David Bowie Dies After Quiet Cancer Battle

In August of 2025, actor Gary Oldman spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about his old friend, David Bowie.

“Don’t you feel that since he died, the world’s gone to s–t? It was like he was cosmic glue or something. When he died, everything fell apart,” Oldman said. “I miss him. Occasionally, I’ll see something, it’ll make me laugh and I’ll think, ‘God, I wonder what Dave would have made of this,’ or ‘Oh, that would have made him laugh.'”

Bowie’s death, at the time of this writing, happened a decade ago. On Jan. 8, 2016, he released what would become his very last album, Blackstar. Two days later he passed away at 69 years old. Since then, it could be argued, an awful lot of stress and strife has seemed to plague the world, and Oldman is not the first person to notice.

David Bowie’s Private Cancer Battle

In the summer of 2014, Bowie had been diagnosed with liver cancer, something he kept secret from all but the closest people in his life, even as the end drew near.

“Nobody knew…Nobody even suggested there was anything,” another of Bowie’s friends, Robert Fox, told The Telegraph in 2016. “And then we woke up on Monday morning and it was on the news. I think that’s the way he wanted it to be.

“He wanted the minimum of fuss. He was just a private man. And I think he wanted to protect his family from the insanity there would have been.”

“Private” was also a word used by Donny McCaslin, the jazz saxophonist who worked with Bowie on Blackstar. Even when speaking with The Guardian in October of 2016, nine months after Bowie’s death, McCaslin wasn’t comfortable speaking about the subject.

“He was so private,” he said. “I want to honor his wishes that we not talk about it.”

READ MORE: Every David Bowie Single Ranked

According to Tony Visconti, Bowie’s longtime producer, the making of Blackstar was, all things considered, relatively normal. Bowie warned people that he would not make it to the studio every day for medical reasons and, in his typical fashion, afforded the musicians he’d hired immense freedom.

“He set the tone from the beginning,” McCaslin continued. “He told us: ‘Whatever you hear, I want you to go with it.’ He said ‘great’ to everything.”

Watch the Music Video for David Bowie’s ‘Blackstar’ Title Track

“David phoned me up for another album, he said, ‘Let’s get together and have a little chinwag,’ which is the first time I’ve ever heard that word, ‘chinwag,'” Visconti later explained. “I’m so happy his last album was among one of his greatest. He didn’t go out like a has-been. He went out like a legend, like a God. And I want people to think of it like that.”

It was around this time that Bowie told Visconti that he was going to be a grandfather, and that once the holiday season was over he wanted to show Visconti new music he’d written for another potential album. It was the last conversation they ever had.

READ MORE: The Best Song From Each David Bowie Album

Naturally, the world’s reaction to Bowie’s passing was one of great surprise. Musicians from all kinds of backgrounds — some who knew and worked with Bowie personally, some who had never met the man — came pouring out.

“David’s friendship was the light of my life,” Iggy Pop said. “I never met such a brilliant person. He was the best there is.”

“What a honor, what a soul,” said rapper Kendrick Lamar, whose music had inspired Blackstar. “David Bowie, Spirit of Gold. RIP.”

“My friends and I in New York, we’ve lived a lifestyle of total immersion in music, fashion, art and technology since we were kids — and this is because of him,” Lady Gaga, who performed a tribute to Bowie at the 2016 Grammys, told NPR. “I just would never be here, or have the philosophy that I have, if I didn’t have someone to look up to that, you know, blew my mind so intensely.”

The Decade Since

In the ten years that have passed since Bowie died, a number of tributes and other public recognitions have taken place.

The traveling exhibition of Bowie artifacts called David Bowie Is continued until 2018, finally coming to an end at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, the city Bowie called home for the last 20 or so years of his life. Later in 2025, the David Bowie Centre opened in London, where the artifacts and tens of thousands of other archival materials from Bowie’s career now live permanently.

Two new Bowie films have entered the world as well. Stardust, a biopic starring Johnny Flynn was released in 2020, albeit to unfavorable reviews. But there was also Moonage Daydream, directed by Brett Morgen, featuring previously-unseen archival footage and audio bits resulting in something that can only be described as kaleidoscopic.

There is now a statue of Bowie in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, England, where he first unveiled the Ziggy Stardust persona back in the early ’70s, plus a street in Paris, Rue David Bowie. On the more unique end of things, it’s only right that in 2016 a group of Belgian astronomers dedicated a constellation of seven stars to Bowie. When connected, the stars form the shape of the lightning bolt from the cover of Aladdin Sane.

And, of course, his artistic influence continues on via friends and disciples alike. In 2019, pop sensation Harry Styles spoke with Rolling Stone about the making of his album Fine Line. In the studio, Styles kept playing a Bowie interview from the ’90s, memorizing one specific part word for word:

“If you feel safe in the area that you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you are capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.”