“Everybody that I have spoken to, the first thing that they say is: ‘Is it really 10 years?’”

So says Mike Garson, speaking from his home studio in the San Fernando Valley, where the renowned classical/jazz-trained pianist, who was David Bowie’s longest-serving band member, is preparing for “Bowie’s Piano Man: A Decade in the Stars.”

The three-night residency at Hollywood’s Sun Rose lounge, which will feature special guests like the Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlain, the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Chad Smith, the Struts’ Luke Spiller, Andra Day, Judith Hill, Jake Wesley Rogers, Paul McCartney guitarist Rusty Anderson, and many others, will kick off on Jan. 8, marking what would have been Bowie’s 79th birthday and the 10th anniversary of Bowie’s final landmark album, Blackstar. And it ends Jan. 10 — which is, incredibly, the 10th anniversary of Bowie’s death.

Garson is in an understandably reflective mood, recalling the last time he spoke with the man he fondly describes as his “dream boss,” right before Bowie passed away. “It was only a few weeks before. He reached out to me, talking about continuing the trilogy of the Outside album,” Garson recalls. “He never gave up hope. … He was dying, and yet he was saying, ‘Let’s do this.’ So, of course, I got excited.”

Mike Garson at the Sun Rose (photo courtesy of the P-22 Agency)

Garson’s last communication with Bowie was via email, when, feeling sentimental after relistening to his entire Bowie discography at the urging of his biographer, Clifford Slapper, he “became awestruck and instantly wrote David. And within three seconds, he emailed me back, saying: ‘Mike, we did a great body of work together.’ And I said to my wife, Susan: ‘That’s the last time I’m going to hear from him.’ Because he said it with finality: ‘We did a great body of work together.’ I don’t know if it was just my intuition. I did not know he was dying then, because he kept [his cancer diagnosis] secret from everyone. … But we had a very special connection.”

The final time Garson and Bowie had shared a stage was in November 2006, at Keep a Child Alive benefit at New York City’s Hammerstein Ballroom, two and a half years after the Reality tour was cut short when Bowie suffered a heart attack. But Garson (along with Arcade Fire) had actually joined Bowie for a brief Fashion Rocks set at NYC’s Radio City Music Hall in September 2005, which was, according to Garson, a low-key test run to see if Bowie was up for embarking on another tour. “He said, ‘The reason I’m doing this is to see if my strength is back and I can do it. I could trust you to hold the fort down when you accompany me. It’s no band. It’s just us,’” reveals Garson, who accompanied Bowie that night on a stripped-back version of “Life on Mars?” (This turned out to be Bowie’s final performance of that song.) “And after we did that, he said, ‘OK, I think I can do it.’ I was so excited that this was a possibility.”

Sadly, that never happened. At another point in 2005, when Bowie phoned Garson about maybe touring again, “I should have said, ‘Yeah! Because I want to go out and make a living and I love playing with you!’” Garson chuckles. “But I didn’t go there. You know what I said? I said, ‘Only if you feel it.’ And guess what? He didn’t feel it. It screwed me up financially and just more importantly, out of the joy of being on the road and playing with him. But he was done. He was done touring.”

And so, Garson joined Bowie for one last public performance a year later, at Keep a Child Alive, where they played three songs: “Wild Is the Wind,” “Fantastic Voyage,” and an Alicia Keys duet of “Changes.” Garson claims Bowie wouldn’t let Keys’s crew officially film the performance, “because he was still recuperating from his heart attack and he was a little more overweight and swollen… so he was self-conscious.” But thankfully, footage does exist online of the historic and, for Garson, poignantly full-circle moment. “We did ‘Changes’ — and that was my audition song,” he muses. “So, that’s the bookends.”

Garson confesses that when he auditioned for Bowie in 1972, after being recommend for what was supposed to be an eight-week assignment by avant-garde musician Annette Peacock (who’d actually passed on the job), he had no idea who the glam-rock star even was. But at the time he was struggling, playing $5-a-night shows in Catskills and Brooklyn jazz clubs, so he jumped at the opportunity. “I was giving a piano lesson and my wife was working, and I had a daughter that was 1 years old in a little swing next to the piano,” he remembers of the phone call that “changed the whole trajectory” of his life, requesting that he be at New York’s RCA Studios in 20 minutes. “So, what do I do? I asked the piano student to babysit my daughter! To this day, my wife [gives me a hard time] about that,” he laughs.

