I was about quarter way through reviewing David Bowie’s fantastic new album ‘Blackstar’ on Sunday night - a task I’d put off despite listening to the album relentlessly for the previous week - when I hit a brick wall called 'tired' and went to bed leaving it half finished.

"Most people close out their sixties with a rainy day holiday before settling into a comfy chair and watching TV, but Mr Jones has never been normal. So, it should come as no surprise that in the time when most people are planning and executing their once in a lifetime trips, David Bowie hired a jazz quartet, doled out a bunch of non-disclosure agreements, and entered the recording studio to record his 28th studio album, ‘Blackstar’. There is no point growing old disgracefully in half-measures though. Bowie could easily have cobbled together a safe jazz album and been forgiven for it by fans - after all Bowie, for all his rock n’ roll pageantry, has always been a sax man at heart. Instead Bowie, who (despite the ten-year gap) has been in a period of resurgence since 2002’s’ Heathen’, continues to push himself creatively. The results echo ‘Station To Station’

I was awakened to the sound of three words. Not "I love you", alas...these three words were terrifying, life changing words: “David Bowie’s dead.” What? Don’t be stupid, I replied. “Turn on the news!” Fuck me. It’s true.

And so I lay in a daze as Sky News handled the news as only Sky News can...badly. Watching Sky News as they bumble to find experts and footage is not the way to soak up news of such magnitude, but I couldn’t bring myself to look away.

Do they not realise this is the day the music died? Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Freddie Mercury, the world stopped when these superstars passed away. Now David Bowie had joined that list of iconic rock stars who stopped the world on it's axis when the news of his passing was heard.

I can’t remember the first time I heard a Bowie song. For me listening to Bowie is like breathing - you don’t do it by choice you, do it by instinct. I do however remember the first time I bought a Bowie record. I bought it in Tower Records in New York; this giant emporium of music more like a museum of sound than a record store. I bought 'The Rise and Fall of..'. and the (then) current singles collection in one of those old school giant double CD boxes. I still have both of those purchases, and I have treasured the music within them and the music beyond which they led me to ever since.

Of course, I knew the hits - Starman, Space Oddity, Life on Mars, Let’s Dance, Modern Love. But when I popped 'The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars' into a Discman and was confronted by the fade-in of Woody Woodmansey’s shuffling beat, the eventual shimmering chord is struck before Bowie’s vivid voice paints a dystopian fairy-tale:

“Pushing through the market square/ So many mothers sighing/ News had just come over/ We had five years left to cry in.”

From that moment on I was enthralled. I had my finger on the play button to restart the journey before the final coda had even begun, never mind the final refrains of “Give me your hands because you’re wonderful”. I hadn’t a clue what half of it meant, but I was intrigued and moved straight onto the singles collection straight after my second helping of Ziggy.

The enthralling confusion continued as I listened to the Singles Collection, which covered '69-'93 - the pomp and pageantry, the sexual exploration, the wild sonic evolution, the cryptic lyrics, I’d never heard anything like it before. The fact that this sudden discovery put the shits up my parents was a Brucie bonus.

That night in New York was a gateway that opened my ears and my mind to music, books and films I would have previously dismissed. I went on to consume Bowie’s back-catalogue with zealot-like conviction. It wasn’t all plain sailing though - much of it came to me too soon and it took many years for much of his work to open up for me. Some of my favourites defy conventional wisdom. ‘Aladdin Sane’ for me is the pinnacle of the Ziggy era. Mike Garson’s piano thrills give me shivers. Let’s Spend the Night Together made The Rolling Stones seem interesting, a hard sell to me considering the tripe they’d been peddling whilst I was growing up.

To this day the 1969 second debut David Bowie does little for me. Sure, it’s got Space Oddity, but those other tracks just don’t connect with me the ways those Mick Ronson riffs on 'The Man Who Sold the World’ do, or the way the Rick Wakeman piano assault of ‘Hunky Dory’ does. ‘Pin Ups’, well what dross it is, Sorrow aside.

From this point on it’s hit and miss for me until ‘Station to Station’, the album Bowie chose to echo in his swan song. A claustrophobic masterpiece - a cry for help before fleeing America for the sanctity of Europe - ‘Station to station’ is a key album, and deserves to be grouped together with 'Low' and 'Heroes' much more than the appallingly staid 'Lodger' does. That’s right, I said it ‘Lodger’ is crap; his second real misstep in an imperious career thus far.

He more than redeemed himself however by following it up with one of his greatest albums, ‘Scary Monsters’, a spectacular return to form followed up by the Nile Rodgers produced ‘Let’s Dance’. Then everything goes wrong for Bowie. He stops being a rock star and tries to be a pop star, but save some singles his output is pretty average for the rest of the '80s (though it has to be pointed out he’s never released an album without one good song on it).

Bowie redeems himself somewhat on the soundtrack for ‘Buddha of Suburbia', returning to more interesting instrumental areas and producing some fine songs. Just when it’s looking up for Bowie he undoes everything with the paltry 'Black Tie White Noise', as big an offence to the ears as any of his '80s output. This album includes a horrendous Morrissey cover and is best avoided.

Perhaps realising the errors of his ways, Bowie does and about-turn into industrial rock & roll, dumping the rappers and the Smoltz in favour of heavy guitars and even heavier beats. The results are not as bad a you've been told, and in fact, 'Outside' and 'Earthling' have aged much better than Bowie’s '80s output. But let’s face it - the drum sound is pathetic on these records and holds back a lot of the material. Fuck you, infant Pro Tools.

So aghast were critics at the time that they welcomed what is possibly his career low point, ‘Hours…’, with welcome arms in 1999. Thursday’s Child aside, it’s an asinine collection best avoided, but even at his worst Bowie still had one song in the bank.

"That's the sound of death. That's what it sounds like when you're dead. Doors opening." - David Bowie

Bowie goes away to dream it all up again and produces his best record since 'Let’s Dance' in the shape of 2002’s ‘Heathen’. He follows it up with ‘Reality’ in 2003, and with two solid albums under his belt it looks as if Bowie has finally re-found form. But his final Twitter friend, God, had other ideas.

Ill health would follow, before ‘The Next Day’ appeared out of the blue a decade later. It’s a spiritual follow-up to its predecessors, as it sees Bowie pretty much pick up where he left off in 2003, but with a new sense of vigour and purpose. It’s a much tighter affair, dispensing with any frivolous notes or meandering passages. ‘The Next Day’ is the musical embodiment of the football saying ‘Form is temporary, class is permanent.’

Which brings us to the final day; the day of ‘Blackstar’. The day a dying man realises his lifelong goal of releasing an epic saxophone album. For underneath all the rock'n'roll pageantry, when you stripped it all away David Jones was a sax man, not a starman.

David Bowie was better than Elvis, better than McCartney, better than everybody. I'll have to accept that he can't give anything else away, but when you examine those facts it's safe to say he never let anybody down

Oh, what I wouldn't give for one more trip on Gemini Spaceship, but please, no posthumous releases unless he planned them.