Is it any wonder?

And so the anniversary of David Bowie's death comes around again. A properly balanced individual would simply get over it, as they would the deaths of any figure they'd held in high regard but never knew personally. Bowie is, though, one of only two artists I’ve properly mourned for, the other being John Martyn. And when I say “mourn”, I don’t mean the lowering of flags and wearing a black veil for a month, but a profound reflection on - as irrational as this sounds - the loss. In the case of Bowie, it was the loss of a creative soul who’s music, and all the different phases of that music - the winsome folk, the glam, the soul, the post-punk, the pop, the grunge...the endless reinvention, basically - captured my interest almost inadvertently. 

But in the wake of Bowie dying, on this day four years ago and just 48 hours after releasing his final album, Blackstar, I discovered another Bowie, one that I have also come to miss as much as a personal and now absent friend. In the flood of archive video clips that started surfacing on social media, documenting both live performances as well as the few on-camera interviews he did, I encountered a Bowie brimming with warmth and a distinct south London charm. Unencumbered by the addictions and foibles of the 1970s, the 1990s Bowie was funny and relaxed. Indeed, backstage footage of The Dame on what would be his final tour saw not a rock deity but a bloke you would willingly want to spent time with, down the pub, in a restaurant, out on the town. 

Somehow this not only completed my picture of Bowie, but also my appreciation of him, as if the incredible body of music and the bold artistic adventure hadn’t been enough. The cap of it all was a train journey back to Paris from the Montreux Jazz Festival when I watched the entire concert film of Bowie’s Reality Tour. Recorded in Dublin in 2003, and running to almost two-and-a-half hours, over 30 songs it not only captured Bowie at his best and captured Bowie’s best, but faithfully portrayed the relaxed, funny, easy-going Bowie that bandmates like Gail Ann Dorsey and Earl Slick would later tell a BBC documentary was what typified him on that tour. 

Sad, then, that health issues ended his live career in 2004, and until the bombshell of 2013, when the single Where Are We Now and, later, The Next Day album, appeared out of the blue, his public appearances were limited to a few guest slots, such as performing Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb with David Gilmour at the Royal Albert Hall in 2006, and his hilarious cameo in Ricky Gervais’s Extras (“Chubby little loser!”).

Since his death there has been no shortage of posthumous releases of archive material and rarities, all of which this fan has been more than willing to Hoover up. Yes, I’m the record company’s dream punter, buying super deluxe editions without question, but just as I will defend most live albums (if recorded well enough and capture a genuinely great performance), the Bowie box sets have provided new opportunity to appreciate the music, the charisma and the artist anew.

And, there seems, plenty more to come. On what would have been Bowie’s 73rd birthday two days ago, Parlophone announced the next set of baubles to prise open the fan’s wallet. Over the next six weeks an EP, David Bowie: Is It Any Wonder?, will be released online in six increments, starting with - and available now - a previously unreleased version of The Man Who Sold The World. The EP’s following five tracks will be released on a weekly basis from 17 January onwards. Then, on this year’s Record Store Day, 18 April, Parlophone will release ChangesNowBowie, effectively a recording of studio rehearsals for Bowie’s 50th birthday concert at Madison Square Garden on 8 January, 1997. Track listings have not yet been released, but the concert featured classics like Space Oddity, The Jean Genie, Queen Bitch, Scary Monsters (And Supercreeps) and other more obscure gems and a cover - with Lou Reed - of The Velvet Underground’s I'm Waiting for the Man. And, of course, I’ll be in the queue at 6am to buy it.