Howard Bowden, head of content, Clarion Communications
Twenty-four and a bit hours later and I still can’t work out what’s more astonishing: that David Bowie is back, or the way in which he did it. Lets look at the facts: 1. With the exception of a four-piece guitar band from up north, Bowie is THE most important figure in British Popular Music over the past half a century (source: me). 2. With no live performances in a decade, no new music since 2006 and well documented health issues, the word was that we’d never hear from him again (as ‘confirmed’ to me by a national newspaper news editor the other week). 3. The last time I checked, the internet was a pretty big place, yet NO-ONE knew any of this was coming; no blurry cameraphone shots of him leaving a recording studio, no MP3s of demos leaked onto filesharing sites, and no slip-up by someone involved in its making on Twitter, as the excellent Alexis Petridis wrote in The Guardian. This really isn’t how you’re supposed to do things these days, you know.