It may have seemed like questionable parenting at the time, but the risk paid off. When Garson first walked into RCA Studios that fateful afternoon, he seemed like a mismatch for Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust-era band, the Spiders from Mars. “I’m in jeans, and these guys are all decked out in the middle of the week, decked out in all kinds of wild clothing. And I thought, ‘Where am I?’” But after Garson played just a snippet of “Changes” on demand, Bowie immediately told him, “You got the gig.”

Two weeks later, wearing a newly acquired sequined tuxedo to better fit in with his flamboyant bandmates, Garson made his debut with the Spiders from Mars, on the first night of the U.S. Ziggy Stardust tour, in Cleveland. Six days later, the Spiders played a sold-out hometown gig for Garson at New York’s Carnegie Hall. And 10 months later, Garson was onstage with the Spiders at London’s Hammersmith Odeon, in front of 5,000 stunned fans, as Bowie famously killed off the Ziggy character in spectacular fashion. Garson was the only band member who “knew that the guillotine was going come down” (he’d been tipped off by Bowie the day before), and the only band member that Bowie didn’t intend to fire that night, which he says was “painful” and “very uncomfortable” for him. Adding to the stress of the evening was his boss’s last-minute request that he open the Hammersmith show with piano renditions of Ziggy hits.

“Out of nowhere, he said, ‘Play a medley of my songs, your way.’ And meanwhile, Streisand’s in the audience, and Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney and Elliott Gould! The only thing I remember was that he said to me afterwards, ‘I was more nervous for you than for myself!’” Garson recalls. “And that’s the point. That guy had humanity and a lot of love. People don’t know that side of him. He was very warm and very loving, aside from being a genius. He just was one of the good guys.”

Garson partnership with “ultimate casting director” Bowie survived that post-Ziggy transition, despite the two musicians seeming like polar opposites. “We were from different planets, but the same solar system,” Garson explains. “Between 1972 and 1974… you won’t believe this, but he fired five bands except for me!” Garson went on to play at least 400 Bowie concerts and appear on more than 20 albums (including Aladdin Sane, Pin Ups, Diamond Dogs, Young Americans, Black Tie White Noise, Outside, Earthling, and Reality). He credits this in part to his own versatility, as a player who’d studied with Herbie Hancock, cut his teeth in Mel Tormé’s backing band, and would later work with the likes of Nine Inch Nails, St. Vincent, Seal, Duran Duran, No Doubt, and the Pretty Reckless. Unlike many straight-up rock musicians, Garson was able to adapt as Bowie veered from glam to blue-eyed soul to drum & bass and electronica over the ensuing decades.

As for his favorite Bowie collaborations, which may or may not end up his rotating setlists at the Sun Rose, Garson quickly rattles some perennial favorites, like “Time” and “Young Americans,” but also many less obvious picks (“because I played great on them!”), like “Lady Grinning Soul,” “Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing,” “Shadow Man,” “Bring Me the Disco King,” “The Loneliest Guy,” “Strangers When We Meet,” “Can You Hear Me?,” and even “The Motel” from what he considers to be Bowie’s most underrated album, 1995’s largely improvised, above-mentioned Outside.

“He said to me a year or two before we made that album, ‘I feel like I sold out in the ’80s.’ That’s what he said to me,” Garson says of the Outside era. “I think he felt, because he’s a very honest guy and had a lot of integrity, that he’d compromised his truth. … So, it was very sincere, that album.”

However, the Garson/Bowie moment that the pianist semi-jokes is “the only one anyone ever calls me about or talks about,” the one that he has received “an email about for the last 30 years,” is 1973’s “Aladdin Sane.” His legendary avant piano solo on that track perhaps best displays the artistic freedom that Bowie granted him.

