Script #19 The Last Light of a Dying Star

He reinvented himself for decades… but his final transformation remained a secret. The Last Light of a Dying Star takes listeners inside the shadowed studio where an icon quietly recorded his last album while confronting an illness too devastating to reveal. Through gallows humor, whispered urgency, and a race against the clock, Jonny’s Dead Air Podcast explores how a legendary figure transformed his own death into a final act of creation—while something unseen waited patiently for the last note to fall silent.

Written by Jonny Hartwell
Voiced by Jonny Hartwell
Music Credit: Reel World Audio.
A iHeart Radio Production

DISCLAIMER: This podcast contains discussions of sensitive topics...Listener discretion is strongly advised. While the stories you’ll hear are rooted in real events, not every detail is strictly historical—some moments are dramatized with creative license to bring the narrative to life. Please keep this in mind as you listen.

Jonny’s Dead Air Podcast
Written, hosted, and produced by Jonny Hartwell.
A production of iHeartRadio Pittsburgh.

Thanks for listening—and for keeping the light on.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
And welcome in. I'm Johnny Hartwell and this is Johnny's
Dead Air Podcast, a production of iHeartRadio. Here we go
again with another story from music's dark side. There are
stars that burn bright and burn fast. There are stars
that collapse under the weight of their own gravity. And
then there are the rare ones, the impossible ones, the

(00:24):
ones that understand somehow that brilliance comes with an expiration date,
and they made a choice of how that end will look. Tonight,
We're going to walk into the space between life and legend,
into a story about a man who lived his life
as though reality was just another material he could sculpt.
A man who wore identities the way other people wore clothes,

(00:47):
the man who refused to stand still, refuse to repeat himself,
refuse to let the world define him. And yet for
all the reinvention, all the personas, all the masks, there
was one truth. He never escaped. He was mortal, and
long before he told anyone else, long before the world
had any hint that he was slipping away, he knew.

(01:09):
And he made a decision, a decision that would turn
his final months into one last burst of creation, one
final transformation, one last constellation of sound and message and defiance.
This isn't the story of celebrity. This is a story
of a man staring down the end and answering it
with art. This is Script nineteen, the last light of

(01:33):
a dying star at one Stardust. He was born in
the quiet edges of London, the kind of place that
molds a child into either conformity or rebellion, and from
the beginning he leaned towards the latter. A fragile looking
kid with a shock of imagination and eyes that didn't

(01:53):
match one Blue won a shimmering shade of something else,
a result of a fistfight that left his people permanently dilated,
the kind of detail the universe gives to someone it
intends to make interesting. His family life complicated, his father
steady but distant, his mother warm but distracted. But it

(02:14):
was his older half brother who lit the fuse, introducing
him to jazz and poetry and philosophy and eventually the
madness that would consume his own life. You're there, a
tiny smoke club and soho barely a stage with a
plank of wood raised on milk crates, and you see
him thin and awkward and nervous, but when he opens
his mouth, you can feel the air change. His voice

(02:37):
isn't perfect, but it's interesting. It bends, it twists, It
suggests a future that doesn't yet understand. He plays in
bands that come and go, long haired folk experiments, some
od phase misfires, a few singles nobody notices. But under
it all a spark, a need to become something more
than the timid kid from Brixton. He studies mime, He

(02:58):
studies movement, He stud theater, He studies the very concept
of identity, like a scientist dissecting atoms. Nobody knows it yet,
but this man, this boy, is building the raw material
of a lifetime of reinvention. He's not a star yet,
He's something stranger, a star forming itself. Act two Starman

(03:21):
If Act one was the spark, Act two is the Explosion.
One night after a failed album, after years of trying,
he invents a creature, a character, a being from another
planet with flaming hair, of the worldly clothes and a
sexuality that dare the world to keep up. He steps
onto a stage as someone else and becomes himself for

