There's a starman waiting in the sky, he'd like to come and meet us but thinks he'd blow our minds

These are times when the phrase 'legend' gets overused. Almost everyone's a legend now. But then something happens, someone dies who really was a legend.

David Bowie passed away in the small hours and we woke up to the news, or I saw it as a Tweet from someone, can't remember who it was, and it don't really matter. That he released his, what is now, final album on Friday, his 69th birthday is remarkable. I tried to like what I heard off it, I did, but it challenged me. Now we can see it for what it was, a long glorious goodbye and thanks for the fish note from the erstwhile David Jones.

Will we see his like again? No, as there was no one like him to start with. Reinventing himself on an apparently annual basis, from hippy, to Aladin Sane, to Ziggy Stardust to the Thin White Duke to Bowie in Berlin, to Major Tom to, well, on and on and on. And just when the music world had caught up with what Bowie was doing, he had moved on yet again. He even did a drum n bass album, Tin Machine both in fairly recent years.

My sometime best friend at Primary School, Andrew Ellis, had a Bowie Aladin Sane t shirt: I thought it was very daring, as I suppose my parents must have said something during the Starman appearance on TOTP or something. I can remember Space Oddity coming out, then his Laughing Gnome song was always played on Junior Choice. He was always there, putting out challenging music, then changing direction just when we all got it. The ending of Ziggy Stardust when he and the Spiders where at the top of their game, at the final date of the tour was 100% Bowie.

I got to know of Bowie again in 1979 when he released DJ and Alabama Song, neither of shich I really understood or liked. But I'm sure I wasn't the only one. Then, in 1980, Ashes to Ashes came out, reviving his Major Tom character from Space Oddity. Only now he was high on drugs not up in space. But more than the sing, was the video, featuring the soon to be famous Blitz Kids Steve Strange et al. Through Scary Monsters, Cat People, Baal's Hymn to Let's Dance, putting guitars back just when everyone else was taking them off their music.

Through the 80s, the greatest hits Serious Moonlight tour, Absolute Beginners and into the new century with Tin Machine and the drum n bass album, always keeping more than one step ahead of everyone else. Then, in 2005, he semi-retired: health problems, flying food, surfacing to guest on other acts records. Then one day we woke up a few years back to find a new song released to the world during the night. But more amazing was that it was the teaser for a whole new album that no one had leaked or knew anything about.

A new album last Friday, on his birthday, then this news.

My favourite track of his, well, hard to choose a favourite as I have only heard a fraction of his output, this is the German version of Heroes, Helden, taken from the soundtrack of Christina F.