmation of David Bowie’s death. There are now dozens of tributes on social media.

Updated

Bowie in the early 70s.
Bowie in the early 70s. Photograph: Sunshine/Rex/Shutterstock
Bowie at the Cannes festival in 1983.
Bowie at the Cannes festival in 1983. Photograph: Richard Young/Rex/Shutterstock

Updated

We have just launched a news story here but the tributes are already starting to be made to someone who changed the face of music.

Reports are coming in that David Bowie, the rock star whose career has spanned six decades, has died.

The death of the British musician, whose real name was David Jones, was confirmed on his son Duncan Jones’s Twitter account.

More to follow.

Updated

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100's of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
“This Is Why She Can’t Keep A Man”: Jennifer Lopez, 56, Brutally Slammed Over Her Daring Stage Outfit
“When grandma won't accept that she's just embarrassing," wrote one user.
Bored Panda
Bored Panda
Las Vegas girl gets a random DM from a woman and finds out she’s being stalked by a rude regular at her gym: ‘There’s photos of you in his phone’
The safety of our digital footprints is a recurring anxiety in the age of social media. For Las Vegas gym creator Klair Elena (TikTok/@klaielena), that fear became a chilling reality after a stranger’s DM.
The Mary Sue
The Mary Sue
Astronaut’s spooky image aboard the ISS sparks fear with some convinced they’re looking at an alien
NASA astronaut Don Pettit has finally shared the real story behind a bizarre, tentacled object photographed aboard the International Space Station (ISS) that had many people online convinced it was an alien. This image, which quickly went viral, had social media users scratching their heads and even feeling a little…
The Mary Sue
The Mary Sue
Woman calls out Starbucks barista online for shooting his shot but soon finds out that the internet isn’t on her side
A woman who took to TikTok to call out a Starbucks barista for what she felt was an inappropriate “secret message” on her coffee cup has found that the internet isn’t quite on her side. Ari Chance shared her experience online, expecting widespread agreement, but instead, viewers offered a mixed…
The Mary Sue
The Mary Sue
People Are Trying to Uncancel Joss Whedon. Why?
Let's not do this!
The Mary Sue
The Mary Sue
Los Angeles woman meets her Hinge date at the Santa Monica farmer’s market. 15 minutes in, one question ends it all
Not worth the extra mile.
We Got This Covered
We Got This Covered
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.
Download on the AppStore Get it on Google Play