I’ve been doing some recreational reading of late – as is my wont – specifically, Apathy for the Devil, the memoir of noted British rock journalist Nick Kent. He goes year-by-year through the 70s, recalling how each year had its moments pivotal in his own burgeoning career, when the likes of Zeppelin, Lou Reed, Iggy and the Stooges and their epoch-mates were in their career infancy as well. But through it all is David Bowie, lingering, as if as a watermark, visible if you hold it up to the light. A basis for comparison, a riddle, an enigma, an instigator. Bowie speaks to Kent about loving Roxy Music, when others of the time would have spurned them as competition.He did what others wouldn’t.

I bring this up because the passing of Bowie a few scant days after the release of this, his (presumably) final album Blackstar seems to have fallen at the same time as another bunch of strange coincidences. Like that of late-and-loved actor Alan Rickman, who died the day after, at the same age, because of similar ailments. Or Lemmy out of Motörhead, who made it to 70 just in time to exit stage left. Lemmy’s pre-Motörhead act, Hawkwind, gets a guernsey in Kent’s early 70s memories. And the rest of it is all just coming together. Like the drummer from Mott the Hoople also dying just a few days ago. And then Glenn Frey passes (saw him live once, too, when he was flying solo, and toured Australia with LRB v3.0 – post-Farnham Shorrock). This is one of those pieces within pieces things – that among the old musical world collapsing among these vaunted greats (and Guru Josh, for what it’s worth), I happen upon Nick Kent’s book as a literary sorbet, after slogging through an academic text on Chairman Mao, and Kent keeps running into Bowie, doing as he would in a scene and society that you’d think would not have had a bar of it. But he apparently didn’t care. He never did, hence the greatness.

Blackstar seemed worthy of instant analysis upon hearing it, but then Bowie went and died, and every other mouse click led to a tribute to him, or a reminiscence, or a cloying attempt at discussing who knew the man best. My own self, I had the sole frame of reference for his work as being his performance as the mulleted, codpiece-sporting goblin king of 1986’s Labyrinth. Then I , saw him in concert, the painfully maligned ‘Glass Spider’ tour of 1987, on the heels of his mightily derided album Never Let Me Down. But I was 12, the gig (a freebie) was my first ever and it blew my tiny (albeit peanut-shaped) head clean off. I got Never Let Me Down on cassette, played it to death, and then started figuring out what else he had done. Had the 1983 ‘Serious Moonlight’ concert tour on VHS. I videoed an MTV special and got a taste of ‘Space Oddity’, ‘Suffragette City’, ‘Ashes to Ashes’, ‘Let’s Dance’, ‘Modern Love’ and ‘China Girl’ (oddly racist video, that, what with Bowie’s slitty-eyed carry-on). Then came the best of compilation ChangesBowie, which covered many of the essentials of his career up to ‘Blue Jean’, as well as a now-unlistenable 1990 remix of ‘Fame’ which was used on the soundtrack to Pretty Woman, of all fucking things. Dreadful.

Then there was Tin Machine, and a series of under-performing, or under-valued, or underwhelming albums followed. But then Heathen, and Reality, and The Next Day, as if from nowhere. Now, Blackstar, again, as if from nowhere. And then he dies, as if from nowhere. And the context for Blackstar becomes inescapable, and of course it means absolutely everything now that the opening gambit of ‘Lazarus’ is “Look up here, I’m in heaven…”

But it’s a strange (in a good way) album, clearly of significant personal import. He’s playing at a kind of musical indulgence and interpretation that defies description, nor does not fit neatly into his heavily scrutinised canon, and clearly speaks volumes about an artist who wants to do what he wants (wanted, past tense, natch) to do at the final moments of his life. Nothing about it can ever mean more than what it suddenly meant two days after he turned 69 and released it – it’s an album as famous last words, a self-penned eulogy, or dirge. It’s the key component of a perfectly executed death-as-art-as-marketing.

As a work of art, it stands perfectly well with the rest of his catalogue, as well as his life as a consummate artist. It’s not so much an album, as a grand statement upon exiting the stage. Quietly glorious.