The Elephant Man

Then that night he was shot and killed.

David Bowie was in The Elephant Man on Broadway, and he came out to do his show that night, and there were three empty seats in the front row.

Oh.

And those three empty seats were John, Yoko, and Mark David Chapman.

By 1980, Bowie also appeared healthier and more grounded in public.

He played Joseph Merrick in The Elephant Man on Broadway without prosthetic makeup, relying on posture and movement learned during his mime training.

He also released Ashes to Ashes, revisiting Major Tom not as a heroic astronaut, but as a damaged addict.

Bowie was beginning to look back at his own mythology without pretending that every version of himself had been admirable.