As you are no doubt already well aware from multiple postings on your Facebook wall, David Bowie officially became a senior citizen today.

I have to admit that I was saddened by reading what The Guardian’s killjoy, Alexis Petridis, had to say about this milestone:

It’s a cliche when a rock star reaches 65 to mention the time when it didn’t look like they’d make pensionable age, but with David Bowie who marks the milestone on Sunday, it’s almost unavoidable. Look at a picture of him in the mid-70s, when he was ravaged by cocaine, living off a diet of red peppers and milk and so paranoid that he apparently kept his own urine in a fridge lest persons unknown steal it: this is not a man destined to make old bones.

It wasn’t just the drugs: there was something about the intensity with which he worked during that decade - the scarcely-believable ten-year creative streak that begins with the 1970s The Man Who Sold The World and ends with the 1980’s Scary Monsters And Super-Creeps – that suggests an early demise. Someone that burns that brightly probably isn’t going to burn for long.

Under the circumstances, it’s hard to begrudge him his ongoing semi-retirement: he last made an album in 2003, and for the best part of a decade has made only sporadic public appearances, the odd special guest spot here and there. It was precipitated by emergency surgery on a blocked artery, and lurid rumours about the state of his health have abounded ever since.

Ouch. The idea of a world without David Bowie (even if he’s not in the public eye much these days) is something I’ve never really contemplated. Thanks a bunch, Guardian, for ruining my morning!

Well, if you’re in a more celebratory mood, you can trawl through the Bowie-related back items here on Dangerous Minds. I daresay our Bowie posts here gather up some of the very best Bowie-related multi-media you’re going to find out there.

In England—well, in Brixton at least—they’ve put him on the currency, a proper tribute for a local lad (insane).

And here’s an oblique treat, a very different take on “Golden Years” as performed by Peter Glaze and Jan Hunt on the BBC childrens show, Crackerjack, in 1976:
 

 
Thank you Paul Gallagher, for that crazy clip…