Rock star David Bowie, 69, kept battle with cancer from the public

LONDON - Visionary British rock star David Bowie cut a new album and coproduced an off-Broadway play while keeping secret from all but a few that he was dying of liver cancer, friends said Monday, a day after the musician died at age 69.

A pioneering chameleon of performance imagery, Bowie straddled the worlds of hedonistic rock, fashion, art and drama for five decades, pushing the boundaries of music and his own sanity to produce some of the most innovative songs of his generation.

He coupled trendsetting pop personas like 'Ziggy Stardust” with hits in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s and on Friday had just released 'Blackstar,” which won some of the best critical reviews of his career.

'David Bowie died peacefully today surrounded by his family after a courageous 18-month battle with cancer,” read a statement Sunday on Bowie's Facebook page. Bowie's son, film director Duncan Jones, confirmed the death. A spokesman declined to say where he died or from what type of cancer.

Bowie kept a low public profile after having emergency heart surgery in June 2004 - just three months after he had performed in the Quad Cities.

It was not publicly known that he had cancer. But Belgian stage director Ivo van Hove, who directed the current off-Broadway experimental play 'Lazarus,” which Bowie co-created and for which he provided much of the music, said the singer had been diagnosed with liver cancer 15 months ago.

'He told me more than a year and three months ago, just after he had heard himself ... he said it was liver cancer,” van Hove told Dutch public radio broadcaster NOS in an interview Monday.

'I saw a man who didn't want to die, he really didn't want to die. ... He was in a battle for his life. Sometimes he looked at me and I saw a man who was suffering through and through because he knew the clock was ticking,” the director told Dutch TV in a separate interview.

One of Bowie's last-known public appearances was in New York in mid-December to watch the show, which is due to close Jan 19.

Bowie died two days after releasing 'Blackstar.” A music video for the first single, 'Lazarus,” showed him lying in a hospital bed with bandages across his eyes.

'He made ‘Blackstar' for us, his parting gift. I knew for a year this was the way it would be. I wasn't, however, prepared for it,” Bowie's record producer, Tony Visconti, wrote Monday on Facebook.

Tributes poured in from titans of popular music, including the Rolling Stones, Madonna, Kanye West and Paul McCartney.

Even the Vatican weighed in: 'Check ignition and may God's love be with you” - borrowing a verse from Bowie's first hit, 'Space Oddity.”

Born David Jones on Jan. 8, 1947, he took up the saxophone at 13 before changing his name to David Bowie to avoid confusion with the Monkees' Davy Jones, Rolling Stone magazine said.

He shot to fame in Britain in 1969 with 'Space Oddity.” Bowie's haunting lyrics summed up the loneliness of the Cold War space race between the United States and the Soviet Union.

It was Bowie's 1972 portrayal of a doomed bisexual rock envoy from space, Ziggy Stardust, that propelled him to global stardom. Bowie and Ziggy, wearing outrageous costumes, makeup and bright orange hair, took the pop world by storm.

Now an influential symbol of artistic reinvention venturing into the theater, film and fashion worlds, Bowie continued to innovate, helping produce Lou Reed's 'Walk on the Wild Side” and Iggy Pop's 'Lust for Life.”

Ever ahead of public opinion, Bowie told the Melody Maker newspaper in 1972 that he was gay, a step that helped pioneer sexual openness in Britain, which had decriminalized homosexuality only in 1967.

Four years later, he informed Playboy that he was bisexual, but he told Rolling Stone magazine in the 1980s that the declaration was 'the biggest mistake I ever made” and that he was 'always a closet heterosexual.”

Bowie married the Somali-American supermodel Iman in 1992 with whom he had a daughter, Alexandria Zahra Jones, born in 2000.

Bowie went through a musical metamorphosis in the mid-1970s, adopting a soul and funk sound.

He scored his first U.S. No. 1 with 'Fame” and established a new persona, the 'Thin White Duke,” for his 'Station to Station” album.

But the excesses of a hedonistic life were taking their toll. In a reference to his prodigious appetite for cocaine, he said: ''I blew my nose one day in California. And half my brains came out.”

Bowie moved from the United States to Switzerland and then to Berlin to recuperate, working with Brian Eno from Roxy Music to produce some of his most ambitious music, including 'Heroes” in 1977. He scored a hit with funk dance track 'Fashion” in 1980.

In 1983, Bowie changed tack again, signing a multimillion-dollar deal with EMI. His first hit, 'Let's Dance”, returned him to chart success.