Recalling the “Aladdin Sane” recording session at London’s Trident Studios, Garson marvels, “I had no idea he wanted something that out-there. I played a blues-type solo, and he said, ‘That’s too commonplace.’ Then I played a Latin solo, and he said, ‘That’s still too norma! Do something way out-there!’ That’s when I took the liberty. And it was one take. … The fact that he gave me permission to do whatever the f*** I wanted and play such a bizarre piano solo that had classical jazz, rock, a million crazy notes, that was never done. If I did that today, it would be still ahead of its time. And this was 53 years ago. It’s probably the most advanced rock solo ever played.”

Looking back on his body of work with Bowie and their final performances and conversations, Garson bittersweetly muses, “It would have been fascinating to see how we continued to evolve.” He also jokes about a long-circulating meme about how the planet fell apart when Bowie left it in 2016, a year of great political unrest that was also marked by the deaths of other music greats like Prince and George Michael. “I think that might be why he left! Like, ‘Buh-bye. This is above my pay grade. I’m outta here!’”

Garson may or may not crack such jokes onstage at the Sun Rose, but the three nights will definitely be full of surprises. (It should be noted that a then-rising pop singer named Chappell Roan joined Garson and Jake Wesley Rogers for a cover of “Heroes” at the club in 2022, so you never know who might turn up.) And he will enjoy performing “A Decade in the Stars” just as much as when he first teamed with Bowie five decades ago.

“Nothing has shifted in terms of my joy for playing the piano — I’m 80 years old, and it feels like the first 79 years was an internship!” declares Garson. And he will always be endlessly appreciative, as a self-described “loose cannon” known for improv and never playing anything live the same way twice, that his dream boss set him on this career path.
“This could almost make me cry,” Garson admits. “Because he gave permission for jazz guys like me to express themselves, and that’s an extraordinary gift. There’s nobody who’s given me the space to be me more than him.”

This interview originally ran on Gold Derby. Watch Mike Garson’s full, delightful conversation in the video at the top of this article.

Strolling through the aisles of Hollywood’s Record Parlour store, sifting through bins crammed with more than 50,000 vintage vinyl albums, Gavin Rossdale reflects on the influences behind his band Bush’s seventh full-length release, Black and White Rainbows, out this week. (Yes, it is available on vinyl.) “Just, like, my vat of issues and everything that’s going on in my life… It’s always full of stuff to draw on,” he chuckles wryly when asked what inspired the album lyrically.

Rossdale is of course referring to his 2015 divorce from fellow ’90s pop/rock icon Gwen Stefani, whom he met in 1995 and married in 2002, and with whom he has three sons. Black and White Rainbows is the first Bush album since that very public split, and many fans no doubt wonder if the album’s lead single, “Mad Love,” with its lines like “still got mad love for you, baby,” is autobiographical. But Rossdale shrugs, “I mean, it’s impossible to be a writer and not have yourself come through all that. But you know, ‘Mad Love’ is a makeup song. So clearly it’s a lot about my life, but it’s clearly not completely about my life — because I haven’t made up with anyone.”

However, there’s one breakup song to which Rossdale can relate. Reaching for a vinyl copy of Bob Dylan’s 1989 album Oh Mercy, he’s quick to quote its bittersweet track “Most of the Time.”

“That song is really the ultimate breakup song, I would think,’ muses Rossdale. “‘I don’t even think about her most of the time.’ It’s a very powerful song. That would be No. 1.”

And what would be Rossdale’s No. 1 love song? “Well, I was listening to Roberta Flack the other day, and ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ is a pretty beautiful song. But I don’t know,” he says, adding with a laugh, “Maybe Talking Heads’ ‘Once in a Lifetime.’ I would put that [on a mixtape]. I would put that song anywhere. I love that song.”

Check out Rossdale’s recommended Record Parlour shopping list for the soundtrack of his life, from his punk-childhood memories of the Sex Pistols and Public Image Ltd to his fondness for strong women like Patti Smith, PJ Harvey, and Rihanna to his undying admiration for his The Voice U.K. castmate Tom Jones and onetime tourmate David Bowie.

The Sex Pistols, Never Mind the Bollocks

“I’d say this is the most perfect record. If had to pick one song that sort of, like, sums my childhood or my youth, it’s ‘Pretty Vacant.’ I always was a sucker for melody, and so when the punk thing was going on, I was listening to the Sex Pistols. I remember thinking ‘God Save the Queen’ was so heavy and abrasive, but then ‘Pretty Vacant’ was such a nice pop song, and with brilliant, brilliant words.

