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David Bowie Producer Tony Visconti Says Rock Star Wrote Five Songs Before His Death

By Sarah Field
Published on: 14:51 PST, May 8, 2016

David Bowie was working on new music right up until his untimely passing earlier this year — that’s according to Tony Visconti, the rock icon’s long time producer. As reported by The Toronto Sun, Visconti revealed Bowie called him up one day — Facetime was a preferred communication method of Bowie’s, according to the producer — and said he had another five songs he was working on. He never heard the music, as Bowie died just three weeks later.

Visconti was involved with Bowie’s last two albums, 2013’s The Next Day and 2016’s Blackstar. The last release continues to surprise fans, as it was recently revealed that the black star on the vinyl cover turns into a galaxy when left in the sun. That came as new information even to Bowie’s son Duncan Jones, who took to Twitter to acknowledge it.

While Bowie may have told Visconti he’d continued to create and seemed to want to release the music to the public in some form, Visconti said those caring for Bowie’s legacy have not yet revealed when or if it will come out.

“Everybody in the Bowie family and everyone involved is still in turmoil about this, not turmoil but grieving.

“It’s hard to believe that he’s gone. It’s hard for me to speak of him in the past tense. And those close to him are going through the same thing.”

Visconti was one of the few people who knew of Bowie’s cancer diagnosis. He currently performs in a Bowie tribute band called Holy Holy with Bowie’s onetime drummer Woody Woodmansey. The band was touring when news broke of Bowie’s passing.

Interestingly, Visconti seemed to reject the idea that Blackstar was meant as a “farewell” record before his death. In an interview with Yahoo Music last month, he said Bowie had always written about death and was still looking ahead to the next release.

“He wasn’t saying goodbye to his fans. He definitely had another record planned. The contingency might have been built into the lyrics – ‘Oh, in case I die,’ that kind of a thing. But death has been on his mind since we met – singing Jacques Brel’s ‘My Death,’ and so on. That’s a big, poetic subject. All poets write about death.”

Visconti first met Bowie in 1967 and produced 14 albums of his albums, the majority of the rock star’s substantial catalogue. He was behind Bowie’s legendary Berlin trilogy of Low, Heroes, and Lodger.

Back in January, when news of David Bowie’s death was still fresh, Billboard reported on comments from an unnamed source that Bowie planned to continue to release music, “divided into eras,” although it wasn’t confirmed whether that would include new music. Bowie released a compilation record, Nothing Has Changed between The Next Day and Blackstar. That release spanned 50 years of Bowie’s musical legacy but also included a couple of new tracks.

Visconti wrote on Facebook when Bowie passed away that the album was indeed a “parting gift.” The family announced the rock star died after an 18-month battle with cancer. The Telegraph picked up a point of information on Twitter that some cancer scars are called “black stars” due to their particular appearance, although more specifically with regards to breast cancer scars seen via mammograms. Although the family did not identify the kind of cancer with which Bowie was afflicted, the director of his play Lazarus, Ivo van Hove, reportedly said it was liver cancer.

[Photo by Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images]

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