Obituaries

[sustra2]

David Bowie died today at the age of 69.....

[duke007]

David Bowie died today at the age of 69.....

 

Very sad news indeed........a legend

 

R.I.P David 

 

 

 

Singer David Bowie has died at the age of 69 from cancer.

His son, film director Duncan Jones, confirmed the news and a statement was issued on his social media accounts.

"David Bowie died peacefully today surrounded by his family after a courageous 18-month battle with cancer," it said.

"While many of you will share in this loss, we ask that you respect the family's privacy during their time of grief."

 

The singer only released his latest album Blackstar on his birthday on Friday.

Tributes have been paid to Bowie from across the world of entertainment.

Brian Eno, who collaborated with Bowie on his albums Low and Heroes, said: "Words cannot express... rest in peace David Bowie".

 

Rapper Kanye West said: "David Bowie was one of my most important inspirations, so fearless, so creative, he gave us magic for a lifetime."

Comedian and actor Ricky Gervais, who convinced Bowie to star as himself and ridicule Gervais in an episode of 2006 sitcom Extras, wrote simply: "I just lost a hero. RIP David Bowie."

 

Bowie collaborator Rick Wakeman wrote on Twitter: "As I'm sure you can imagine I'm gutted hearing of David's passing. He was the biggest influence & encouragement I could ever have wished for."

And Prime Minister David Cameron said: "I grew up listening to and watching the pop genius David Bowie. He was a master of re-invention, who kept getting it right. A huge loss."

 

David Bowie was the Picasso of pop. He was an innovative, visionary, restless artist: the ultimate ever-changing postmodernist.

 

Along with the Beatles, Stones and Elvis Presley, Bowie defined what pop music could and should be. He brought art to the pop party, infusing his music and performances with the avant-garde ideas of Merce Cunningham, John Cage and Andy Warhol.

 

He turned pop in a new direction in 1972 with the introduction of his alter ego Ziggy Stardust. Glam rock was the starting point, but Ziggy was much more than an eyeliner-wearing maverick: he was a truly theatrical character that at once harked backed to pre-War European theatre while anticipating 1980s androgyny and today's discussions around a transgender spectrum.

 

He was a great singer, songwriter, performer, actor, producer and collaborator. But beyond all that, at the very heart of the matter, David Bowie was quite simply - quite extraordinarily - cool.

His last live performance was at a New York charity concert in 2006.

Blackstar, which includes just seven songs, has been well received by critics.

Bowie's breakthrough came with 1972's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.

 

[duke007]

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Stroker]

It just gets worse.

[Luung]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

 

Not another fukin' childhood hero gone!

 

Jezuuuuus, First record I ever knew the words to... Starman.. First album I ever bought, Ziggy Stardust & the Spiders from Mars.. In fact up until 1978, I had all his albums... Saw him twice too & got a chance to speak to the great man once in my favorite clothes' shop, Margret Howell's, back in the early eighties... He just sounded like the bloke next door with a mortgage & a lawn mower, he was absolutely lovey!

 

He influenced me in very much the same sort of way that Bryan Ferry did... In fact, I used to go to many Ferry & Bowie nights at the 'Blitz' nightclub, back in the mid to late 70's... Funnily enough they were usually organized by Steve Strange, who was only a year older than myself & died just last year (Although I didn't quite like him very much, & he didn't like me either)

 

Ah, this is so sad, first Brian Ferry, then Lemmy, & now this... Fuck this bastard world!

 

R.I.P. David Bowie... From a big, big, big fan!

[duke007]

@Luung.... I think you will find that Bryan Ferry CBE is still very much alive and kicking   

[duke007]

[Tomcat]

OMG so sad... i,loved Bowie....remember trying to get tickets for Romford Odeon and the queue was a mile long , never did see him live.  Rick Wakeman actually played the piano on his early Albums ( trivia titbit) . Also he dresses up a woman for one album cover and it was changed quickly due to outrage... how daring was that for the time

 

Ziggy Stardust takes some beating as an aibum and how it never got made into a West End show ill never understand...

 

RIP... the Picasso of Pop

[Jimslim]

Quite a shock to wake up to Bowie's death this morning .

 

The guy was unique pure and simple we will never see his like again in an age when money and selling product is more important than talent .

