With ever longer gaps between albums, it’s becoming difficult to identify which rock stars are just having a quick lie-down, and which are actually missing in action. Retirement: now that is a bold career move. There must be a few old rockers currently eyeing the example of Joni Mitchell, who retired very noisily some years ago, saying she’d had it up to here with the music business, and is now back with a new album, a ballet, a new range of Joni action figures and maybe a fragrance or two to follow. It’s probably more sensible just to ease quietly out of the picture, which at least gives you the option of easing quietly back in again a few years later.
In which case, what is going on with David Bowie? It’s four years now since his last studio album, Reality, the second of two recorded in quick succession with Tony Visconti, who produced many of his best 1970s records. In Mojo earlier this year, Visconti said that he and Bowie hadn’t worked together since, ‘though we’re email buddies and I hear from him every week’. In 2003, while touring Reality, Bowie had a minor heart attack and emergency angioplasty. Since then he has turned up here and there, recording the odd song for film soundtracks and popping up on stage with David Gilmour and, as it happens, the Arcade Fire. According to the film director Darren Aronofsky, Bowie is working on a rock-opera adaptation of the comic book Watchmen. Which may just be a joke. (When rock stars make it known that they are working on rock-opera adaptations of comic books, I suspect that what they are really saying is: ‘I’m just off for a swim, and afterwards I’ll have a cup of tea.’)
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