David Bowie never stopped reinventing himself. This is a lesson that so many of us could take something from. After all, we so often think that we're destined to be just one thing forever. But David knew that this was a fallacy. He knew that life was so much more authentic (and so much more interesting) when things were open to change and development, rebirth and even falling back into aspects of the past. Point is, nothing was the same forever. With his love or prevention, David would have likely been pleased with the attempt to bring his likeness into Star Wars. This aspect of David was something that so many people were drawn to. This includes his longtime friend Gary Oldman and even Lenny Kravitz, who toured with him.

Speaking of which, David's music was the best example of how the man reinvented himself. This is certainly true of his final album, "Blackstar", which featured his hit single "Lazerus". Of course, this was his final album as we lost David to cancer. But there are even more fascinating aspects of the creation of this album... Let's take a look...

First, It Was A Musical

According to a fantastic article by NME and David's longtime friend and music producer Robert Fox, "Blackstar" was originally a musical called "Lazarus", one based on "The Man Who Fell To Earth".

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"At that point, the idea was as far along as him saying, ‘I know it should be called Lazarus and I know it should be based on the character Thomas Jerome Newton from The Man Who Fell To Earth, but I don’t know anything else’," Robert Fox told NME. "He asked me what we had to do next so I said, ‘We have to find a writer’ and suggested Enda Walsh because I thought they’d get on and spark ideas off of each other. He read lots of Enda’s work, lots of other people’s work and about two or three months later, emailed me and said, ‘Enda’s the one’."

Working On The Album In Secret With A Secret Influence

Soon a director joined the project and things kicked off in 2014. David also decided to work with a jazz ensemble that he had never worked with before instead of returning to those he knew could bring his vision to life. Donny McCaslin, who headed New York’s The Donny McCaslin Group, came on board. While they worked on the musical, David and Donny were secretly working on his next album, which featured a couple of the same songs in the musical. They had the help of David's long-time producer Tony Visconti, drummer Mark Giuliana, pianist Jason Linder, and bassist Tim Lefebvre.

"The first day in the studio was a mixture of excitement, anticipation, and hoping that it was all going to go smoothly," Donny McCaslin said. "I was loving the music he had sent and I had done some work on it on my end with woodwinds and with voicing things that I hadn’t told anybody about, so I was excited to unveil that. When we got going, it just felt seamless and organic – the analogy I would use is that the group was like a basketball team where we were constantly sharing the ball and throwing it back and forth. That first day, the spirit of what David told us was, ‘Let’s not worry about what this will be called, let’s just go have fun and anything you’re hearing I want you to go for it’. He didn’t say ‘no inhibitions’, but that was the spirit of what he said. It was great to have that affirmation before we even started and to sense that he trusted us with this music. You couldn’t have asked for it to be a better environment creatively."

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According to NME, David's main influence for "Blackstar" was actually Kendrick Lamar's "To Pimp A Butterfly". Tony Visconti and David were constantly replaying the record and were deadset on avoiding any 'rock and roll' influences. This album was going to be something different.

David Let Us Know He Was Dying

Yes, this has been a major topic when discussing "Blackstar"... and, in particular, the song "Lazarus". Of course, the title of the song references death and rebirth, but the lyrics of David's final hit almost definitely reference the fact that David knew he was dying and wanted to let his fans know that it was all going to be okay.

These references were all over both the "Lazarus" musical as well as the song and the rest of the album.

"I must have heard ‘Lazarus’ for the first time just before rehearsals for the musical started, because it was around then that I went to see the filming of the music video for it," Robert Fox said. "Because I knew what the content of the story that we were telling was, it felt entirely appropriate to the musical. If I hadn’t had the context of the show, it probably would have been quite a different experience. But it completely made sense for the character of Newton to be singing that song in our show. So it was great to hear; it was exciting and felt completely right for what we were doing. There’s lots of discussion about to what extent he identified with the character of Newton, to what extent what he was going through in his own life, with illness, and possible death and all of that influenced his work around that time. It was not the first time that he’d had health scares, so I think his own mortality was very much on his mind.”

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