 

In centuries to come future generations will look back on David Bowie and Bob Dylan and others in the same way as we look on Mozart and Beethoven now .

 

I bought all his albums from the beginning up until the mid Eighties when he appeared to have peaked but in true Bowie style he came back again .  

 

I remember hearing this on the radio when it came out around the Millennium and starting to buy his albums again .

 

[strocube]

So sad about David Bowie's passing. I actually cried when I found out this morning.

Not only was he a true artist and a genius, but he was also an inspiration and hero to millions of alintared weirdos, like me, and I am sure, some of you as well.

I first encountered Ziggy when I was 13-years-old, way back in 1973. I have been a fan ever since. Was fortunate enough to have seen him live when he was doing his Serious Moonlight tour in 1984. It was an amazing show.

Travel well, Starman. Thanks for dropping by.

[xyzzy]

I woke up early this morning as I was off to the airport at 8:30 AM. It was all over the news at 5 AM. Ziggy Stardust was a big changing point in this old pharts life. WHAM BAM THANK YOU MA'AM!

[Luung]

@Luung.... I think you will find that Bryan Ferry CBE is still very much alive and kicking   

Oh yeah, that was your topic about which star you'd like to be?... Whooops.. Fuck, I'm loosing it, I get all these topics mixed up now.. Man, I've got to stop smokin' that shit

 

Rick Wakeman actually played the piano on his early Albums ( trivia titbit) . Also he dresses up a woman for one album cover and it was changed quickly due to outrage... how daring was that for the time

Here's another bit of trivia.. Did you know that David Bowie was in the same class at school as Peter Frampton?.. I find it incredible that two completely different artists' who both made it so BIG in their own rights, actually used to play conkers in the playground together.

The album cover in the dress was, 'Man who sold the world', I think it might well have flown if it were a bit more tongue in cheek. I'm sure that the problem for most, at the time, was that he was obviously making a very serious attempt, (very much like the traps of today)... And that makes a lot of folk outside our appreciative world, a bit queasy.

Here's my favorite Bowie track.... Very Ray Davies

[Pdoggg]

Bowie in Bangkok, around 4:20 there is some gogo footage.

 

[Luung]

Alan Rickman's just died... Same age as David Bowie, only 69, what a great talent, what a shame

[iceberg]

I loved him in Die Hard, sad to see he's passed on!

Also I can't forget the Family Guy episode with his answering machine! 5555

RIP!

[Pdoggg]

Unlike John Lennon who is very much associated with New York, Bowie was a quiet, low key New Yorker

 

About 10 years ago, the playwright John Guare got a call asking if he wanted to meet David Bowie to discuss a theater project.

 

As Mr. Guare remembered it, Mr. Bowie was “in a very dark place” (it was shortly after he had had a heart attack onstage in Berlin), and a mutual friend, the English producer Robert Fox, was trying to coax him back to a creative life. Mr. Guare immediately said yes.

 

He and Mr. Bowie met at each other’s homes in New York to throw around ideas, and sometimes they went out. “We would take walks around the East Village,” Mr. Guare said. “And I was always praying somebody would run into us so I could say, ‘Do you know my friend David Bowie?’”

 

It never happened.

 

Mr. Guare was at first puzzled and then amazed at how Mr. Bowie — the stage creature, the persona, the guy he saw command an audience at Radio City Music Hall in 1973 with his spiky orange hair and snow-white tan — could walk the city streets unrecognized.

 

“He traveled with this cloak of invisibility — nobody saw him,” Mr. Guare said. “He just eradicated himself.”

 

People often forgot, but up until his death, on Sunday at age 69, Mr. Bowie was a New Yorker. He said so himself, emphatically. “I’m a New Yorker!” he declared to SOMA magazine in 2003, after he’d been here a decade.

 

He and his Somali-born wife, Iman, who is a model fluent in five languages, spent almost their entire marriage, more than 20 years, as residents of the city. Anyone will tell you they were one of New York’s most glamorous, graceful couples, made all the more so by the dignified and private way they lived.

 

And though Mr. Bowie was enormously wealthy, he wasn’t one of those rich guys who kept an apartment in the city, along with a portfolio of global real estate holdings, and flew in. Aside from a mountain retreat in Ulster County, N.Y., his Manhattan apartment was his only home.

