LADY STARDUST'S PASSING: THE DEATH OF DAVID BOWIE

Today David Bowie died. That's just four simple words. 

People die every day I know. Each death is a tragedy without doubt. 

But David Bowie's death will not simply touch those closest to him, but also his millions of fans around the world in a way that only super-stardom can do.

I am one of those fans and I am deeply saddened by his passing. I am saddened because he was still so young and had so much still to give to the world but I am also saddened because in many ways it is the end of my childhood. 

My Parents have long since gone, as have many of the cultural icons of 'my' time, not least Gerry Anderson himself. But Bowie was different, he was my teenage idol. I adored him from the off and followed his every move into my mid-teens. It was a burning passion that shaped who I was, what I sang and who I talked to.

David Bowie was a genius. In a world of ubiquitous long hair and loud lead guitars he landed on Earth and made us think. No ampless folkie, Bowie gave us rock for the space-age and characters of such colour and verve that for a time our humdrum lives were brilliantly transformed by his day-glo androgyny and cosmic visions. He carried the news.

I loved all his incarnations and went to see him at Preston Giuldhall in the winter of 1973. I had a Bowie hair cut and large circle painted on my forehead. I was 12 and new every word of every song he had ever made. At the concert I sang with all the other young dudes till our throats were sore. Every one of us there felt sure he had smiled at each of us individually. He was undoubtedly the nazz.

My bedroom wall was plastered with his face and I filled scrapbook's with news and pictures of him. For a time David Bowie consumed me in a way that only a young teenager can allow. No one else came close, not Elton, Roxy Music, Lou Reed, Slade, Zep. No musician meant as much to me nor ever will.

Every album he made painted a new vista of possibilities, a new language we had never heard before and a fresh slew of modern youth. He gave us a glimpse of the future. It was rock voodoo.

My school essays were influenced by his lyrics and I even mimed Ziggy Stardust with a guitar at the High School Talent Show. I didn't win - but for 5 minutes I was David Bowie! I couldn't play guitar but boy, what a feeling.

I still have all his albums. All my original vinyl I started to collect age 10 or 11. My own journey with Bowie spanned every LP from Space Oddity to Diamond Dogs, each a glam new chapter in his early Seventies rise. I digested them so completely I almost ate them.

As I grew more facial hair in my mid to late teens my rising heavy rock sensibilities may have turned me away after Dogs from the Berlin-bound Bowie but I never forgot him nor his fabulous music.

Today for many of us the music will have died. But boy, could he play guitar.

Rest in peace David.