{"id":138572,"date":"2025-09-12T12:25:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T12:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/138572\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T12:25:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T12:25:08","slug":"secrets-behind-david-bowies-final-burst-of-creativity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/138572\/","title":{"rendered":"Secrets Behind David Bowie\u2019s Final Burst of Creativity"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Bowie always seemed to be everywhere. From the moment he dyed his hair orange, cut it into a spikey pre-mullet and adopted the persona of Ziggy Stardust, Bowie became an international superstar. <\/p>\n

For the next 30 years, through an endless number of guises and creative left turns, Bowie was hardly ever out of the spotlight. That is until ill health\u2014and an apparent onstage heart attack<\/a>\u2014 forced him to all but retire from live performance in July 2004.<\/p>\n

Then, suddenly, in January 2013, Bowie dropped a surprise release, and roared back into the public consciousness with the single, \u201cWhere Are We Now?,\u201d and, in March of that year, a stunning new album, The Next Day. Still, there was no new tour. Sure, Bowie could be seen walking around New York City\u2019s SoHo, and lunching with friends and former collaborators. But after the excitement around the release of The Next Day subsided, Bowie appeared to retreat happily back to the life of a family man.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Then, in the fall of 2015, he was everywhere once again. Two dazzling singles, \u201cLazarus\u201d and \u201cBlackstar,\u201d were released, accompanied by striking videos, and a new play, Lazarus, loosely based on the main character from Bowie\u2019s first major film, The Man Who Fell To Earth, from 1976, and including both classic and new Bowie music, was announced. <\/p>\n

On Jan. 8, 2016, Bowie\u2019s 69th birthday, the gorgeous, genre-defying album, Blackstar, was released. But before the public could even absorb this latest creative burst from the pop culture giant, he was gone, dead after a long-concealed bout of cancer.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

In all of the books and essays and documentaries that followed, one thing became clear: We never really knew David Bowie. Sure, his public persona and rock legend status were set in stone, but David Jones, the man Bowie was when the cameras and the record button were off, remained a wonderful, remarkable enigma.<\/p>\n

A new box set, I Can\u2019t Give Everything Away (2002-2016)<\/a>, finally sheds some light on the mystery. Covering the last 15 years of Bowie\u2019s remarkable life, what\u2019s most remarkable is that this era now appears to be perhaps the most consistently fruitful period of Bowie\u2019s recording career. But it\u2019s also the one in which the characters and guises were largely abandoned, in favor of top drawer songcraft and unfailingly stellar performances.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this period was a time in his life where he had more options,\u201d longtime bassist Gail Ann Dorsey recalls of the final years of Bowie\u2019s career. \u201cEarly on in his career, there was so much going on, from Ziggy Stardust to the Thin White Duke, elaborate things, and the music was always great, the songwriting was always brilliant, and the singing was just beyond. But in this era, he was getting older, and he still had so much to say. And he was excited about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because he was getting older, Dorsey continues, \u201che felt he didn\u2019t have to go out in high-heeled boots and he didn\u2019t have to dye his hair. He said after he turned 50, \u2018I don\u2019t need to do all that stuff.\u2019 And I think he discovered, within himself, more freedom to even be himself. And it comes out in this music. That\u2019s what I hear. He was increasingly more comfortable with being whatever he was\u2014really, deeply was\u2014without having to shock anybody. He just had to do the work.\u201d <\/p>\n

Below, some of Bowie\u2019s closest collaborators during the period covered within I Can\u2019t Give Everything Away remember the man they came to see as a mentor, creative role model and, even, friend, in turn giving us a window into the David Bowie we never knew.<\/p>\n

