David Bowie’s demise brings baby boomer generation to death row

A GENERATION is waking up to its mortality, writes Victoria White. That’s what’s been happening for the last 10 days as Bowie’s Blackstar reaches No 1 in the US and the UK charts and his tracks are streamed 19m times in the space of a week.

As British journalist Stuart Machonie wrote, “For those of us who grew up in the 1970s the passing of David Bowie is a moment of huge and seismic generational grief. We knew the greatness and heft of Kennedy and Presley and Lennon — but even so, they felt like giants from a different era. Bowie was ours, the first pop star of the post-Apollo age.” At first there was a fair bit of disbelief. One report even called the 69-year-old’s death “premature”. It was premature in the sense that every death is premature. It felt especially premature because Bowie was so talented and had such a young daughter.

But he completed nearly the average global lifespan for men. He died 10 years earlier than the average British man but that was quite an achievement given the extent to which he abused his body in early life.