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David Bowie To Make One More Appearance On HBO

By Stacey Cole
Published on: 05:44 PST, Mar 11, 2017

David Bowie may have passed away a little over a year ago, but his legacy lives on, according to Billboard. The late “Life on Mars” rock icon, who died last January at the age of 69, will make one more appearance on HBO.

The TV network has acquired the U.S. television rights to the documentary David Bowie: The Last Five Years, which premiered on BBC2 last month. The documentary chronicles Bowie’s recording sessions for his last two albums, 2013’s The Next Day, and Blackstar, which was released just two days prior to his death in January, 2016.

While HBO has not yet announced when David Bowie: The Last Five Years will air, the documentary, directed and produced by Francis Whately, also captured the late rock icon’s work on the stage musical Lazarus. The HBO documentary will also feature interviews of several people who have collaborated with David Bowie, including his producer Tony Visconti.

In his statement to HBO, Whately said that revisiting David Bowie’s final five years allowed him to “reexamine his life’s work” as well as discover that the late rock icon’s career was something bigger than many people tend to believe. HBO’s acquisition of David Bowie: The Last Five Years TV rights comes less than a week since the late rock star’s final album Blackstar received five Grammy Awards, including for Best Rock Performance.

In January, the director of the music video for David Bowie’s song “Lazarus” revealed that Bowie didn’t know his cancer was terminal until after the recording sessions for Blackstar were finished. The revelations from Johan Renck published in The Guardian may sound strange especially given the fact that there were so many allusions to death on the album and in the “Lazarus” video.

“I found out… the week we were shooting, it was when he was told it was over. They were ending treatments and that his illness had won.”

Renck also revealed that the opening scene in “Lazarus,” in which David Bowie is seen lying in a hospital bed and singing, “look up here, I’m in heaven,” wasn’t a reference to the rock legend’s imminent death. This was, however, a widespread interpretation of the lyric. But Renck insists that he had David Bowie lying in the hospital bed because the song is called “Lazarus” and because he wanted the biblical aspect to be attached to it.

“It had nothing to do with him being ill.”

David Bowie may have had one of the most prominent careers in the music industry, but he received only one Grammy Award in his lifetime, according to Forbes.

While David Bowie’s debut Grammy came to him in 1985 – for Best Video, Short Form – more than three decades prior to his death, at this year’s Grammy Awards ceremony Bowie posthumously won all five Grammys for which he was nominated that night.

While David Bowie’s song “Blackstar” received two golden gramophones for Best Rock Performance and Best Rock Song, the late rock icon’s album of the same name earned him Grammys for Best Alternative Music Album, Best Engineered Album (Non-Classical), and Best Recording Package.

Even David Bowie’s longtime collaborator, Donny McCaslin, noted while accepting the Grammy Awards on his behalf that he was “very surprised” to learn that the late rock legend had won only one Grammy in his lifetime.

“I’m just so happy for him and his family and his fans.”

Despite winning only one Grammy in his lifetime, David Bowie had been nominated for twelve golden gramophones in total. As tragic as it may sound, McCaslin also revealed that Bowie was working on new music prior to his death.

“We were going to go back in to the studio in January [2016] to record.”

[Featured Image by Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images]

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