The Next Day wasn\u2019t just a surprise to David Bowie\u2019s fans.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got a phone call from him about The Next Day sessions,\u201d Dorsey recalls of the 2012 call from Bowie that kickstarted things. \u201cIt had been pretty quiet leading up to that, because he\u2019d had his health issues, so I was surprised.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time of The Next Day, Bowie had replaced booze and drugs with some unexpected indulgences.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d done pretty much every drug under the sun<\/a> either together or around each other over the 40-plus years we knew each other,\u201d guitarist Earl Slick recalls of his off again, on again boss since 1974. \u201cBut when I showed up at the sessions for The Next Day, things had really changed. We were both family men and we\u2019d both been sober a long time. So, on the way to the studio, I grabbed some biscotti from this little shop I knew that David loved. Man, was he happy when he saw them. Between those and the espressos we were downing while we were recording, we were both flying pretty high on sugar and caffeine. We had a good laugh over how different things were from the old days.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"DavidBowie\u2019s stage presence was formidable. When he retreated from the public eye after his health scares in 2004, the world lost a great performer. Masayoshi Sukita The Next Day can rightly be considered the first surprise drop of the modern era by a major star. And that\u2019s just how Bowie intended it.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe called me and said, \u2018Hey, I\u2019m gonna do another album, but you have to promise you\u2019re not going to tell anybody about it or you can\u2019t be involved,\u2019\u201d remembers Dorsey. \u201cAnd I said, \u2018Of course. I\u2019m not going to say a word.\u2019 He was kind of pissed off. I remember him saying, \u2018Every time I do anything, it gets leaked out onto the internet.\u2019 He didn\u2019t want all of that energy floating around. He wanted to make a record that was like when he made a record, when anybody made a record, in the \u201860s and \u201870s. They just were making a record. There was no publicity around what they were doing. And then a record came out and we were ready to receive it. He wanted to go back to that model, where there was no interference from the outside about what he may or may not be doing, or when it was coming out, or any other speculation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sessions for The Next Day were intense, but also Bowie kept a sense of humor about the secrecy of them.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was in a good mood, especially because he was making music, people around him that he enjoyed working with, because that\u2019s what he loved doing,\u201d recalls Dorsey. \u201cAs a spoof on the secrecy of it all, I remember he had a little leather briefcase, which he kept all the charts in. People would scribble out their notes on them throughout the day while we were recording, but then, at the end of the session, he\u2019d go by each music stand and kind of whip the paper off, very dramatically, and stick it in his special little dossier. So, that was a sort of running joke, this undercover thing that was happening. But it was playful.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"DavidBowie\u2019s final photo shoot, to promote the album \u201cBlackstar,\u201d shows him defiant in the face of impending death. Jimmy King Bowie\u2019s surprise swan song Blackstar was more than a year in the making.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe recorded demos, based on his home demos, about six or seven months before we started the album officially, in January 2015,\u201d Bowie\u2019s longtime producer Tony Visconti told me during an interview a few years ago. \u201cDavid was on keyboards and guitar, I was on bass, and we used [longtime Bowie drummer] Zach Alford and a jazz keyboard player friend of mine named Jack Spann.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cI mentioned to him, \u2018I\u2019m checking out some of your older tunes,\u2019\u201d saxophonist and Blackstar bandleader Donny McCaslin recalls telling Bowie after getting tapped to play on what became Blackstar. \u201cAnd he wrote back, \u2018Well, what are you listening to?\u2019 And I listed, maybe, 15 tunes. Things like \u2018Life on Mars,\u2019 even stuff from Heathen. And the spirit of his reply was, \u2018That\u2019s my old stuff and I\u2019m into something new now.\u2019 And I immediately stopped listening to all that stuff and just focused on the demos for Blackstar. Because in that moment I realized, yeah, he wants us to do what we do with his tunes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe phone call is mind-blowing enough,\u201d recalls bassist Tim LeFebvre. \u201cWe\u2019re gonna record with Bowie? Even that was pretty mind-boggling. But when we got to the sessions we all relaxed, because he was very, very, very nice. And over time it got funnier and funnier, because the guy was hilarious. He played us the Legendary Stardust Cowboy and we were in fucking tears. He made the vibe very comfortable from the very first day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alongside Blackstar, Bowie\u2019s last great work\u2014the off-Broadway show Lazarus\u2014was intended to confound.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe gave his songs a \u2018new skin,\u2019 as he called it,\u2019\u201d the director Ivo van Hov recalls of his collaboration with Bowie. \u201cThe songs sound different, because they are sung by women, or by totally different voices than his voice, and that\u2019s what he loved about it. He wanted the songs to take on a new meaning. Because David Bowie\u2019s work is not one thing. You can think and feel different things. That\u2019s what\u2019s great about his music. And that\u2019s also what we wanted our theater piece to be: ambivalent. He didn\u2019t want to tell the audience what to think.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although the quintessential solo artist, Bowie thrived on collaboration.<\/p>\n