“Kings Road was where all the punks would go. I was 11 years old. We’d get outside my house the 31 bus, and that would go down to Chelsea, World’s End… With all of the punk movement, it was palpable. When you walked along the street, especially where I lived [London], it was a commitment to have spiky hair. It was a commitment to put safety pins on your jacket — or safety pins in your mouth! You’d put egg white in your hair, so you get spiky hair. Everyone had bleached hair and filthy fingers and filthy overcoats. I didn’t have any money to get anything like that, but I remember all the Seditionaries stuff, the bondage trousers, the creepers. Just saving up for one pair of creepers was a big deal. You had one pair of jeans, a pair of creepers, then you were sort of set.

“My sister was a punk, and so she was supercool, with the dyed bleached hair and all her friends — everyone just looked so cool. My first band I was around, it was my sister’s boyfriend’s band, the Nobodiez, with a Z. I used to go to their rehearsal rooms — stinky, stinky rehearsal rooms. He gave me my first bass when I was 13. So it was just growing up in that atmosphere of counterculture, rebellion, kids that didn’t listen, just doing their thing. That stayed with me till this day.”

Public Image Ltd, Metal Box

“It was that combination of post-punk. I grew up in punk music… I grew up down the road from a record store called Manzie’s, so I have all the original punk singles from when I was a kid, like everything that I used to get each week, different singles. Those 7-inch vinyls are really, really special to me. But I didn’t like what you’d call the ‘California pop-punk’ that they do now. So I thought of that as a natural progression, what John Lydon did with PiL. He was a real great inspiration for me, with all the reggae basslines. It’s all based on that hybrid of reggae and rock. He’s such an incredible artist. I just love everything about him, his aesthetic. There’s not much about him that I don’t think is great.”

David Bowie, The Man Who Sold the World

“My aunt, who I lived with, she would give me Bowie records. The Man Who Sold the World would be my favorite vinyl I probably have. But there’s so much of Bowie I really love. ‘The Laughing Gnome’ was the only one I wouldn’t play again! After that, it’s incredible. He’s amazing. I love him. Just the concept of being a hybrid, having that sort of modern art obsession and putting it into his work, and treating his work much like a performance artist. And although I didn’t take it to his level with the costumes and stuff, I did really feel connected to that.

“We toured with him twice, in Brazil and South America, so just spending time with him and getting to know him, seeing his understanding of the importance of all different art forms, all different voices, all different genres, all different disciplines — he was everything you want him to be.

“I stayed in contact with him. We were like email friends. And I owed him an email, which is really sad. You should always respond to emails quickly. I was looking forward to the response.”

The Pixies, Surfer Rosa

“A massive, massive influence on Bush. That’s what made me work with Steve Albini [on 1996’s Razorblade Suitcase], just because I loved Surfer Rosa so much. I’ve never heard something so lush and dark and weird. And then the artwork was so beautiful. Surfer Rosa had the picture of the flamenco girl inside in the gold cover — that’s the first that got me into the artwork stuff.

“I got a girl on my team [on The Voice U.K., on which Rossdale is now a coach], Millicent. She [auditioned with] ‘Where Is My Mind’ by the Pixies. I knew that she did it for me, so I was like, ‘I got you, I got you.’ I didn’t let her down. She’s amazing.”

Bob Marley, Exodus

“That’s one of my favorite records. When we were growing up, the only [other] music you were allowed to listen to if you listened to punk music was reggae music. If you listen to Don Letts, he says the only reason they played reggae music is because he didn’t have enough songs to fill a night of dancing and a night at the club. So the only music they had was reggae, all the sound system stuff, dancehall. And so when I was a kid and Bob Marley came out with ‘Jamming,’ which is side two, first track — boom. And on the B-side was ‘Punky Reggae Party.’ So it’s all tied in! He’s been a guiding light of music for me my whole career. I still listen to him, I still love him. I just can’t believe how great he is — or how many children he has!”

