‘David Bowie: The Last Five Years’ on HBO Shows Us Rock’s Starman Was An Earthling After All

No one put the stars in being a rock star quite like David Bowie. Like, literally, the stars above us in the sky. From his first hit record, the intergalactic “Space Oddity,” whose Major Tom protagonist he would revisit throughout his career, to such songs as “Starman,” “Life On Mars,” and “Loving The Alien,” there was always something otherworldly about Bowie, as if, like the character he played in the 1976 film The Man Who Fell To Earth, he was a visitor from another planet. Being a rock star wasn’t enough. Being a musician wasn’t enough. Rock n’ roll wasn’t enough. His passion for art extended to jazz, experimental music, as well as theater, film, painting, and dance. All of these were manifested in his work, whether it was his songwriting or the curation of his image and persona, which he famously altered every few years, igniting new pop cultural trends.

It’s been two years and two days since David Bowie left this mortal coil for the stars up above. To mark the anniversary, as well as that of his birthday this week, HBO aired the documentary David Bowie: The Last Five Years, which is currently available for streaming. The title is a riff on “Five Years,” the leadoff track from Bowie’s breakout album, 1972’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. It also references the excellent 2013 documentary David Bowie: Five Years, which looked at five different stages of his career (and, like the new film, was directed by British documentary filmmaker Francis Whately).

As text explains in the beginning of the film, in his final three years David Bowie released two albums and wrote a musical. All three works touched on his past, present and future. The Last Five Years explores these connections and delves into the works themselves by interviewing his many collaborators, including longtime producer Tony Visconti, members of his backing band and actor Michael C. Hall, who starred in Lazarus, the musical which was based on songs from throughout his career.

The first sign that anything was wrong with the eternally youthful looking singer-songwriter was when he suffered a mild heart attack in June 2004 at the end of the world tour for his Reality album. In 2011 he began working in secret on his first new set of music in seven years. The musicians working on the album were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements and sessions would end promptly every day at 6 pm, which longtime Bowie guitarist Earl Slick notes was a change in practice from the workaholic Bowie of old.

The songs that would make up 2013’s The Next Day referenced Bowie’s past, both figuratively and literally. Where “The Stars (Are Out Tonight)” explored notions of celebrity, something producer Visconti says Bowie found distasteful, “Where Are We Now?” named the locales he frequented during his Berlin years, a period when Bowie produced some of his “most rewarding music.” The album artwork made this connection obvious, defacing the original cover of 1977’s “Heroes” with a large white cut-out.

“I’d never expect him to look back,” says Tony Visconti of the album and the artist who spent so much of his life ahead of the curve. To illustrate these connections, The Last Five Years jumps back and forth from present to past, finding the refracted inspirations in his work. While it’s a valid point, and at times fascinating to see how they intertwine, with a sense of panic you start feeling too much time is being spent in yesterday, especially knowing that Bowie’s days are running out.

The years begin passing by too quick, each one displayed on screen, like a final countdown. In his last year on Earth, Bowie began work on the musical Lazarus, which built its narrative around the character Thomas Newton from The Man Who Fell to Earth. He told Visconti writing a play was on his “bucket list,” the only time the producer can remember him being sentimental. At the same time he began work on his final album, Blackstar. Early in the creative processes of both he confided in his collaborators that he was ill with cancer and “probably going to die.” Rather than being discouraged, all involved say he threw himself into the projects with his vigor of old.

Lazarus opened at Manhattan’s New York Theatre Workshop on December 7, 2015. Though he was ill and knew his condition was terminal, Bowie made it to the premiere and afterwards talked about working on a sequel with the show’s producer. It was his last public appearance. The album Blackstar was released a little over a month later, on January 8, 2016, Bowie’s 69th birthday. Two days later, on January 10^th, he was dead.

David Bowie: The Last Five Years is heartfelt, as you might expect, but it’s never morose or gooey. By the end you come away thinking that despite his much ballyhooed different personas, Bowie was in fact one of music’s most transparent personalities, the different masks being just different facets of who he really was. He was no alien, but like the title of his 1997 album, an “Earthling,” a man driven by his passion for art and not afraid to make fun of himself. While at the film’s start we hear Bowie say “I would love to feel that what I did actually changed the fabric of music,” in it’s final moment he tells us when he dies he hopes we remember, “I had really great haircuts.”

Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC.

Watch David Bowie: The Last Five Years on HBO Go