David Bowie Dies at 69; a Chameleon in Music, Art and Fashion
By JON PARELES

David Bowie, the infinitely changeable, fiercely forward-looking songwriter who taught generations of musicians about the power of drama, images and personas, died on Sunday, two days after his 69th birthday.

His death was confirmed by his publicist, Steve Martin, on Monday morning. No other details were provided.

Mr. Bowie had been treated for cancer for the last 18 months, according to a statement on his social-media accounts. “David Bowie died peacefully today surrounded by his family,” a post on his Facebook page read.

His last album, “Blackstar,” a collaboration with a jazz quartet that was typically enigmatic and exploratory, was released on Friday — his birthday. He is to be honored with a concert at Carnegie Hall on March 31 featuring the Roots, Cyndi Lauper and the Mountain Goats.

He had also collaborated on an Off Broadway musical, “Lazarus,” which was a surreal sequel to the 1976 film that featured his definitive screen role, “The Man Who Fell to Earth.”

Mr. Bowie wrote songs, above all, about being an outsider: an alien, a misfit, a sexual adventurer, a faraway astronaut. His music was always a mutable blend — rock, cabaret, jazz and what he called “plastic soul” — but it was suffused with genuine soul. He also captured the drama and longing of everyday life, enough to give him No. 1 pop hits like “Let’s Dance.”

In concerts and videos, Mr. Bowie’s costumes and imagery traversed styles, eras and continents, from German Expressionism to commedia dell’arte to Japanese kimonos to space suits. He set an example, and a challenge, for every arena spectacle in his wake.

If he had an anthem, it was “Changes,” from his 1971 album “Hunky Dory,” which proclaimed:

“Turn and face the strange / Ch-ch-changes / Oh look out now you rock and rollers / Pretty soon now you’re gonna get older.”

Mr. Bowie earned admiration and emulation across the musical spectrum — from rockers, balladeers, punks, hip-hop acts, creators of pop spectacles and even classical composers like Philip Glass, who based two symphonies on Mr. Bowie’s albums “Low” and “ ‘Heroes.’ ”

Mr. Bowie’s constantly morphing persona was a touchstone for performers like Madonna and Lady Gaga; his determination to stay contemporary introduced his fans to Philadelphia funk, Japanese fashion, German electronica and drum-and-bass dance music.

Nirvana chose to sing “The Man Who Sold the World,” the title song of Mr. Bowie’s 1970 album, in its brief set for “MTV Unplugged in New York” in 1993. “Under Pressure,” a collaboration with the glam-rock group Queen, supplied a bass line for the 1990 Vanilla Ice hit “Ice Ice Baby.”

Yet throughout Mr. Bowie’s metamorphoses, he was always recognizable. His voice was widely imitated but always his own; his message was that there was always empathy beyond difference.

Angst and apocalypse, media and paranoia, distance and yearning were among Mr. Bowie’s lifelong themes. So was a penchant for transgression coupled with a determination to push cult tastes toward the mainstream.

Mr. Bowie produced albums and wrote songs for some of his idols — Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Mott the Hoople — that gave them pop hits without causing them to abandon their individuality. And he collaborated with musicians like Brian Eno during the late-1970s period that would become known as his Berlin years and, in his final recordings, with the jazz musicians Maria Schneider and Donny McCaslin, introducing them to many new listeners.

Mr. Bowie was a person of relentless reinvention. He emerged in the late 1960s with the voice of a rock belter but with the sensibility of a cabaret singer, steeped in the dynamics of stage musicals.

He was Major Tom, the lost astronaut in his career-making 1969 hit “Space Oddity.” He was Ziggy Stardust, the otherworldly pop star at the center of his 1972 album, “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.”

He was the self-destructive Thin White Duke and the minimalist but heartfelt voice of the three albums he recorded in Berlin in the ’70s.

The arrival of MTV in the 1980s was the perfect complement to Mr. Bowie’s sense of theatricality and fashion. “Ashes to Ashes,” the “Space Oddity” sequel that revealed, “We know Major Tom’s a junkie,” and “Let’s Dance,” which offered, “Put on your red shoes and dance the blues,” gave him worldwide popularity.

Mr. Bowie was his generation’s standard-bearer for rock as theater: something constructed and inflated yet sincere in its artifice, saying more than naturalism could. With a voice that dipped down to baritone and leapt into falsetto, he was complexly androgynous, an explorer of human impulses that could not be quantified.

He also pushed the limits of “Fashion” and “Fame,” writing songs with those titles and also thinking deeply about the possibilities and strictures of pop renown.

