(people talking over each other)

♫ Ahh ♫ Ahh, ahh

♫ Let's dance ♫ Put on your red shoes ♫ – This was my introduction to David Bowie more than 30 years ago as a boy of 13 or 14 years old. That sound, that suit, I so wanted to be that guy. I think I still do and that wasn't even his best album I was to find out shortly. We lost Bowie on Monday following a secret battle with cancer just days after his 69th birthday and the release of his final album, Blackstar. I gave it a listen for the first time just hours after the news of his death and Bowie was still pushing boundaries on that album, still going where few artists dare, literally, right up until the very end. I'm Steve Green, this is Trifecta and let's bring on Scott Ott and Bill Whittle to reflect on a long career of one of rock's most intriguing and enduring performers. And of course, he wasn't just David Bowie, he was Major Tom, he was Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, the Thin White Duke, he was the Goblin King, he was even the man who fell to earth. Scott, how do you sum up the career of a man who was so many things to so many people? His musical career, it spanned glam, experimental rock, alternative, soul, pop, funk, new wave, hard rock, and more. How do you sum up a life that stretched from the darkest drugs and sex days of the '70s to spending his last quarter century as a devoted and intensely private family man. And you know, Scott, you've had a rock band way back when, how does someone create even one successful stage persona, much less, I don't know, half a dozen or more? – You don't sum that up, you let the music speak for itself, as every artist would hope to be remembered, you let the art speak for itself. You know, I was trying to think of, David Bowie was, it's hard to describe today because there are so many interesting characters in popular music today and so many who are trying to be interesting characters, but David Bowie really stood alone in the 1970s. There was nobody like him. And I guess, if we were to do a mash up now and create a David Bowie, we would take Frank Zappa and Lady Gaga and Elvis Presley and put them all together into one because this guy had a charisma that barnone, I mean, on stage as you saw even in that performance, which as you point out was kind of a pretty poppy kind of thing for Bowie. A lot of his stuff was edgier than that. But he had the ability to compose that Frank Zappa had that, to do stuff that he knew would never be pop music and yet he did it for the sake of the music. And then he just, he had the power of the Elvis Presley persona that once you went into that room, it didn't matter what he did in that conert, you were with him, you were gonna be with him all the way through. I, myself, have also started listening to Blackstar, the album, and I thought, you know what, you can't listen to this album while you're going about your daily stuff, you have to put the headphones on and hunker down in that chair and listen.

– Yeah, like Bowie, it demands your full attention. Bill, whether this is fair or not, I was thinking more of as being a movie guy than a music guy, Bowie, of course, was also a highly acclaimed actor, even if he stuck mostly to supporting roles. He might have been most famous for playing Thomas Jerome Newton, the man who fell to earth, an alien who came here to get water for his dying planet but ended up, of course, being seduced by earthly pleasures. But my favorite of his more recent roles might just resonate with you. In Christopher Nolan's The Prestige, Bowie had a supporting role as inventor, physicist, engineer, everything guy, Nikola Tesla. I want you to watch this clip, it was his first scene as Tesla in the movie.

– So, this is the great Danton? Mr. Alley has effused about your acting on any number of occasions.

Hold out other hand.

– What's conducting the electricity? – Our bodies, Mr. Angier, quite capable of conducting and, indeed, producing energy.

