Hot Press' David Bowie tribute starts on Thursday!

It’s almost a year since we woke up to the shock news that David Bowie had died from cancer just two days after celebrating his 69th birthday.
To commemorate this and the Thursday January 5 start of the Dublin Bowie Festival, we’ll be dipping into the Hot Press archives to bring you a selection of classic interviews, videos, photos, reviews and tributes from some of the Jones boy’s most ardent musical admirers.
Kicking things off on Thursday will be our Hot Press 2017 Annual chat with Enda Walsh, the Dubliner who collaborated with David on his acclaimed Lazarus musical and got to know the person as well as the artist.
“God almighty, he was such a sweet man!” Enda tells Hot Press. “The guy was inspired by all art and everything around him. He realised that you can’t be constantly going over the same ground again and again. David wasn’t afraid to throw things away that had previously been successful for him, and think new stuff.”
Walsh was one of the handful of people outside of David’s family who knew he was seriously ill.
“We’d been working together for about a year-and-a-half when in May 2015 he told us that he was sick. And that was it, discussion over, back to the grindstone.”
Enda doesn’t buy into the notion of Lazarus and Blackstar being some sort of grandiose last will and testament.
“People say, ‘This is the man who stage-managed everything, but I never saw that,” he insists. “David was always saying, ‘What are we going to do next?’ Not once did I sense a finality talking to him.”
We’re also re-winding to 2013 when Walsh’s fellow Dub Gerry Leonard told us about the making of The Next Day, and what it was like to be the Thin White Duke’s musical director for over a decade.
So, stay tuned to hotpress.com for a feast of Bowie!