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Stephin Merritt, Will Sheff, and More Remember David Bowie on the Talkhouse

David Bowie performing onstage at The Concert for New York City to benefit the victims of the World Trade Center disaster. October 20, 2001 (Photo: Scott Gries/ImageDirect)

The Talkhouse, a place for musicians to write about other musicians, is hosting a remembrance of the late, great David Bowie. The 69-year-old died yesterday, just two days after the release of his final album, ?, following an 18-month battle with liver cancer. Several musicians and producers have contributed essays or personal reflections about what Bowie meant to them, including Stephin Merrit of the Magnetic Fields. “David Bowie, for my tiny generation, was a civil rights movement unto himself,” he wrote. “Celebration of difference could hardly be acted out more literally than that.”

“I had an invisible prison around my music and my brain and Bowie made that prison visible and gave me some rudimentary tools for dismantling it,” Will Sheff of Okkervil River added. “Over time I’d add more and more tools to the collection, but the first gift basket came from Bowie.”

Tei Shi, Sondre Lerche, and producer John Congleton have also contributed, and the Talkhouse says that more remembrances will be added as they come in. Read them all here.