 

You may not have considered all this because Mr. Bowie was an apparition in the city, rarely glimpsed. You heard it mentioned that he lived here. Somewhere downtown, someone thought. But seeing him out? Good luck.

 

Michael Musto, the veteran night life columnist (and occasional New York Times contributor), met him at a party in the 1970s but saw him very few times after that, he said. Gerard Malanga, the poet and Warhol associate, who lived three blocks from Mr. Bowie and had friends in common, described himself as “one of the millions who never encountered David on the street or anywhere.”

 

Mr. Bowie wasn’t a Garbo-level recluse. He got around enough to avoid the terrible fate of having his privacy draw more attention to him. But if people did spot him at Lincoln Center or out to dinner with Iman, they usually gave him wide berth, out of respect and also a sense of intimidation.

 

 

Get lifestyle news from the Style, Travel and Food sections, from the latest trends to news you can use.

 

 

“I had always thought he was unapproachable,” Mr. Musto said. “But he was quite lovely and accessible.”

 

“The fabulous identities he had,” Mr. Guare said — meaning Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane and the Thin White Duke and even the Bowie of the ’80s, who looked like the world’s most elegantly dressed serial killer — “bore no reflection on the person who was carrying them.”

 

 

“I think he had complete access to David Jones,” Mr. Guare added, referring to Mr. Bowie’s birth name. “And that’s who I knew.”

 

Mr. Bowie heard New York before he ever saw it. When he was 19 and still living in England, his manager, back from the States, gave him an acetate record of “The Velvet Underground and Nico,” obtained directly from Andy Warhol.

 

“I was hearing a degree of cool that I had no idea was humanly sustainable,” he later wrote in an essay for New York magazine.

 

He traveled to New York in 1971, around the time he released “Hunky Dory,” his fourth album. One of the first New Yorkers he encountered was Moondog, the blind, flowingly bearded street performer who dressed in a homemade robe and a horned Viking helmet and planted himself on West 54th Street. On that trip, Mr. Bowie visited the Factory; touchingly, he wanted to play his song “Andy Warhol” for the man himself.

 

When he came for an extended stay in 1972, he was accompanied by his first wife, Angie, and his new manager, Tony DeFries. Mr. DeFries, a cigar-chomping, Col. Tom Parker-like showbiz slickster, believed in success by way of publicity-generating spectacle. Back then, Mr. Bowie did not pass through the city in a cloak of invisibility. He took limos everywhere and presented himself like an abstract canvas.

 

Photo

David Bowie outside the Carlyle Hotel on the Upper East Side, circa 1980. Credit Art Zelin/Getty Images

Here’s Bebe Buell, the musician and rock star paramour, recalling Mr. Bowie’s arrival at Max’s Kansas City: “He walked in wearing a powdered-blue suit with orange hair, and just bedazzled us all.”

 

After he became Ziggy Stardust, and a huge star, Mr. Bowie found refuge at the West 20th Street apartment of his publicist, Cherry Vanilla. In her memoir, “Lick Me,” she recounts how he would do brain-sizzling amounts of cocaine and drink milk for nourishment (no solid food in those years), and they’d rap about “power, symbols, communication, music, the occult, Aleister Crowley and Merlin the Magician.”

 

Like a lot of rock stars, Mr. Bowie lived in hotels: first the Gramercy Park Hotel, then the Sherry-Netherland until the room-service bill became obscene. Throughout the 1970s, he was less a citizen of New York than a debauched tourist, directing his limo to Max’s, Paradise Garage and Reno Sweeney. Socially deft and curious, he transited between Studio 54 and CBGB, and hung out with Mick and Bianca Jagger and Iggy Pop.

 

In the New York magazine essay, Mr. Bowie wrote of that period, “I rarely got up before noon and hit the sack again around four or five in the morning.” He saw the city with “multicolored glasses.”

 

As had been widely chronicled, Mr. Bowie left America for Berlin, partly to flee his druggie lifestyle.

 

In 1980, after recording the albums “Low,” “Heroes” and “Lodger” — which became known as his Berlin trilogy — he was back in New York, this time as the Elephant Man at the Booth Theater on Broadway. (“He is splendid” The Times wrote.) In 1982, with Nile Rodgers producing, he recorded the album “Let’s Dance” at the Power Station on West 53rd Street, a sonic and commercial triumph. But for all his victories and nocturnal good times in the city, Mr. Bowie seemed unable to commit to it.

