20 Years Ago: David Bowie Plays His Final Concert
As one of the most inventive performers of the rock era, David Bowie's concerts were always a spectacle. Yet his last one passed by with little fanfare on June 25, 2004, at the Hurricane Festival in Scheessel, Germany.
There were actually dates scheduled to follow, but a health scare forced Bowie to cancel the rest of a tour in support of 2003's Reality. Following the Scheessel date, Bowie had an emergency angioplasty.
The problem started a couple of days earlier during a show in Prague, when he started feeling pain in his left shoulder and abruptly ended his concert. Tests revealed an acutely blocked artery, and the final month of the European tour was shelved. He never played another full show before dying on Jan. 10, 2016.
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That wasn't the only problem on Reality tour. A week prior in Oslo, Bowie was hit in the eye by a lollipop that had been thrown by a fan. More seriously, his Miami concert was canceled when a lighting technician died after falling from the rig above the stage prior to the concert.
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Bowie subsequently made only a handful of guest appearances, sitting in with Arcade Fire in 2005 and David Gilmour a year later. He then joined Alicia Keys in November 2006 at a benefit concert in New York.
A DVD featuring footage from two Dublin shows on the Reality tour was released in 2010. Unfortunately, Bowie never sang in public again. He refused to tour behind the release of 2013's acclaimed The Next Day, his first album since Reality. Blackstar arrived just days before he succumbed to cancer.
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Gallery Credit: Ryan Reed
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