Patti Smith, Easter

“Patti Smith is massive to me — just the female presence, the female power. Her life with Mapplethorpe is so interesting. If you read up on Just Kids or M Train, it’s just amazing what she did, the struggles that she went through and how hard she worked supporting Robert Mapplethorpe and his dreams — and then sort of inadvertently on the side, she was writing poetry herself and was this incredible tour de force that continues on to today. Beautiful. These songs, they’re just very brave.”

Tom Jones, 20 Greatest Hits

“Working with Tom Jones [as a coach on The Voice U.K.] feels really special, because I think that he loves that I’m also a singer, he loves that I’m on this journey that he’s been on as a legend for so long, and that I understand and respect him. You know, he feels that respect. He’s one of the greatest singers I have ever heard live. He’s unbelievable, still sounding great.

“The main thing I learned from Tom, which makes a lot of sense to me, is that he is really, really professional. He’s always on time. He’s just always present. He’s a pro. And he works — if you look through his CV, he just has worked so consistently. He’s done months in Vegas each year since 1969. He doesn’t sit back and rest on his laurels.

“I sang the other day with Tom Jones. He was at my house and I played guitar and sang with him on ‘It’s Not Unusual.’ His voice is brilliant; it, like, destroys my voice. He sounds perfect.”

Rihanna, Anti

“I don’t have crazy guilty pleasures of, like, secretly listening to *NSync, but I think how much I love Rihanna is probably surprising for some people. But it’s just such quality, that last record. Anti was such a strong, interesting record the whole way. It reminded me of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. There’s these sort of benchmark records that some girls make, that just sort of define the time. I was aware of all of Rihanna’s other stuff, but this record really got me. My go-to song now by Rihanna is the Devault mix of ‘Sex With Me’; that is really incredible. But I basically like Anti, so I can just pick any song off the deluxe record and focus in on that. I love letting it play. It’s brilliant.”

PJ Harvey, Rid of Me

“Polly Harvey is a brilliant, strong artist. I love her sound and feel. When she went to make a record with Steve Albini, I lost my mind, because I so loved Steve Albini. And that was Rid of Me. That was just brilliant — recorded in two weeks, I think. I try to not bug Steve with questions about her.”

The The, Infected

“Matt Johnson is incredible. He was like the precursor. For me, he’s before Trent [Reznor], before Swans. He was really the guy doing it sort of electro, hard. He’d give everything of himself to these records. And Infected was a brilliant record. Brilliant.”

Jane’s Addiction, Nothing’s Shocking

“I’ve been really inspired by Perry Farrell, Jane’s Addiction. I saw them do a show in London, Acklam Hall, and that’s when suddenly the whole performance side of me woke up. I was used to My Bloody Valentine, Throwing Muses, who weren’t big on performance — it was more literally shoe-gazing. So seeing Perry Farrell perform, I was just like, ‘Who is this shaman? What is going on here?’

“I think that’s a lot where my most American side of me came in. I perform in a very bizarre, sort of semi-desperate way — you know, energized, and like it’s going be the last show I ever play. Very, very heightened emotions. And I think that’s more of an American thing. Think, like, David Yow of the Jesus Lizard — he’s like the craziest performer ever.”

Lana Del Rey, Born to Die

“I like Lana Del Rey a lot; I think she has brilliant words, brilliant melodies. I know that she’s a controversial figure, like whether ‘she exists or doesn’t exist,’ but I just listen to her records and think she’s incredible. She does the [jazz torch singer thing], she evokes that for sure, but then with a kind of whole modern twist, of really modern lyrics — strong, cool-woman lyrics.”

Metallica, The Black Album

“My sons just started guitar lessons. We all have the same guitar teacher; it’s really cool. They like a lot of hip-hop, but they play a lot of AC/DC, Metallica — they’re starting to get into that, so it’s really fun. They love Drake, and then they’re playing ‘Enter Sandman.’ It’s brilliant.”

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Music.

Among the late, incredibly great David Bowie’s many career achievements was his 1973 covers album Pin Ups, but there are enough remakes of Bowie’s own iconic material out there to fill an entire library of covers compilations. There will no doubt be many more Bowie covers to add to this list, as the artists mourning his shocking death pay homage to him onstage in the coming weeks. But here are some of the best Bowie tributes of the past (golden) years.