Mr. Bowie was married for more than 20 years to the international model Iman, with whom he had a daughter, Alexandria Zahra Jones. They survive him, as does his son from his marriage to the former Mary Angela Barnett, Duncan Jones, a director best known for the 2009 film “Moon.”

In a post on Twitter, Mr. Jones said: “Very sorry and sad to say it’s true. I’ll be offline for a while. Love to all.”

David Robert Jones was born in London on Jan. 8, 1947, where as a youth he soaked up rock ’n’ roll. He took up the saxophone in the 1960s and started leading bands as a teenager, singing the blues in a succession of unsuccessful groups and singles. He suffered a blow in a teenage brawl that caused his left pupil to be permanently dilated.

In the late 1960s, Lindsay Kemp, a dancer, actor and mime, became a lasting influence on Mr. Bowie, focusing his interest in movement and artifice. Mr. Bowie’s music turned toward folk-rock and psychedelia. The release of “Space Oddity,” shortly before the Apollo 11 mission put men on the moon in 1969, gained him a British pop audience and, when it was rereleased in 1973 in the United States, an American one.

By then, with the albums “Hunky Dory,” “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars” and “Aladdin Sane,” Mr. Bowie had become a pioneer of glam rock and a major star in Britain, playing up an androgynous image. But he also had difficulties separating his onstage personas from real life and succumbed to drug problems, particularly cocaine use. In 1973, he abruptly announced his retirement — though it was the retirement of Ziggy Stardust, not of Mr. Bowie.

1947-2016 大衛鮑伊享年69歲

英國一代巨星大衛鮑伊（David Bowie）悄悄與癌症抗爭18個月後，10日病逝。他上周五剛滿69歲。

大衛鮑伊的官網發布聲明說，他在家人圍繞下安詳過世。聲明中並未說明他患的是哪種癌症。他近年來健康走下坡，2004年動了心臟手術，2006年在紐約一場慈善演唱會唱了3首歌，此後就未曾公開演出。他先前並未對外透露罹癌，加上上周五生日當天還發表新專輯，突然過世令各界震驚，英國廣播公司（BBC）、美國有線電視新聞網（CNN）都立即以頭條新聞處理他的死訊，圖文並茂回顧他的音樂與表演藝術成就。

變幻莫測 音樂革命

大衛鮑伊號稱「搖滾變色龍」、「華麗搖滾始祖」，他縱橫流行樂壇四十多年，不斷求新求變挑戰自我和社會框架，從音樂風格、服裝打扮、表演類型都不斷改變，BBC說，他是當代最具影響力的藝人之一，因為他永遠在革命。

1947年出生的大衛鮑伊原名大衛瓊斯（David Jones），1969年以「Space Oddity」一曲成名，這首歌描寫太空人「湯姆少校」迷失在宇宙的故事，曲子發行9天後，美國太空人阿姆斯壯登陸月球。「Space Oddity」是最早呈現太空時代意境的流行音樂之一，往後和大衛鮑伊的許多名曲一樣，不斷被其他歌手翻唱或在電影中出現。

雌雄同體 扭轉時代

紐約時報說，大衛鮑伊許多名曲以「局外人」為主題，包括迷失在太空的湯姆少校、外星人、性冒險者、不適應社會的人。他1972年唱片的主角「Ziggy Stardust」是個雌雄同體的人物，造型和樂風同樣誇張華麗，被評論家認為扭轉了當時整個流行音樂走向。

雖然年紀輕輕就成名，但他的音樂不斷在變化，多樣樂風橫跨華麗搖滾、酒館小調、電子音樂和爵士樂等等，紐約時報說，他1971年的名曲「Changes（改變）」堪稱他的國歌。他還幫人寫曲、製作唱片、演出電影和舞台劇，1990年代他架設自己的網站，利用自己的名氣在華爾街發行「鮑伊債券」，募得5500萬美元。

英國首相 推文致敬

8日在他69歲生日當天發行的爵士樂風新專輯Blackstar，立即在英國iTunes銷售排行榜衝上冠軍，凸顯出他的魅力不衰。

英國首相卡麥隆發推文向大衛鮑伊致敬說：「我聽和看流行樂天才大衛鮑伊的歌長大，他精通重新創造，總是創造對的方向。他的過世真是一大損失。」

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/12/arts/music/david-bowie-dies-at-69.html

紐約時報中文版翻譯：
http://cn.nytimes.com/obits/20160111/cc11bowie/zh-hant/

Slideshow：David Bowie (1947-2016)
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2016/01/12/arts/music/david-bowie-1947-2016/s/20160112_BOWIE_HP-slide-DMXR.html

2016-01-12．聯合報．A13．國際．國際中心