Rest in peace Mr. Bowie

Back in the 1970’s when I was a young lad my Dad used to work as a bin man. It was an entirely different job back then. No simply putting wheelie bins on a lift to tip into the back of a truck back then.

One of his routes saw him collecting the rubbish from one of the local cafes here in Cromer. Every few weeks a man would go round and change the records in their jukebox, and rather than throw them away the owner used to give some of them to Dad, so when I first took an interest in music our family had a ready-made record collection.

Most of the songs I used to play a lot came from the glam rock era, so among the likes of Slade, Sweet, T-Rex, Suzi Quatro and David Essex were a few from a guy called David Bowie.

One of his early songs, The Laughing Gnome, was an early favourite, but it was Diamond Dogs that was played over and over again.

As I grew old I remember being transfixed by the Ashes to Ashes video, I wondered why he’d turned blonde for Let’s Dance, and as I became a man I rocked out to Tin Machine’s Under the God. His Singles Collection double CD was played with great regularity.

Although I freely admit that I always leaned to his sixties to eighties work I enjoyed everything he did, and his songs were never too far away from my MP3 player.

It came as a shock when I awoke this morning to learn that the man who had been a part of my life for as long as I can remember had passed away, another life taken away by the most cruel of diseases.

Countless tributes have been paid to him today, and there will probably be countless more in the next few days.

So in closing, I’ll just say this. RIP Mr. Bowie. Thank you for everything.