(03:42):
the first time. Suddenly, the nobody is a phenomenon. Crowd swell,
Journalists panic, teenagers scream, parents clutch their pearls, and the music, Oh,
good God, The music reshapes the map of what rock
could be. You're there again, a stadium where in the
early nineteen seventies, the lights go black, the crowd holds

(04:04):
its breath. A single spotlight drops onto a figure in
a multicolored suit. He looks like a visitor from the future.
He raises a hand, and tens of thousands raise theirs back.
You feel something electric, like witnessing the birth of a myth.
And then, just as the world adjusts, he throws it

(04:25):
all away, kills the character moves on. New sound, new hair,
new wardrobe, new genre, Berlin, experimental noise, ambient landscape, songs
that sound like alien transmissions, rehab, recovery, redemption. He strips
away the masks until there's nothing left but a man
and his fear. And then pop resurrection, a groove so

(04:47):
tight it becomes immortal. Another reinvention, than another, and another.
He becomes a cultural language is simple, a shape shifting
oracle of art. And still we haven't said his name,
not once. By now you're already whispering it, aren't you.
It's obvious, ridiculous not to say. But that's exactly the point,

(05:09):
because his identity was never meant to be a single name.
It was a constellation. Act three. Let's dance next Act three,
Let's dance. Let's stop pretending we don't know. Let's stop

(05:31):
dancing around the truth. His name David Bowie, David meaning
beloved Bowie, a knife, a weapon, a blade that cuts
through the ordinary. A man who turned his life into
a kaleidoscope of truth and illusion, who treated in the
world like his canvas, who understood better than any performer
who ever lived. That identity is a fluid thing. But

(05:54):
now we step into the shadows. No star can escape,
because at the height of his late renaissance, just when
the world believed he had ascended to some mythic plateau,
something dark began to grow inside him. A shadow in
his own cosmos. Act four, ashes to ashes, It starts small,

(06:17):
A pain in his side, an exhaustion he can't shake,
a whisper in his body telling him something is wrong.
Then a doctor's office, a scan, a folder, a soft
voice saying his name like an apology. David, it's your liver,
it's cancer. The word drops like a stone into a

(06:38):
bottomless well inside him. Two voices argue at once, one calm,
all right, this is it, Then one panic, No, not now,
not yet. I still have work to do. He leaves
the office not with dread, but a decision. One more album, one,
last chapter, one, final metamorphosis. He tells almost no one,

(07:04):
but there is one person who must know, his longtime producer,
Tony Visconti. Tony walks into Bowie's New York apartment and
immediately sees it. The weight loss, the thinning cheeks, the
fatigue stitched into his bones. Jesus, David, he said you
were slimming down. I didn't think you met. Bowie smarks weakly, Oh,
come on, Tone saves on wardrobe. David gives his longtime

(07:28):
friend a welcome hug. I can finally fit into everything.
Those stylists bullied me in Tune seventy two. They share
a brittle laugh. Then Bowie says it plainly, Tone, I'm dying.
No theatrics, no mask, just the truth. Tony's eyes go glassy.

(07:49):
He lowers into a chair like his if gravity has doubled.
But before I go, I want to leave something behind.
Not a greatest hits thing, a message, my last one.
I want you to help me make it. And there
they are in that dim studio, cables everywhere. Bowie in

(08:09):
the vocal booth, frail but defiant. He grips the headphones
like he's holding himself upright. He sings, and every line
takes something from him, a WinCE, a tremor, a quiet,
shaky gasp in between syllables, lyric by lyric, He bleeds
into the microphone. Then one night, the temperature in the

(08:30):
broom changes. A heaviness settles, a presence. He feels it
before he sees it. It's it's a phantasm, not dramatic,
not cloaked, just there, quiet plight, sitting in the corner,
like someone early to an appointment. You're cutting a close.

