Lazarus

When David Bowie died on 10 January 2016, aged sixty-nine, his death was greeted with the greatest display of public mourning since Princess Diana three decades before. Politicians and fellow musicians alike fell over themselves to pay tribute to the former Starman, and his home cities of New York and London saw thousands of well-wishers assemble to play his music and console each other in their hour of grief.

Twenty-five years before, Bowie appeared to be washed up. His 80s career had been a slow descent into self-parody, his attempts to diversify into hard rock with the new group Tin Machine had been disastrous, and the art-rock music with which he had made his name was badly out of fashion. The Thin White Duke needed a miracle if he was not only going to be able to assume his rightful place at the top of the rock music firmament, but even to continue his career. And a miracle—a resurrection from the dead—is precisely what happened.

Lazarus: The Second Coming of David Bowie is the first biography of Bowie that tells the full and candid story of what happened in between those two apparently unbridgeable points. With new and exclusive interviews with the musicians, filmmakers, and cultural figures who worked with and befriended Bowie throughout this period, Lazarus is the definitive account of the previously overlooked and fascinating latter half of a great and distinguished career.

It climaxed with his final masterpiece, Blackstar, and the unprecedented—yet entirely appropriate—theatrical flourish of his departure from the stage on which he had thrived. And as it did so, Bowie passed from greatness into legend, and the world could only look on in admiration.