27. The Shins, “Ashes to Ashes”

The revamped lineup of the Garden State-approved indie band debuted this earnest cover of Bowie’s Scary Monsters classic back in 2011, with frontman James Mercer’s high, plaintive voice – a drastic contrast to Bowie’s colder, more detached delivery – adding even more pathos and ennui to the sad-clown 1980 hit. This cover might change your life.

26. Barbra Streisand, “Life on Mars”

Yes, this actually happened, back in 1974 at the height of Bowie’s glam-rock fame. It’s every bit as ostentatious and blustering and over-the-top as you might expect, but it actually works. At the very least, it’s way better than Susan Boyle’s cover of Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day.”

25. Marilyn Manson, “Golden Years”

Obvious Bowie disciple Brian Warner did this proper tribute during Manson’s obviously Bowie-inspired Mechanical Animals late-‘90s era. (This cover actually appeared on the Dead Man on Campus soundtrack in 1998.) Infusing the song with just the right amount of industrial edge and Goth-rock attitude, Manson definitely made it his own.

24. Jessica Lange, “Life on Mars”

Elsa Mars, the faded-glamorous, Dietrichian grand dame of American Horror Story: Freak Show, gave glorious cabaret performances of both this song and “Heroes” during her AHS run. It was the freak-i-est show-oh-oh-oh, indeed. Lange won an Emmy for her AHS work, but she deserved a Grammy, too.

23. Morrissey, “Drive-In Saturday”

This 1973 Aladdin Sane track got the cover treatment from a lad possibly slightly insane, Mr. Steven Morrissey, on a 2008 B-side. His version is full of so much preening, heart-on-sleeve melodrama, it makes Bowie’s original seem like something by John Denver.

22. The Dandy Warhols, “The Jean Genie”

The Portland psych-rockers released this rough-hewn, pleasingly ramshackle remake in 2004, as part of the hard-to-find covers compilation Come on Feel the Dandy Warhols. Its ragged, acoustic sound in no way resembled the synth-pop vibe of the band’sWelcome to the Monkey House album released a year earlier, which was actually co-produced by longtime Bowie collaborator Tony Visconti – but it certainly showed what huge Bowie fans the Dandys were.

21. Tegan and Sara, “Rebel Rebel”

A highlight of the brilliantly titled 2003 compilation Spiders from Venus: Indie Women Artists and Female-Fronted Bands Cover David Bowie, the Quin sisters used their twin powers and sugar-sweet harmonies to transform Bowie’s glam anthem into something downright adorable.

20. My Chemical Romance & The Used, “Under Pressure”

David Bowie’s epic Queen duet got the tribute treatment from two of emo’s finest for this 2005 tsunami relief benefit single, and the collaboration brought out the best in both bands. A year later, MCR’s Bowie fixation was evident on their artistic breakthrough album, The Black Parade.

19. TV on the Radio, “Heroes”

Bowie sang backup vocals on TVOTR’s 2006 song “Province,” and three years later the band returned the favor by hauntingly covering his power ballad “Heroes” for a War Child charity compilation.

18. A Place to Bury Strangers, “Suffragette City”

The NYC noise-rockers contributed this menacing, abrasive, oozing-with-cool cover to Manimal Vinyl’s all-around excellent two-disc compilation We Were So Turned On: A Tribute to David Bowie in 2010.

17. Duran Duran, “Boys Keep Swinging”

Also off We Were So Turned On, the swinging Boys on Film from Birmingham paid homage to the glam man that inspired them (and the U.K.’s entire New Romantic movement) with this slick, stylish Eurodisco remake.

16. The Last Shadow Puppets, “In the Heat of the Morning”

The side-project of the Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner and the Rascals’ Miles Kane brought their supercool, Morricone-esque, spaghetti-western flair to this 1960s Bowie rarity.

15. Smashing Pumpkins, “Space Oddity”

We still miss James Iha in the Smashing Pumpkins’ lineup, but when the current Pumpkins incarnation tackled Bowie’s somber interstellar classic at South by Southwest 2013, it was a fine Aeroplane Flies High-esque return to form for Corgan and company.

Over the course of his career, Bowie – who shockingly died Sunday after a long, secret battle with cancer – released 51 music videos. None were as haunting or heartbreaking as his video swan song, “Lazarus,” released just last week, which eerily, unflinchingly documented his imminent death and just might stand as the most amazing artistic exit of all time. But the rest of his videography is filled with masterpieces that married sound and vision as only David Bowie could. Here are some of his best.

