David Bowie left mark in Detroit and beyond

The tribute from Iggy Pop was brief and bright.

David Bowie’s “friendship was the light of my life,” the Michigan-born rocker posted Monday on Facebook. “I never met such a brilliant person. He was the best there is.”

Bowie died Sunday at 69 after an 18-month battle with cancer, just two days after the release of his eagerly awaited album “Blackstar.” It was an extraordinary final act for an artist who built a career out of grand gestures and left-field transformations.

Until Monday, Bowie’s illness had been undisclosed to the world at large and was apparently known only to a circle of those close to the English star. The musician’s spokesman did not specify what form of cancer had befallen Bowie.

Bowie’s five-decade career was rich, bold and eclectic, defined by groundbreaking theatricality and musical versatility — a chameleonic journey that took him from the folk world to the avant-garde, from manning the stage on “Soul Train” to sharing one with Bing Crosby.

His passing prompted a flood of tributes and remembrances from around the world — perhaps the biggest outpouring for a deceased musician since the death of Michael Jackson in 2009.  Driving home the breadth of Bowie’s influence across genres and disciplines, artists ranging from Mick Jagger to Kanye West offered heartfelt homages on social media.

“RIP David Bowie,” tweeted Detroit electronic music producer Carl Craig. “He has been in my life since I was a young boy. He inspired Kraftwerk, so he also inspired Techno music.”

Also among those paying tribute was Madonna, whose knack for reinvention through the years has frequently been linked to Bowie’s influence; indeed, the Rochester Hills-raised pop star stood in for Bowie when he couldn’t make his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 1996.

She saluted Bowie in a series of tweets early Monday, calling the late star “Talented. Unique. Genius. Game Changer.”

“Im Devastated!,” she tweeted. “This great Artist changed my life! First concert i ever saw in Detroit! R.IP.”

It’s likely that was one of Bowie’s many 1970s shows in Detroit, a city that quickly took to the young artist’s larger-than-life persona and theatrical performances.

“You need to impress when you play in the Detroit area. You need to make a statement and not be run of the mill,” said Martin Bandyke, a longtime disc jockey and Free Press contributing writer. “Nobody did that better than David Bowie.”

Bandyke was 19 when he caught his first Bowie concert — a 1974 Toledo stop on the Diamond Dogs Tour, a show with an array of costumes and stage sets that saw Bowie lofted above the audience in a cherry picker during “Space Oddity.”

“I’d never seen anything at that level in a rock show,” said Bandyke, who was on hand when Bowie headed to Detroit later that year for a six-night stand at the Michigan Palace.

Bowie’s first Detroit visit had come two years earlier, an October 1972 show at the Fisher Theatre as part of his first U.S. tour. His final one would come three decades later, in January 2004, when the Palace of Auburn Hills hosted the second date on what turned out to be Bowie’s final tour.

But nowhere was Bowie’s link with Michigan more deep and enduring than his relationship with Iggy Pop, the iconoclastic Stooges front man he met in the early 1970s. Bowie is widely credited for resuscitating Pop’s career — and perhaps even serving as a personal lifesaver — at a time when Pop was verging on self-destruction.

Bowie’s 1972 track “Panic in Detroit,” with its snarling Mick Ronson guitar and Bo Diddley-inspired rhythm, was reportedly inspired by Pop’s tales of the 1960s Motor City political mood. “The Jean Genie,” released that same year, is thought to have been modeled on the streetwise Stooges singer.

Their friendship blossomed into a productive creative partnership through the 1970s, including a fabled period in Berlin in which both of them got sober and collaborated on the Iggy Pop albums “The Idiot” and “Lust for Life” while concocting songs such as “Tonight” and “Sister Midnight.” One of those compositions — “China Girl” — was rerecorded by Bowie to become a Top 10 pop hit from his 1983 album “Let’s Dance."

A biographical film chronicling their time in Berlin went into development in 2013, but has not been completed.

Bandyke was there in 1977 when Pop rolled into town for a homecoming performance at the Masonic Temple. In back, perched unobtrusively at a keyboard, was Bowie — happily serving a stint as a backup musician.

It was just another move in a career as daring as it was unpredictable.

"He was the next step forward for rock," Bandyke said. "This was the guy who was going to show the way for the next generation."