I remember the first time I dropped ‘Fame’ at Carriages club, Swindon, not because it was my 20th birthday, not because it segued so well after Stevie Wonder’s ‘Superstition’, but for the number of funk fans who just kept dancing to this great new funky tune… Not that they knew it was Bowie!

I remember even more the astonishment, a few coming to the booth to check the single, when I said “Now THAT was… David Bowie!”.

It was pretty much unheard of me to play anything but R&B artists in those days, and that night we even had a couple of successful UK R&B recording artists in the club who were blown away by the sound coming from a man who, until that moment, had embodied white glam-rock.

Bowie didn’t invent ‘blue-eyed soul’, others like The Righteous Brothers and Frankie Valli had already established that, but the Thin White Duke went on to make the genre his own.

The second part of this tribute shows Bowie in his post Ziggy days, sometimes experimenting with new music scenes, sometimes diving into mainstream dance, but then seemingly just concentrating on his art rather than the showmanship that he had become associated with.

There’s dance; there’s rock; there’s new wave; there’s funk; there’s soul; there’s even a little return to glam-rock; then there’s Lazarus, which surely must be his self-penned epitaph.

So saluté and farewell David Bowie! I hope you all enjoy this fan’s humble thanks for the excitement and delight he’s given over the years.