– Now, Bill, you're a screen writer, a former film editor, tell me, is it possible for an actor to pack more into a 30 second intro, that has, actually very little dialogue? – I'm gonna have to eject, eject, eject from this question, Steve, because I didn't see The Prestige and I think David Bowie was a terrific actor and he was a self-deprecating actor. But I do want to talk a little bit about the music and then a couple of experiences I had with him. First time I ever saw David Bowie, I think I was 12 or 13 years old and you have to understand, folks, at this point I was well into my astronaut training, getting prepped for the Mars mission I was gonna command. I mean, I was Mr. Apollo, straight-laced kind of mission control kind of guy and one night, it was a Friday or Saturday night, it was either on Don Kirchner's rock concert or the Midnight Special, it was one of those two things. Bowie came on, about 1973, I want to guess, it was late at night and he came on and did Major Tom in this butterfly outfit in the Ziggy Stardust kind of thing and I became so violently enraged that I actually thought I was going to kick the TV and I was so absolutely, destructively angry that this thin, weird, heroin looking guy was gonna talk about being an astronaut. I lost my mind, I was so pissed off. And then in 1985, '86, I started working at a night club and well before then I started listening to his music, but '85, '86, I had a double breasted jacket with shoulder pads out to here and I had a thin white satin tie, and I had a pair of pants with one zipper down one leg and I had hair down to here and I was working in the booth and by this point I just, I think "Modern Love" is one of the great dance songs of all time. And (stutters) I just couldn't get enough of the guy. I probably got five or six of his songs on my iPhone now. "Modern Love" is a terrific dance tune and there's a line in "Let's Dance," you know, we just caught the end of it at the beginning of this clip, you know, "Put on your red shoes and dance the blues," I mean, okay man, I'm right there. "Put on your red shoes and dance the blues." So that was, actually, my favorite album, that and China Girl, they were terrific. But the guy was, you can't really even call him a genius because there's a lot of geniuses out there, there's a lot of people with talent, but there's one of the great artists of the world, there's one in a million that just defines a look and a sound and an era and locks it down and while he had many contemporaries, there's, even the Rolling Stones, who are so iconic, they're not Bowie. Bowie was just, he was just so iconic. And I feel bad about my first reaction to him because I never realized how tongue in cheek the whole thing was, you know? How mocking of it it really was. Ashes to Ashes is a, Ashes to Ashes is a commentary on Major Tom, ♫ Ashes to ashes, funk to funky ♫ We know Major Tom's a junkie ♫ Caught up in heaven's high ♫ Hitting an all time low ♫ I mean, that's just, that self-reference, that mockery of the pretense of it. That's what I liked about the guy. And I think my favorite David Bowie moment was when he made an appearance on Extra, the Ricky Gervais show, and he was just in a lounge, in the center of attention and just, you know, just being David Bowie and chatting up some beautiful girl and Ricky Gervais comes in and says, "Yeah, I'm an entertainer, I kind of do, you know, "this kind of catch phrase comedy." And Bowie just sits there and on the fly composes this, just totally soul destroying song. And the reason I like that so much is there's Ricky Gervais making fun of himself, here's David Bowie making fun of himself, and I guess the final comment would be you know, one thing we learn about people like Barack Obama is that people who can't make fun of themselves are fundamentally insecure people. Ronald Reagan used to joke about his age and everything else all the time, David Bowie's been making fun of himself since he's been David Bowie. The whole thing has been a commentary on the experience and that comes from the kind of break out genius, that once in a generation talent and I'm really gonna miss him, and what a way to go. You know, to write a love letter to your fans about dying and releasing it after you're dead, I mean, few of us are gonna be that lucky, I think.

– You know, he was never better, Bill than when he was playing David Bowie, whether it was on stage, on film, or on his albums. And I'm not sure we ever saw the real David Bowie until just this week with his new album. – But as you pointed out, his family did. That's the thing that's really great about the guy. You know, he lived a life in the public eye but he had an actual life. He actually did and he was a family man and a private guy, so I don't care that I didn't get to know that guy, it's none of my business, but it's good to know that he existed. – It is indeed. You know, folks, I've been a fan a long time. I preordered Blackstar, his final album a couple of months ago, literally moments after Amazon sent me the heads up email that it was coming out and like a good fan I waited as patiently as I could for it to arrive and, of course, it ends up arriving at the house when my wife and I were enjoying a long weekend up in the mountains. So I spent the weekend just gritting my teeth, even though I was having a great time, but just waiting to get home and give this new Bowie album a listen and as we were packing our suitcases Monday morning, I picked up my phone and I saw the headline, "David Bowie dead after battle "with cancer." Now, I'm not one of these people who gets choked up much over celebrity deaths, but I have to tell you, this one hit me. And I wondered, this was kind of a selfish moment, but I wondered whether I should listen to Black Star for the first time while the shock was still fresh or should I wait a week or two? Well, we got home and, of course, I couldn't wait and I'm glad I didn't. Blackstar, it's Bowie's most haunting work but it's still unmistakably and maybe for the first time, unmasked David Bowie and I'd like to give you a small preview to get you started. So for Bill Whittle and Scott Ott, I'm Steve Green.

♫ Look up here I'm in heaven

♫ I've got scars that can't be seen ♫