 

 

When Iman met Mr. Bowie at a dinner party in 1990, he was living in Switzerland as a tax exile, a citizen of the world. She wasn’t having it, she once told The Guardian: “I’m a New Yorker. I was like, ‘Let’s go home.’”

 

The couple married in 1992 and moved into a conventional prewar apartment on Central Park South. They had a daughter, Lexi. In 1999, they paid $4 million for two penthouses (an upstairs-downstairs) on Lafayette Street in SoHo, where they remained. That’s also where fans gathered in the numbing cold after he died to lay flowers, many unaware, until that day, that he’d been a fellow New Yorker.

 

Over time, Mr. Bowie did become a real New Yorker. He absorbed the city’s attitude and cultural quirks, and had trouble catching a cab. He wrote a song (“Slip Away”) about Uncle Floyd, the host of a weird, low-budget, quasi-children’s TV show that aired locally back in the UHF days.

 

After the Sept. 11 attacks, he performed movingly at the Concert for New York City at Madison Square Garden. He covered Simon and Garfunkel’s “America” and announced from the stage, before singing “Heroes”: “I’d particularly like to say hello to the folks from my local ladder. You know where you are.”

 

In photographs, you can see how subdued and grown-up Mr. Bowie’s second go-round in the city was. “He did the ballet, all the fun cultural stuff,” said Patrick McMullan, who photographed him over the years, though much less after Mr. Bowie’s heart attack in Berlin.

 

He was always in a sharp suit or tux. Regularly at the Met Gala or the Council of Fashion Designers of America Awards to support his wife. Never caught stumbling out of the hot club at 4 a.m. He’d already been to a lifetime’s worth of parties.

 

Iman once described Mr. Bowie as a “homebody”; The Onion imagined him as a “pansexual alien” staying in to “do lasagna for dinner.” He led a pretty normal-seeming life. He shopped for groceries once a week at Dean & DeLuca. He loved the chicken sandwich with watercress and tomatoes at Olive’s on Prince Street. He liked to rise at 6 a.m. and get his “buzz” by walking the still-empty streets of Chinatown.

 

He read a lot. He collected art. He painted. He and Iman socialized with the parents of their daughter’s friends at school. He spent his remaining time meaningfully and productively, and largely here.

 

 

A wall near the couple’s home in SoHo, decorated by fans after he died last week at 69. Credit Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images

Mr. Bowie stopped touring in 2004. He left New York only when work demanded, and during his stunning end-of-life creative burst, he found a way to never leave his neighborhood.

 

“Lazarus,” the show for which Mr. Bowie composed songs and resurrected the displaced alien he played in the 1976 film “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” was staged at New York Theater Workshop, on East Fourth Street, less than 10 blocks from his house.

 

Both his 2013 album, “The Next Day,” and the demos for his final record, “Blackstar” — which was released, incidentally, on his birthday and just two days before he died — were recorded at the Magic Shop recording studio on Crosby Street — 283 steps from his front door.

 

Mr. Bowie would have ridden the elevator down from his penthouse, exited his building, crossed Lafayette Street, slipped through the little alley called Jersey Street and walked on cobblestones until he came to the studio’s unmarked metal doors.

 

Brian Thorn, a recording engineer for the “Next Day” sessions, said Mr. Bowie worked “very humane hours,” as rock stars go. “We’d start by 10,” Mr. Thorn said. “He would get there with or before the musicians. The studio would have his coffee order ready,” a double macchiato from La Colombe.

 

Mr. Thorn remembered overhearing Mr. Bowie and his guitarist talking one day. The guitarist was going on about an art exhibit, and how much Mr. Bowie would love it. Then he caught himself, realizing whom he was talking to, and said, “Oh, you can never go there; there’s too many people.”

 

Mr. Bowie answered, slyly, “You’d be surprised the places I’m able to go.”

 

Have you seen the photo that’s been circulating on Twitter of Mr. Bowie out in the city in cargo shorts and sneakers and carrying Uncut magazine? He’s very normcore. You can see why nobody recognized him, why an international superstar was able to move through the city unseen.

 

He understood that in our minds we all held a picture of David Bowie, or Ziggy, or the Thin White Duke. It allowed him to walk among us disguised as himself, David Jones.

