Jimmy Fallon emotional over David Bowie

In 2014, Iman admitted that while Bowie was overwhelmed by his feelings for her nearly immediately after meeting her, she had no intentions of entering into a relationship with a “rock star”, yet soon found herself falling in love.

Perhaps this album, viewed in the light cast by his sudden and unexpected death, is just the next stage for him to conquer.

A very important location for anyone wishing to pay tribute is Trident Studios – here in St Anne’s Court he recorded Space Oddity and a couple of years later, his great breakthrough Ziggy Stardust album. And piano, and saxophone, and cello, and harmonica, and drums. I asked to join a long-standing Bowie tribute band, the Thin White Duke; they auditioned me, then welcomed me. After the concert, the East Germans began to riot, demanding that the wall was torn down, and within two years it was gone.

This was a period that saw Bowie sporting an array of fantastic costumes, some said to based on the chilling Kubrick movie “A Clockwork Orange”. The act could not be stopped by his mortal life. In June 1987, Bowie played in West Berlin and sang “Heroes” in a concert that was relayed by radio to East Germany, where East Germans came out to the wall to try and hear it live. It was the act, after all: David Bowie, vibrant and thriving at the end of his seventh decade of life, pushing musical and artistic boundaries for the umpteen-hundredth time. It features lyrics including: “Look up here, I’m in heaven”.

The label, the industry, everyone, had assumed Bowie retired after his heart attack and the cancellation of his world tour in 2004. Now all I see is a man dancing a jig and telling everyone, “That’s all folks!” I was the kind of pupil whom teachers dread – clever but too stupid to use it. But I was using it. I ran my own fanzine, I was writing never-to-be-published novels, I was painting and I was performing music. “I didn’t know this person…”

And to commit more fully to the research, surely I should have my hair dyed in his distinctive style from The Man Who Fell To Earth, and the cover of the Low album? I’d never cried over an artist before, but I got this Facebook message about it from a girl in the United Kingdom, and I sat there and cried.

“While many of you will share in this loss, we ask that you respect the family’s privacy during their time of grief”, the post said.

A day after David Bowie lost his secret 18-month battle to cancer, his music played on.

Black says the people in Bowie’s hometown spoke of being stunned after hearing the news. For me it’s simple – in so many ways David Bowie was my teacher.