Time to upload my first picture to this Blog, my front row ticket to David Bowie’s Earls Court gig, 30 June 1978.

Millions of words have already been spoken and written about David Bowie since his death earlier this week. Like most people of my background and age I have been affected by the news in a way that will only happen a few times in my life: sadness, sorrow, and gratitude for the songs and the memories. Elvis, Bowie, Dylan: the most important solo artists of my lifetime. And Elvis and Bowie shared a birthday, as you probably know.

I’m not ready to write much more about this but will post up some personal memories in the days ahead, memories of the Starman‘s effect on my life over the last 40 years, from the first Bowie album I bought (“Aladdin Sane”) through all those musical ch-ch-changes, seeing him live, the many hours I spent at the V&A exhibition in 2013, and the Tony Visconti gig last summer at the Shepherds Bush Empire. He and the remaining Spider from Mars played the whole of “Man who sold the world”. I brought my son, then aged 10, to that one, his first proper gig. He knew who David Bowie was, we called him “the Starman”. He had spent enough time with me at the V&A to know the song and that classic “Top of the Pops” performance from 1972. He asked if the Starman was going to be there too. I thought that there was the tiniest chance that he might show up. We didn’t know that he was ill. And now he’s waiting in the sky.