 

www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/fashion/david-bowie-invisible-new-yorker.html

[Gutsy]

Another entry to the bad news thread as we lost another music great today. The Eagles founding member Glenn Fry died in New York today at age 67..

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/glenn-frey-dead_us_569d5f8ee4b0cd99679b1a75

 

Sounds like he was battling several things for quite some time.  

 

[Luung]

What an absolute shame... They're certainly falling thick & fast at the moment.
 
I'm so glad that I actually got a chance to see the Eagles once at Wembley Area, it was amazing how they managed to be regal & yet casual, all at the same time.

I personally feel that regardless of anyone's taste, the Eagles will stand the test of time as being just about the most talented band on the planet... And I say that in spite of the fact that I've walked out of many a bar because they wouldn't fuckin' well stop playing 'Hotel California'.
 
Here's Glen Frey's own personal favorite.

https://youtu.be/pk0RAYlI9K4

[360]

.

[Pdoggg]

RIP Khun Por.  All the Thai ladyboys know who he is.   Dengue.

 

 

BANGKOK — Beloved television actor “Por Thrisadee” Sahawong, 35, whose illness gripped the nation for more than two months, died this morning at Ramathibodi Hospital in Bangkok.

 

A statement issued Monday afternoon by the hospital, where he was admitted 71 days ago for treatment of severe complications stemming from dengue fever, said Thrisadee died at 11:50am.

 

"Since early January 2016, his lung infection escalated, causing his condition to progressively deteriorate," it read. "He eventually stopped responding to treatment and passed away peacefully."

 

The statement said Trisadee had been suffering from various health complications such as kidney failure, liver failure, hemorrhaging and loss of white blood cells. His left foot was amputated due to a blood clot in his leg, and doctors later removed one of his lungs.

 

Sornmontra Pichaisornplaeng, Por’s personal manager, confirmed his death this afternoon and said his funeral will take place in his hometown of Buriram.

 

His family has yet to make a statement on the actor's death. The actor is survived by his wife Vanda Sahawong and daughter Pakwan "Mali" Sahawong.

Among the first to publicly mourn his death was Thrisadee’s favorite football club, Buriram United; the actor originally hailed from Buriram province.

 

“Por’s departure today is the greatest loss for the Sahawong family and also the Buriram United family, because we have lost the person who loves us with a pure heart, who loves us with an unconditional love,” read a statement from the club posted to Facebook and accompanied by a photo of Thrisadee wearing a Buriram United jersey.

 

Thrisadee’s illness had become an obsession of the national media ever since he was first admitted to the hospital on Nov. 9 in a comatose state due to complications from dengue fever, with daily reports filed from the hospital waiting room.

 

Thrisadee was an A-list celebrity known for acting in the immensely popular television dramas known as lakorn.

 

While hospitalized, the story of his illness provided its own plot twist. Several days after being admitted to the hospital came the revelation Thrisadee had a 2-year-old daughter with Vanda kept out of the public eye.

 

Thrisadee rose to fame after he was named Cleo Thailand's 2004 Bachelor of the Year. In 2009 he was propelled into superstardom by his lead performance in classic lakorn remake Pu Yai Lee Kab Nang Ma, or Village Head Lee and Miss Ma. He has played more than 30 roles in other series.

http://www.khaosodenglish.com/detail.php?newsid=1453102492

[Tomcat]

What an absolute shame... They're certainly falling thick & fast at the moment.

 

 

 

Glen once said his tastes were " Booze , Broads and Blow".....later in life he reversed into a fitness fanatic but one supposes the damage was done . 

 

 

RIP 

[SiamSam]

For this of us who remember BARNEY MILLER and of course his wonderful GODFATHER character I am sad to say Abe Vigoda died today at age 94. What a wonderful man. 

 

http://www.msn.com/en-ca/entertainment/celebrity/abe-vigoda-of-barney-miller-and-the-godfather-dies-at-94/ar-BBoJvzl?li=AAggNb9

[TEXASMAC]

In the Godfather he was good. On Barney Miller he was awesome. Loved that show because of him. Sad day.

[Pdoggg]

RIP Abe

 

[SiamSam]

Great movie moment. One of the best without a doubt. Boo Hoo for Abe's passing but what a wonderful time he had of being. Good for him.