From Rock 'n' Roll Suicide to one of life's true Heroes

With the 10th anniversary of his passing next month, Bowie may be celebrated more in death than in life. JAMES RAMPTON looks back at some difficult years for the rock icon when his reputation took a nosedive

- JAMES RAMPTON

ONE critic described David Bowie as “the most important and influential artist since The Beatles”, while another cites, “one of the supreme careers in popular music, art and culture of the 20th century”.

Selling more than 100 million records worldwide and scooping numerous awards, Bowie was, as last year’s bestselling box-set says, the ultimate “rock ‘n’ roll star”.

So it is astonishing to recall that in the late 1980s and 1990s his reputation took a battering. For the first time in his career he was out of step with a fast-changing music scene. Critics pummelled him, promoters couldn’t shift tickets and one reviewer called him “a [expletive deleted] disgrace”.

His hard rock experiment Tin Machine was deemed a failure, and the singer further undermined his street cred in 1987 by recording a Pepsi ad with Tina Turner.

As his bandleader Reeves Gabrels says: “That commercial encapsulates everything wrong with where his career had gone. He lost a feeling for who his audience was.”

The immensely influential and imaginative musician had mislaid his magic.

However, with typical genius, the magician turned it round again in his final years.

First, he made a groundbreaking comeback, storming the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury in 2000. But his final, dazzling musical statement came with his last album, Blackstar, released two days before

'To the end, Bowie remained the master of reinvention'

his death from liver cancer at the age of 69.

The LP was an elegiac reminder of why there would only ever be one David Bowie.

A new Channel 4 documentary, Bowie: The Final Act, relays the musician’s final creative journey, tracing the course of his stunning resurrection.