\u201cDavid was very interested in seeing what other people would do with the art,\u201d keyboardist Henry Hey, who worked on The Next Day and collaborated with Bowie on Lazarus, recalls. \u201cHe was very good at picking people to help him out, to work on his projects, to be collaborators and to be entrusted with that role. And once he\u2019d made that decision, then he would give you that trust, completely.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Blackstar, Bowie was a man on a mission.<\/p>\n

\u201cDavid rolled in, and we talked a little bit, and they threw on a demo of one of the tunes,\u201d remembers McCaslin. \u201cWe listened to it once and then we started recording. And after that, we only ever did one or two or, maybe, three takes of each song. On the strength of his songwriting, and the demos that he sent us, all the essential elements were there, so we were able to just jump in and play. It felt really cohesive right from the start.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"DavidOne of Bowie\u2019s longest collaborations was with the photographer Masayoshi Sukita. \u201cIt\u2019s very hard for me to accept that Sukita-san has been snapping away at me since 1972 but that really is the case,\u201d Bowie once said. Masayoshi Sukita During the first week of the sessions, Bowie celebrated his 68th birthday with the band.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis birthday was great,\u201d recalls McCaslin. \u201cWe recorded this really wild version of \u2018Happy Birthday,\u2019 a really exuberant, avant garde, downtown-ish, punk version, and when he walked in that day we played it for him. Iman came at lunch, and we had this very elaborate sushi lunch and we were all hanging out. It was real nice.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cHe let us into his world a little bit that way,\u201d adds LeFebvre. \u201cIt was a nice way to break it up. Because we were all nervous as shit that first week. But then, as time went on, it got a lot more loose and fun. But that was definitely an icebreaker.\u201d <\/p>\n

Bowie was committed to seeing Lazarus to the finish line despite his illness.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe so did not want to be defined by his illness, and he never brought it up unless I\u2019d ask, \u2018How are you feeling?\u2019,\u201d recalls Hey. \u201dAnd he definitely never wanted it to be a part of the creative process, or temper the process. The only concession was that sometimes we wouldn\u2019t see each other in person. But we continued the work, even if it was by Skype, although we couldn\u2019t always be working, anyway, because he was working on Blackstar at the same time. So, David was pretty busy during that time, and he did everything that he could to never allow his illness to color or affect the process, at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was there from the earliest read throughs, through previews, right up to the opening,\u201d van Hov recalled of the period that ran until just a few weeks before Bowie\u2019s death. \u201cHe\u2019d watch run throughs, and he\u2019d stay long afterwards, hanging out with us, exchanging ideas. It was a very normal artistic production process. His only concern was always the project itself, not his image or whatever. He always went for the artistic choices.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bowie even said goodbye in his own unique way.<\/p>\n

\u201cDavid always called me or sent me a card or something for my birthday, but never both,\u201d Earl Slick recalls. \u201cBut on that last birthday, which was just three months before he died, I got a really sweet card, but then on my birthday he called me. We had a really great conversation, laughing about the old times and trading stories about our families and what we were up to. But never once did he bring up his health. After I got the news, I immediately remembered that call. In retrospect, of course, he was saying goodbye, even though I didn\u2019t know it. Of all the time we shared together, I\u2019m really glad I have that memory of David.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"David Bowie always seemed to be everywhere. From the moment he dyed his hair orange, cut it into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138573,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":["post-138572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}