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How Did David Bowie Die? Inside The Hidden Health Issues That Ended The Rock Star’s Life
ilpo musto/Alamy Stock PhotoDavid Bowie at the Rainbow Theatre in Finsbury Park, London. 1990.
“Look up here, I’m in heaven,” sings David Bowie in “Lazarus,” a single from his 25th and final album, Blackstar. That album, largely recorded in secret and released in January 2016, was greeted with excitement and enthusiasm from fans and critics alike. Little did they know that at the time of the release, David Bowie was nearing his death.
For 18 months before the release of Blackstar, the legendary rock star had been battling liver cancer, a fact that was known only to a few people close to him. He had been receiving treatment, but while he was filming the music video for “Lazarus” — a song that deals with themes of death and revival, referencing the Biblical figure by the same name — David Bowie learned that his cancer was terminal. His treatment was ending.
Still, this tragic turn of events was kept from the public. When Blackstar was released in early 2016, on Bowie’s 69th birthday, many assumed that the album’s darker themes and subject matters were just part of another persona or artistic reinvention for him. He was getting older, after all — it made sense that he was reflecting on his life, death, and legacy.
Needless to say, David Bowie’s death on Jan. 10, 2016 in his New York City home, just two days after the release of Blackstar, came as a major shock. To the outside world, Bowie was still at the top of his game. Suddenly, Blackstar didn’t feel like an ordinary album; for many fans, it felt more like a farewell. In fact, some even described it as his “parting gift.”
David Bowie’s Early Life And Education
David Bowie was born David Robert Jones on Jan. 8, 1947, in Brixton, South London, in a postwar Britain still rebuilding from the rubble. His father worked as a promotions officer for a children’s charity, while his mother was a cinema usherette, which likely influenced David’s theatrical flair.
From an early age, it was clear that young David would go on to be a performer. In a letter written by his cousin Kristina Amadeus to The Economist, she notes how his parents “encouraged him from the time he was a toddler” and gave him his first instruments — “a plastic saxophone, a tin guitar, and a xylophone” — before he was even an adolescent.
It was at Bromley Technical High School, however, where David Robert Jones began to transform into David Bowie. He studied art, music, and design, subjects that helped lay the groundwork for his approach to performance. He also received a distinctive physical feature: a permanently dilated left pupil, the result of a fight with his friend George Underwood over a girl.
“It was just horrible. I didn’t like it at the time,” Underwood told the BBC in a 2024 interview. “But of course, later on, lo and behold, he says I did him a favor because it’s given him this enigmatic, otherworldly look.”
George UnderwoodDavid Bowie and George Underwood remained friends throughout their lives.
The mismatched eyes would undoubtedly enhance Bowie’s unique looks throughout his career, but looks alone wouldn’t make him one of the most remarkable musical pioneers in modern history.
David Bowie’s Rise To Musical Stardom
By his teens, David Bowie had been learning proper saxophone techniques and immersing himself in jazz and rhythm and blues records that would heavily influence his sound. But he still had a long road ahead of him.
Throughout the 1960s, he cycled through various bands, like The Konrads, The King Bees, The Manish Boys, and Lower Third. These early projects yielded little commercial success, but they provided a perfect training ground for the young performer to hone his craft.
Rolf Adlercreutz/Alamy Stock PhotoWith his musical talent and knack for reinventing himself, David Bowie became a legendary rock star before his death.
When he was 18 years old, he officially changed his name to David Bowie to avoid being confused with a different British musician, Davy Jones, who went on to become the frontman for The Monkees.
Under the new name, Bowie would embark on a solo career that eventually ascended him to god-like status in the music world — but not right away. His first album, released in 1967, saw little success. This led him to study with famed dancer, mime artist, and choreographer Lindsay Kemp, who helped Bowie immerse himself in a variety of artistic mediums.
“Before I met him, I was so enamored of the music of his songs — the same as he was with my little show [Clowns],” Kemp told Uncut in 2017. “We were mutually enamored with each other. It was the voice and the songs themselves. Then when I met him, it was his physical beauty. It was like the Archangel Gabriel standing there. And then of course, it was his charm, his wit, his humor, his charisma. His talent goes without saying.”
Wikimedia CommonsTony Defries with David Bowie in 1971.
Two years after he met Kemp, Bowie’s breakthrough finally arrived. Combining his love for theater with his unique musical background, he created the 1969 song “Space Oddity” — strategically released around the time of the Apollo 11 Moon landing — which captivated listeners with the haunting tale of Major Tom, an astronaut lost in space.
“I think I wanted to write a new kind of musical,” Bowie recalled in 2002, “and that’s how I saw my future at the time.”
Wikimedia CommonsDavid Bowie performing as Ziggy Stardust on tour in 1972. Known for his creative personas, David Bowie reinvented himself countless times before his death.
“Space Oddity” had garnered a good amount of attention, but it wasn’t until he created the character of Ziggy Stardust in 1972 (with the help of his first wife Angie) that he achieved genuine superstardom. The androgynous, flame-haired alien rock star persona revolutionized popular music, blending glam rock with elements of science fiction and theatrical spectacle.
Ziggy Stardust had transformed Bowie into a genuine cultural phenomenon. People began to closely analyze his lyrics, line by line. They regarded him, in many ways, as a guru of sorts — a title that he was hesitant to accept.
“I’m not that convinced at the moment that I am anybody’s guru,” he said in a 1972 interview with NME. “I know there is a lot of interest in what I’m doing, and we seem to be getting our goodly fair share of exposure, but I’m not convinced that we are leading any particular cult.”