“Boys Keep Swinging” (1979)

Kicking open doors for gender-bending video stars like Boy George, Marc Almond, and Annie Lennox, in this David Mallet-directed classic Bowie played it straight in a suit, but was flanked by “backup singers” that were really multiple Bowies in full drag. The lipstick-smearing flourish around the 2:15 mark remains one of Bowie’s most iconic onscreen moments, and it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that the “runway show” at the video’s end inspired every great RuPaul’s Drag Race episode ever. Werk, Bowie, werk.

Perhaps even more foreshadowing than the Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star” (the first video ever shown on MTV) was this clip, shot two years before MTV, in which Bowie ransacked a radio station DJ booth. Side note: No one, not even John Travolta in his Saturday Night Fever prime, ever looked cooler strutting down the street than David frickin’ Bowie.

Another groundbreaking visual from Bowie’s “Berlin Trilogy” era, this one was inspired by Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray – quite fitting, since Bowie was perhaps the most ageless icon in rock, looking amazing until the very end.

At the time of its release, this Scary Monsters-era video for “Space Oddity’s” Major Tom sequel was the most expensive music video ever made, costing roughly $400,000. A fascinating artifact of London’s Bowie-fixated Blitz club scene (which spawned New Romantic icons like Boy George, Visage’s Steve Strange, and the Spandau Ballet boys), the clip starred “Blitz Kids” like Strange and clothing designer Judith Frankland, in what almost felt like a torch-passing totally-‘80s moment.

In an interesting instance of early-MTV synergy, one of the extras in this lo-fi but fashionable video was future original MTV VJ Alan Hunter. Shot at the famous NYC nightclub Hurrah, where many of the U.K.’s Bowie-influenced post-punk bands played their first Stateside gigs, the video also featured John Lennon’s ex-girlfriend May Pang, who later married Bowie’s longtime production partner Tony Visconti.

Some music snobs dismissed Let’s Dance, the commercial high point of Bowie’s career and most blatantly mainstream album, as a “sellout.” It’s ironic, then, that the cinematic video for the LP’s title track was a pointed critique of Western imperialism, harrowingly juxtaposing a young Aboriginal couple’s struggles with racism, poverty, and oppression against a backdrop of sunny Australian hedonism. This certainly wasn’t typical high-gloss MTV fare, but the song still went to #1 on the U.S. charts. Even when Bowie “sold out,” he never sold himself or his vision short.

This video’s racial references, when taken out of context, make this VMA-winning clip for an Iggy Pop remake seem a little dated and politically incorrect in 2016. But Bowie explained to Rolling Stone’s Kurt Loder in ‘83 that, much like the “Let’s Dance” video, “China Girl” was a “very simple, very direct” anti-racism statement, deliberately lampooning Asian female stereotypes. On a lighter note, the extended, uncensored version of the video featured Bowie’s bare, very perky bottom in the From Here to Eternity-inspired beach makeout scene – much to the delight of many smitten fans.

Now an MTV megastar, Bowie was granted 21 minutes of the network’s precious airtime for the world premiere of Jazzin’ for Blue Jean, an ambitious, Julien Temple-directed short film starring yet another Bowie alter ego, the facepaint-contoured, turban-swathed Screaming Lord Byron. It all seems a little self-indulgent now – and Bowie playing a dual role as a dork named Vic is entirely unconvincing, because if there’s anything Bowie never was, it’s a dork. But for new wave fans 32 years ago, the televised “Blue Jean” film premiere was a popcorn-passing event as momentous as Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”

Bowie reteamed with Temple here, and once again explored controversial social issues for this lead single from Never Let Me Down – in a raw video that depicted a young, desperate couple and their child dealing with poverty, violence, and sexual assault against a grim Los Angeles cityscape. (For some much-needed levity, there was also a scene with Bowie on rollerskates.) The video was hardly subtle, and it was banned by some TV stations at the time, but nearly 30 years later, its message hits home more than ever.

