Ahead of his time, Bowie spoke of post-apocalyptic landscapes, of isolation, of the technological journey beyond the human realm posing the great question of our time: Is the planet going to survive? He talked of dynamiting binarism and making room for different notions of identity, while forging a deep and warm bond between those who listened to him.
That new album, Sad and Beautiful World released on 7 November includes a small galaxy of music legends orbiting around Staples at the centre. As well as covers of songs by Curtis Mayfield, Gillian Welch, Frank Ocean, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen and Porter Wagoner, plus US alt heroes Mark Sparklehorse Linkous and Kevin Morby, there are new songs, including one written for and about Staples by Hozier and Allison Russell.
Great artists who are the opposite of prolific are always a thorny subject. Many of our most romantic ideas about creativity tend to view "genius" as a kind of vessel state, from which beauty and inspiration simply flow forth, effortlessly and boundlessly: It's deflating to be confronted with the reality that this isn't always how it works. And, of course, when such artists come to be the subjects of intense devotion and scrutiny, it often provokes a demand for more and more, faster and faster,
Danny Hutton of Three Dog Night is due to receive diaspora award Irish-born US musician Danny Hutton is founder of a band that have sold 50 million records, released 21 consecutive Billboard Top 40 hits and helped launch the careers of Elton John, Randy ­Newman and Harry Nilsson.
Brian Eno once said of the Velvet Underground that their first album sold only 30,000 copies, but everyone who bought one started a band. Joy Division's debut Unknown Pleasures sold only 20,000 copies in its initial period of release, but the T‑shirt emblazoned with its cover art - an image of radio waves emanating from a pulsar taken from an astronomy encyclopedia - has long since constituted a commercial-semiotic empire unto itself.
When four top film studio musicians formed the Hollywood String Quartet in the late 1930s, its name was presumed an oxymoron. Exalted string quartet devotees belittled film soundtracks, while studio heads had a reputation for shunning classical music longhairs.
We didn't want to be the cops, says Bobby Weir, guitarist and founder member of the Grateful Dead, laughing as he describes his band's legendarily lax attitude to people taping their concerts... It was an easy decision to make.
