BBC 6Music to host special David Bowie week to celebrate new album

Series of special programming will take place

Metro - 4/5: "Bowie has always been comfortable with his own ch-ch-ch-changes; now he's taking in a changing world, too. He's a pop icon with no intention of being a period piece."

Friday 8th March 2013 by Grace Carroll | Photos by WENN

BBC 6Music is to host a week of radio programming in honour of David Bowie.

Presenters - including Adam Buxton, Marc Riley and Stuart Maconie - will honour Bowie in their usual shows and there will also be a series of special programmes about Bowie each week. The special programmes will feature new documentaries, concerts and archive material.

Riley said about the programming, "It was June 15, 1972 that David Bowie changed my life. Performing 'Starman' on a kids TV programme called Lift Off three weeks before his legendary appearance on Top of the Pops.

"When he announced 'the last show we'll ever do' from the stage of the Hammersmith Odeon just about a year later I thought I'd never even get to see him in concert. Who'd have thought over nearly three decades later I'd be introducing him onto that very same stage. Bowie changed my life. It's as simple as that."

Riley will be playing interviews he conducted with Bowie producer Tony Visconti, photographer Mick Rock, producer Ken Scott and Bowie's bandmate Bob Soley, as well as archive material and Radio 1 session tracks recorded for his and Mark Radcliffe's show back in 2000.

Buxton said about his own show, "David Bowie has done a lot of interviews in his 45-year career and I've listened to most of them. I'll be taking a journey through my favourite parts of Bowie's work thus far and putting them in the context of a few of his most insightful, charming, and ludicrous interviews."

David Bowie will be celebrated in a week of special programming from 6Music

Maconie added, "From using a stylophone on his first hit to dabbling with drum and bass in the '90s, David Bowie has always been open to new sounds and sonic adventure. And never better than when in the 1970s, he incorporated krautrock and electronica on his Berlin masterpiece Low. Chilly and beautiful."

The special programming begins on 25 March and continues until 3 April.

BBC Radio 2 will also be airing some special shows, including a documentary presented by Gary Kemp, about guitarist and Bowie collaborator Mick Ronson.

David Bowie - The Next Day: what the critics have to say