David Bowie has passed away at age 69 today. David Bowie was one of Damon Albarn's idols throughout his musical career. Influencing both Blur and Gorillaz, Damon Albarn once said that he thought about recording an album with David Bowie and Ray Davies.
Asked how much he enjoyed collaborating with other musicians, Albarn said: "I do genuinely like working with people but at the same time I don’t expect it to work, and there have been a lot of people who a lot of things don't happen. I mean, for about 24 hours, many years ago, I was making a record with David Bowie and Ray Davies. But that only lasted 24 hours."
Blur's song M.O.R was also borrowed from David Bowie's "Boys Keep Swinging" and "Fantastic Voyage". On the album Lodger Bowie and collaborator Brian Eno carried out a musical experiment in which multiple songs were written with the same chord progression, of which "Boys Keep Swinging" and "Fantastic Voyage" were the two that surfaced. M.O.R is both a continuation of, and tribute to that experiment, as its chorus also lifts the melody and call-and-response vocals from Boys Keep Swinging.
There were also rumours that the Gorillaz albums would feature David Bowie. It seems that this is not going to happen anymore. Farewell David Bowie.
