David Robert Hayward Stenton Jones

I only ever knew him as David Bowie.

When I was an extremely dislocated 14 year old, I bought the Diamond Dogs LP. Suddenly the world made more sense and I had an ally. I spent a lot of my teenage years homeless. When I was 15, I was squatting a flat in a deck access block. Turned out I was next door to an old hippy dealer who would give me free weed. I spent a remarkable summer stoned out of my mind with Dogs, Hunky Dory, Pinups, Aladdin Sane, Station To Station and Low on permanent rotation. In those days, it appeared that "the normals" couldn't wait to fight with me. Aggravation was around every corner. I'd sing "Oh! You Pretty Things" at them before the inevitable happened. It didn't appear to improve their mood but it cheered me right up! He was a lightening rod for the freaks and made our world a brighter place. I very literally can't imagine who I would be if it wasn't for him.

At six this morning, I was almost asleep when the radio told me that he had died. It was like a bomb went off inside my head. I didn't know that he had cancer. Apparently, Tony Visconti has indicated that they knew that the outcome would be terminal. So, what does David do? He goes into the studio to create his final album (and effectively his epitaph). It was released on his 69th birthday last Friday. Today he is gone.

This ain't Rock 'n' Roll ... this is genocide!