David Bowie had discussed revisiting his 1995 album Outside about a year before his death, Brian Eno has revealed.
The album was Eno and Bowie’s last collaboration and followed the pair’s so-called Berlin Trilogy of records made in the 1970s. Eno says the pair believed it had “fallen through the cracks.”
Eno tells the BBC: “About a year ago we started talking about Outside – the last album we worked on together. We both liked that album a lot and felt that it had fallen through the cracks. We talked about revisiting it, taking it somewhere new. I was looking forward to that. I received an email from him seven days ago.
“It was as funny as always, and as surreal, looping through word games and allusions and all the usual stuff we did. It ended with this sentence, ‘Thank you for our good times, Brian. They will never rot.’ It was signed, ‘Dawn.’ I realise now he was saying goodbye.”
Bowie died on Sunday at the age of 69 after an 18-month battle with cancer which he’d kept secret from everyone but his family. It has since been reported that the singer was suffering from a form of liver cancer. His biographer, Wendy Leigh, claimed he had survived six heart attacks in the last 12 months as he worked on his final album ★ (Blackstar).
Tributes poured in from across the music and acting worlds as the news broke yesterday and fans gathered at a Bowie mural in Brixton to pay their respects. Tributes were also laid on the music icon’s star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame in California and outside his home in New York.
Ozzy Osbourne, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Iggy Pop, Rush, Yoko Ono, Peter Frampton and AC/DC are among the latest big names to pay their respects, with Beatles hero McCartney saying: “David was a great star and I treasure the moments we had together. His music played a very strong part in British musical history and I’m proud to think of the huge influence he has had on people all around the world.”
Iggy Pop – whose albums The Idiot and Lust For Life were produced by Bowie – writes: “David’s friendship was the light of my life. I never met such a brilliant person. He was the best there is.”
