It was such a shock to hear the news about Bowie the other day, especially as a few days before on his 69th birthday I saw a post on his FB official page talking about his plans for his 70th…

It’s hard to comprehend the commitment of the man to his art having now watched the video for ‘Lazarus’ after his death… Even harder now to think how much influence he had on my formative music tastes as a teen, and remembering the excitement of the last night of his Serious Moonlight Tour held in Hong Kong.

Utterly stunning news, even though we know it comes to all of us, even the gifted.

I wanted to put a quick tribute together to the man and found that, in addition to his iconic music from the 70s, there was so much more and so much different in the four decades he recorded in since then to just put out the familiar tunes. Gone it seems was the full-on flaunting of his love affair with fame, transcending into a more introspective flirting with his ego, culminating in his last album release while alive, Blackstar.

So there are two parts, Part 1, in this blog, brings together a selection of the biggest tunes and a few personal favourites and versions from the Ziggy era. Part 2 will follow, bringing music from his transformation into the Thin White Duke and beyond, forever the chameleon of rock and roll.

Farewell Starman, we know you will forever be waiting in the sky.