The more famous he became, the more ordinary David Bowie wanted to be. When he resided in Switzerland he was known as plain David Jones.
I heard since 2012 that Bowie's health was not so good. It had been some years since he was regularly seen in public.
So fans and critics were surprised when Bowie released The Next Day album in 2013.
In January 2016 the rock world was shocked when his death was announced just a few days after the release of the Blackstar album.
This documentary more than just looks at the last five years of his life. Bowie had health problems when he toured in 2004 and in the years after he seemed to have withdrawn from the public limelight.
We hear from collaborators on his final albums, some of them recreate the sounds from those albums. You can sense the surprise and joy they had been asked to record with Bowie. We also hear from directors who made the videos to accompany the songs from these final years and there was the collaboration he did for a stage musical. Some of them knew he was ill and that his time was short.
The most striking thing about this documentary was to hear from Bowie that his biggest regret was to lose some of his best years to drug addiction. A lot of performers whether they are actors or musicians claim that they regret taking drugs and I am never sure they are ever sincere. Bowie seemed to be here.
In ways this was a low key documentary but it was fascinating. Director Francis Whately seemingly did not have much to go on because Bowie was away from the limelight for so much of the last decade of his life.
