very sad.. for sure no musician's death has impacted me like this one.. and even when bob Dylan and chuck berry go it will not have the same impact even though one is my #1 and the other might as well be called mr. rock 'n'roll... I think one of the things that really sucks about getting older is watching people die.. i'm a novice at it but it feels like in the last year I've grown a lot... sadly.
"About a week before his death, with Blackstar nearing release, David Bowie called his longtime friend and producer Tony Visconti via FaceTime, and told him he wanted to make one more album. In what turned out to have been the final weeks of his life, Bowie wrote and demo-ed five fresh songs, and was anxious to return to the studio one last time. Bowie had known since November that his cancer was terminal, according to Visconti, but if their final conversation was any indication, he had no idea he had so little time left. "At that late stage, he was planning the follow-up to Blackstar," says Visconti, that album's producer, in an interview conducted Wednesday for a Bowie memorial package in the next issue of Rolling Stone.
"And I was thrilled," Visconti continues, "and I thought, and he thought, that he'd have a few months, at least. Obviously, if he's excited about doing his next album, he must've thought he had a few more months. So the end must've been very rapid. I'm not privy to it. I don't know exactly, but he must've taken ill very quickly after that phone call." Visconti has been working with Bowie on and off since 1969's Space Oddity, producing numerous key albums, among them 1970's The Man Who Sold the World, 1977's Low, 1980's Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), and 2013's surprise comeback The Next Day.
Around the middle of 2015, however, Bowie's prognosis seemed to improve. "He was optimistic because he was doing the chemo and it was working," says Visconti, "and at one point in the middle of last year, he was in remission. I was thrilled. And he was a bit apprehensive. He said, 'Well, don't celebrate too quickly. For now I'm in remission, and we'll see how it goes.' And he continued the chemotherapy. So I thought he was going to make it. And in November, it just suddenly came back. It had spread all over his body, so there's no recovering from that."
Bowie had already finished Blackstar by November. But even before then, Visconti noticed the tone of some of the lyrics and told him, "You canny bastard. You're writing a farewell album." Bowie simply laughed in response. "He was so brave and courageous," says Visconti. "And his energy was still incredible for a man who had cancer. He never showed any fear. He was just all business about making the album."
