KISS co-founder Gene Simmons appeared on CNN on January 12th to discuss music icon David Bowie's enduring legacy. Bowie passed away on January 10th following an 18 month battle with cancer at the age of 69. Check out the interview below.

In celebration of Bowie’s recently released box set Five Years (1969 -1973), InTheStudio syndicated radio host Redbeard revisited interviews he conducted with Bowie about that highly prolific period in his career, spanning from Space Oddity to the invention of the cosmic character Ziggy Stardust.  These interviews can now be streamed on the InTheStudio syndicated radio show website here and at this location.

“Bowie changed the trajectory of rock music, fashion, and gender social issues in thirty-eight minutes with Ziggy Stardust,” cites Redbeard. “David Bowie is one of my most memorable interview subjects. ‘Art with a capital “A” ‘ is how Bowie described to me the expression of certain universal truths to one another. But even before he got sick, David seemed to realize fully that when the unique spirit within us all is set free to return to the ultimate Creator, there will be no need whatsoever of any kind of artistic expression, because art in Eternity will be replaced with Truth... with a capital “T”.”

David Bowie in his own words from interviews conducted by Redbeard for InTheStudio:

“When I was nine or ten I was given books on Jack Kerouac, (Lawrence) Ferlinghetti, (Alan) Ginsberg, (Gregory) Corso and all that whole Beat crowd, and they sort of became early Bibles to me…Initially I thought I was going to be a painter, but I realized there was absolutely no money in that. So for work I became a graphic artist…I enjoyed theatrical music. I enjoyed the idea of interpreting things on stage and creating an otherness of some kind.”

“I think the person I was listening to out of America as much as Little Richard, at that time, would have been Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground. This is really cool (Velvet Underground). I want to sound like this, but English.”

“Hunky Dory probably, for me, was the first recognition that I had this ability to write stories that people found interesting. There were no real characters on Hunky Dory, but the idea of developing little story songs,  as opposed to just mood pieces, it obviously was quite strong in me, and I think it gave me the motivation to propel myself towards something more cohesive as an album.”

“I had this terror, in my mind that I was going to be trapped with Ziggy & the Spiders.”

“I think the ‘70s showed conclusively that we live on a thread of rationality, that in fact the cosmos is far more complex than we realize.”