As Bowie’s fame rose, he also began heavily using drugs. His former wife Angie later recalled him having numerous incidents of cocaine-induced paranoia in the 1970s — and sometimes even psychosis — which was part of the reason why their relationship eventually deteriorated.
Though David Bowie later kicked his cocaine habit (and eventually became fully sober by the 1990s), some were convinced that he was destined for an early death due to his drug use and wild lifestyle. In fact, some even feared that he would join the infamous 27 Club.
He later reflected, “By the mid-’80s, it was really apparent to me that I really needed to stop losing myself in my work and in my addictions. What happens is you just wake up one morning and feel absolutely dead. You can’t even drag your soul back into your body. You feel you have negated everything that is wonderful about life. When you have fallen that far, it feels like a miracle when you regain your love of life.”
Though music was clearly one of Bowie’s biggest sources of joy throughout his life, he also found fulfillment in his acting career — putting just as much effort into his movie roles as he did with creating Ziggy Stardust.
A Screen Presence Beyond The Music
Wikimedia CommonsAn RCA publicity photo of David Bowie from 1979.
David Bowie’s first movie role actually came before his music career took off, in the short film The Image, which was filmed in 1967, but his first substantial film work was starring as the alien Thomas Jerome Newton in the 1976 science fiction film The Man Who Fell to Earth. He leveraged the same alien-like nature that had made Ziggy Stardust a breakout success.
Throughout the years, Bowie continued to explore acting alongside music. He appeared in Just a Gigolo in 1978, performed in the play The Elephant Man on Broadway, and, perhaps most memorably, portrayed Jareth, king of the goblins, in Jim Henson’s 1986 fantasy adventure Labyrinth.
“David was my first choice for the part,” Jim Henson had told Entertainment Tonight back in 1985. He described Bowie’s aura as “something you can’t quite put your finger on. And at the same time it’s very powerful and it has the ability to go from very attractive to [nearly] villainous.”
LucasfilmDavid Bowie in Labyrinth.
Although Labyrinth did not perform well at the box office, the film later became regarded as a cult classic, with Bowie’s performance highly praised.
Later, he would appear as Pontius Pilate in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ and the inventor Nikola Tesla in Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige. And while acting never overshadowed Bowie’s musical legacy, it was clear that he brought the same fearless creativity and constant reinvention to his performances on screen as he did to his musical performances.
By the time The Prestige was released in 2006, however, Bowie had become more reclusive. This was in large part due to a heart attack he suffered in 2004, which led him to stop touring. He also limited his public appearances.
But his lack of live performances didn’t mean he was about to stop working, and his surprise album The Next Day was greeted with much enthusiasm in 2013. The same went for his album Blackstar, which was released in 2016. Sadly, Blackstar would be David Bowie’s last piece of work before he died.
How Did David Bowie Die?
Wikimedia CommonsDavid Bowie performing in 2003.
The 2004 heart attack was not the only health issue David Bowie faced in his later years. In fact, Bowie’s biographer Wendy Leigh later claimed that he faced six separate heart attacks that he kept hidden from the public.
By 2014, Bowie’s health had declined even further and he was diagnosed with liver cancer. He kept his diagnosis private, only telling a few people.
During this agonizing time, Bowie continued to push himself creatively. In 2015, a musical titled Lazarus that featured Bowie’s music debuted at the New York Theater Workshop. The musical was designed to be a sequel to The Man Who Fell to Earth, continuing the story of Thomas Newton.
As Bowie privately underwent treatment for his cancer, he also started to work on what would end up being his final album, Blackstar. Notably, a single from that album was also titled “Lazarus.”
Some of the band members who worked with Bowie on Blackstar knew he was ill, but others did not. And even those who were aware of his diagnosis didn’t know how serious it was — even as they learned about the music video for “Lazarus,” which featured Bowie lying on a hospital bed.
The last music video David Bowie released before his death.
“To me, it had to do with the Biblical aspect of it… it had nothing to do with him being ill,” the video’s director Johan Renck told The Guardian. “I found out later that, the week we were shooting, it was when he was told it was over, they were ending treatments and that his illness had won.”
Bowie had kept this information largely under wraps, even as the release of Blackstar — and his 69th birthday — approached. Despite his ailing health, Bowie was apparently keen to keep producing art. He had even suggested making a sequel to the Lazarus musical, director Ivo Van Hove said.
“Bowie was still writing on his deathbed, you could say,” Van Hove remembered. “I saw a man fighting. He fought like a lion and kept working like a lion through it all. I had incredible respect for that.”
But sadly, no amount of determination could save Bowie, and he eventually had to come to terms with the fact that he was running out of time.
“I don’t find it strange he kept his illness so private,” said Francis Whately, who directed a documentary about David Bowie shortly after he died. “He’d had his life picked over for 40 years and he thought he had said everything he wanted to say, there was nothing more.”
Wikimedia CommonsA temporary memorial to David Bowie set up outside his New York apartment after he died.
Blackstar was released on Jan. 8, 2016, coinciding with Bowie’s birthday, to positive reviews. Some even considered it to be Bowie’s best work in years, praising the experimental jazz-infused sound. But its moody atmosphere and dark subject matter were not lost on listeners. It was quickly made clear why the album may have taken on such a somber tone.
Just two days after the release of Blackstar, on Jan. 10, 2016, David Bowie succumbed to his illness and died in his New York City home.
After reading about the death of David Bowie, read about how Prince died that same year. Then, read about Patrick Swayze’s tragic battle with cancer.
The post How Did David Bowie Die? Inside The Hidden Health Issues That Ended The Rock Star’s Life appeared first on All That's Interesting.
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