David Bowie: His last live performances

David Bowie left us ten years ago. After his onstage heart attack in 2004, the enigmatic icon made a series of small public appearances. A look back at David Bowie's final live moments before he disappeared from the stage forever.

Ten years ago this month, David Bowie died just three days after releasing one of the most remarkable albums of his career, Blackstar. Rumors had been circulating about the precarious state of his health for a good decade, but he had just attended the premiere of his new off-Broadway musical, Lazarusand had appeared in two music videos for Blackstar. Bowie's death at age 69 on January 10 was very difficult news to digest and the start of a truly horrible year in which we also lost Prince, Leonard Cohen, Glenn Frey, George Michael, Sharon Jones and Leon Russell.

At the time of his death, Bowie had not performed a full concert or given an interview in a dozen years. After decades of very public life where it did not seem strange to see him invited to the Rosie O'Donnell Show or pose for photos in the magazine Hello! with his wife Iman and their newborn daughter Alexandria, he suddenly adopted a new personality: that of “the Man who fell from the Earth”, seen only in snatches on red carpets or at film premieres, without ever uttering a word.

But there was a strange, brief period after the tour ended prematurely reality from 2003/04, where he started appearing unexpectedly at special events and at his friends' concerts. We did not know then that this marked the end of his stage career. Fortunately, all of this was captured on camera, although some fan-filmed material from the pre-iPhone era lacks quality. Here's a fantastic journey through Bowie's last seven live appearances.

Prague, T-Mobile Arena, June 23, 2004

As hard as it may be to imagine today, a David Bowie tour wasn't a huge event in the early 2000s. He hadn't had a hit album in 20 years at that point, much of his '70s mystique had faded, and he was in town as often as Rod Stewart or James Taylor. When he launched a world tour in support of his album reality from 2003, unfortunately underrated, the American leg passed through a mixture of arenas, theaters and even several casinos. He was supposed to stay on the road until the end of July 2004, but everything changed in the middle of a concert in scorching heat in Prague, when pain overwhelmed his body as he sang the title track of reality.

New York, Hammerstein Ballroom, November 9, 2006

There's a very valid argument that Bowie's three-song set at the Hammerstein Ballroom in 2006 for the Save a Child foundation was his last live performance. He performed “Wild Is the Wind” and “Fantastic Voyage” with Mike Garson, before Alicia Keys joined him on “Changes.” (The footage is as awful as you'd expect for a 2006 concert clip that's been on YouTube for 19 years, but we should be grateful that it exists at all.) It was the last time he performed his own songs in public or even had musicians on stage. But there was one last moment that matters a little, in a way…

New York, Radio City Music Hall, May 19, 2007

David Bowie organized the 2007 High Line Festival in New York, and was originally scheduled to close the festivities with a giant concert in Riverside Park. Those plans were eventually canceled, but he scheduled Ricky Gervais at Radio City, and he came on stage to introduce him by recreating a sketch fromExtras in which he made fun of himself with an impromptu song called “Little Fat Man.” It's easy to argue that this is a simple comedy act, and there is no band or instrumentation of any kind, but there is an audience and Bowie is singing rather than speaking. Setlist.FM is counting it, but we're still undecided. (Watch the video and judge for yourself.) What we can say with great certainty is that Bowie released two more albums, filmed several music videos, and created the musical Lazarus after that. But he never sang a single note in public again, even “Little Fat Man.”

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