MTV Video Vanguard honoree Mark Romanek is one of the greatest music video directors of all time, having lensed such iconic clips as Madonna’s “Bedtime Stories,” Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer,” and Fiona Apple’s “Criminal.” Bowie’s Romanek-lensed, Kubrickian “Jump They Say” unfortunately didn’t get quite as much exposure as those videos, despite being such an exquisitely art-directed widescreen stunner. But it was clear that even after Bowie’s 20-plus years in the spotlight, the camera still loved him.

Director Floria Sigismondi, most famous for her envelope-pushing work with obvious Bowie descendent Marilyn Manson, cast a Ziggy Stardust lookalike in this futuristic yet nostalgic clip from Bowie’s experimental/electronica Earthling era. But the real Bowie was always the star of this show. Accept no imitators, ever.

“I’m Afraid of Americans” (1997)

Crazy-eyed Trent Reznor stalked David Bowie, Taxi Driver-style, through the mean streets of New York City, all set to an ominous soundtrack of modern-day xenophobia and heightened paranoia. Drama ensued, and the result was Bowie’s best video of his adventurous 1990s era. This clip was just a small part of a fruitful and historic cross-generation partnership between Bowie and the NIN mastermind, which included their ’95 co-headlining Outside Tour.

“The Stars (Are Out Tonight)” (2013)

In a bit of inspired casting on the part of returning director Sigismondi, this video by the Thin White Duke co-starred thin white duchess Tilda Swinton as his dutiful wife. For years, the uncanny resemblance between Bowie and the Oscar-winning actress had been noted by observers – so much so that an entire Tumblr site was devoted to their separated-at-birth similarity. In 2003, fashion photographer Craig McDean orchestrated a shoot with Tilda during which she dressed up as Bowie, and in 2012, Hint magazine even published a rather convincing compare-and-contrast blogpost titled “Visual Proof That David Bowie and Tilda Swinton Are the Same Person.” The fact that Bowie and Tilda appeared onscreen on the same time here refuted Hint’s theory – unless Sigismondi used some creative CGI, of course.

“The Next Day” (2013)

Oscar-winning actress Marion Cotillard, who displayed her own musical inclinations portraying Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose, made her finest music video cameo ever in this controversial, temporarily-banned-from-YouTube, Sigismondi-directed clip, in which she played a stigmata-stricken prostitute cavorting in a church brothel with a wayward priest played by Gary Oldman. Only someone as inventive and risk-taking as Bowie could still shock, awe, and provoke like this after all these years.

“Love Is Lost” (2013)

Proving that creativity need not come with a $400,000 pricetag, Bowie eschewed the big budgets of his other videos for this $12.99 bargain (yes, this video supposedly only cost twelve dollars and ninety-nine cents). Apparently all Bowie needed were a couple of creepy doppelganger puppets, a dimly lit office corridor, a free weekend, an assistant to turn on the camera, and a thumb drive to conjure pure video magic. Let’s see today’s Vine stars and YouTubers create something as amazing as this for 13 bucks.

“Blackstar” (2015)

This 10-minute epic for the title track of Bowie’s 25th (and, tragically, last) studio album was directed by Breaking Bad’s Johan Renck and starred a cast of living scarecrows, children of the corn, dead astronauts, and a blinded Bowie. It seemed like the most disturbing Bowie video yet… until the final one that followed, of course.

“Lazarus” (2016)

Jan. 8, 2016 was a day of celebration. It was Bowie’s 69th birthday; it was the release date for Blackstar, one of Bowie’s finest albums to date; and it brought us yet another stunning new music video, for “Lazarus.” But two days later, the celebration was over; Bowie was gone, and no one would ever see “Lazarus” the same way again. While the video depicted Bowie, his face bandaged, his eyes covered by buttons, his body gaunt and frail, writhing in pain on his deathbed, few viewers took it literally; Bowie was never one to shy away from dark or shocking imagery, after all, and it’s not unheard-of for any veteran artist to grapple with themes of sickness, aging, and mortality. But “Lazarus” was Bowie’s way of telling us he was dying, that he would soon be leaving us. This was his carefully orchestrated goodbye, his final act. The very thought of it is all at once magical and magnificent and upsetting and awful. “Lazarus” is definitely a must-watch. But you probably won’t be able to watch it more than once.

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Music.