THE STARMAN

REBIRTH OF

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Tie White Noise, may have been produced by Nile Rodgers, but its ragtag collection of covers and songs earnestly criticising the evils of racism failed to chime with the mood of a country emerging into the Britpop era of Blur and Oasis.

Marriage to the model Iman gave him personal fulfilment, and a reunion with Eno on the 1995 album Outside saw him produce his best work in over a decade, but the mainstream had moved on by then.

Attempts at reclaiming the zeitgeist stuttered — his drum’n’bass album Earthling was actually embarrassing, like seeing your father wearing hot pants — but when he triumphantly headlined Glastonbury in 2000, the world remembered why they’d loved Bowie so much in the first place, as he played the greatest hits set that he swore he’d never play again, and gave festival-goers the experience of their lives.