'. . . Mr. Bowie stopped touring in 2004. He left New York only when work demanded, and during his stunning end-of-life creative burst, he found a way to never leave his neighborhood.
“Lazarus,” the show for which Mr. Bowie composed songs and resurrected the displaced alien he played in the 1976 film “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” was staged at New York Theater Workshop, on East Fourth Street, less than 10 blocks from his house.
Both his 2013 album, “The Next Day,” and the demos for his final record, “Blackstar” — which was released, incidentally, on his birthday and just two days before he died — were recorded at the Magic Shop recording studio on Crosby Street — 283 steps from his front door.
Mr. Bowie would have ridden the elevator down from his penthouse, exited his building, crossed Lafayette Street, slipped through the little alley called Jersey Street and walked on cobblestones until he came to the studio’s unmarked metal doors.
Brian Thorn, a recording engineer for the “Next Day” sessions, said Mr. Bowie worked “very humane hours,” as rock stars go. “We’d start by 10,” Mr. Thorn said. “He would get there with or before the musicians. The studio would have his coffee order ready,” a double macchiato from La Colombe.
Mr. Thorn remembered overhearing Mr. Bowie and his guitarist talking one day. The guitarist was going on about an art exhibit, and how much Mr. Bowie would love it. Then he caught himself, realizing whom he was talking to, and said, “Oh, you can never go there; there’s too many people.”
Mr. Bowie answered, slyly, “You’d be surprised the places I’m able to go.”
Have you seen the photo that’s been circulating on Twitter of Mr. Bowie out in the city in cargo shorts and sneakers and carrying Uncut magazine? He’s very normcore. You can see why nobody recognized him, why an international superstar was able to move through the city unseen.
He understood that in our minds we all held a picture of David Bowie, or Ziggy, or the Thin White Duke. It allowed him to walk among us disguised as himself, David Jones . . .'
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/fa...rker.html?_r=0