Legendary Artist David Bowie Loses Battle With Cancer, Dies at 69
Legendary singer and artist David Bowie loses battle against cancer. Passes away at 69.
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Legendary singer and artist David Bowie has died at the age of 69.
In a statement posted on his official Facebook account, Bowie’s representatives said the singer, actor and legendary musician died “surrounded by his family after a courageous 18-month battle with cancer.”
Bowie’s son Duncan Jones confirmed his father’s death.
Born David Jones in the Brixton area of south London, Bowie took up the saxophone at 13. He shot to fame in Europe with 1969’s “Space Oddity”.
But it was Bowie’s 1972 portrayal of a doomed bisexual alien rock star, Ziggy Stardust, that propelled him to global stardom. Bowie and Ziggy, wearing outrageous costumes, makeup and bright orange hair, took the rock world by storm.
Bowie said he was gay in an interview in the Melody Maker newspaper in 1972, coinciding with the launch of his androgynous persona, with red lightning bolt across his face and flamboyant clothes.
He told Playboy four years later he was bisexual, but in the eighties he told Rolling Stone magazine that the declaration was “the biggest mistake I ever made”, and he was “always a closet heterosexual”.
The excesses of a hedonistic life of the real rock star was taking its toll. In a reference to his prodigious appetite for cocaine, he said: “I blew my nose one day in California,” he said. “And half my brains came out. Something had to be done.”
Bowie kept a low profile after undergoing emergency heart surgery in 2004 but marked his 69th birthday on Friday with the release of a new album, “Blackstar”, with critics giving the thumbs up to the latest work in a long and innovative career.
(With agency inputs)
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