(08:54):
The specter murmurs in his head. I know. Boie thinks back,
but I'm done. Death steeples its fingers. No rush, no rush,
But the watch is visible now. Tick tick dick. The
sessions accelerate, not frantic, just focused, urgent, in the way

(09:17):
of a man running out of breath to spend. Tony
watches him degrade in real time. A bad day. Bowie,
leaning on the wall between takes a worse day, Tony
offering his arm as they walk into the booth. A
day after that, Bowie collapsing into her chair, joking, oh
if I crop before the final chorus, Tony, you have
permission to autitune me to hell. Tony forces a laugh

(09:39):
because the alternative is breaking. The dark shadow is back
in the room. A bony finger taps the watch face. Dick,
a cough between takes, Dick, a WinCE hidden behind a joke,
Dick a glance from Tony to the clock, then down
to the floor. In Bowie head, it's louder? Tick? How

(10:02):
many songs are left? Tick? Can I finish the lyrics? Tick?
Did I say enough? Did I say too much? Tick?
Will they understand what I'm trying to tell them? Tick?
Will they see it after I'm gone? Or will it
be just strange? Tick? Is it strange enough? Tick? Tick? Tick?
He lies awake at night in a dark apartment about

(10:25):
the New York City streets, listening to the city growl
like a distant amplifier. He thinks, this is it, This
is the last act. Every line has to count, every
syllable has to mean something. No filler, no fluff, no
b sides, no we'll fix it in the next record,
because there is no next record. The shadow greets David

(10:48):
in every room, not the hooded reaper, something quieter, a
patient observer, legs crossed, hands folded, plight finished yes in
his mind, voice deceptively gentle, almost. Bowie replies, silently, just
a few more takes. Death smiles hmm, like I said, no,

(11:16):
no rush. But the tap on the watchface is more emphatic,
more insistent, And then miraculously they finish the final mixed session.
It's just the three of them, David, Tony, and David's
final observer. Bowie sits in the studio couch, thin as paper,

(11:37):
eyes dim but present, Tony at the console, hands trembling.
The speakers breathe the life. The lights are low, the
air is still. The album Black Star unfurls through the
room like a prophecy. Bowie closes his eyes and in
that moment, the entire weight of his life washes through him. Ziggy,

(11:58):
the Duke, Berlin, the stadiums, the reinventions, the addictions, the reburst,
the disguises, the truths, the lies, the art, the pain,
the beauty, the family, all of it circling into this
one final offering. Tony watches him, seeing not the legend,
not the icon, but his friend, his friend who is

(12:18):
dying right in front of him and still giving everything
he has left. The final track ends, The last note
hangs in the air and dissolves silence. Tony turns, tears streaming.
Bowie looks at him through tired, glassy eyes. Well, well

(12:43):
that's me done. Tony can't speak. He moves the Bowie
sits beside him, and they fold into an embrace, one
man grieving the loss that hasn't quite happened yet, the
other grateful for the chance to finish his last message.
They hold onto each other, two old friends, one fading,

(13:04):
one breaking, and then in the corner, that familiar presence.
He's standing now, straightening his coat. The room turns colder.
Bowie feels it. He lifts his head slightly. Well, he mutters,

(13:27):
with a half smile. He's back. I told you he'd
be punctual. Tony excels a shaking laugh through the tears.
Bowie squeezes his arm. It's alright, to It's all right,
we did it. We finished the record. The apparition steps

(13:48):
closer and holds out his hand At five Lazarus, Act
five Lazarus. The album is done, finished, completed, in the

(14:10):
shadow of death itself, and nobody knows, not the musicians,
not the public, not even most of his closest friends,
is that David Bowie spent the last year racing the
Reaper and somehow won the race by inches. Now the
record sits in the hands of the world, shimmering like
a coded message transmitted from a dying star. Black Star,

(14:33):
a title that sounds cosmic, ominous, and biblical all at once.
It's released on January eighth, on his sixty ninth birthday.
People celebrate his return, believing it's a triumphant comeback, a renaissance,
a new chapter. But those who listen closely, really listen,
feels something unsettling, A tremor behind every lyric, a chill

(14:56):
embedded in the harmonies, a sense that the singer standing
on the edge of something unseen. The world doesn't know
what Bowie and Tony know, what Death knew in the corner,
what Bowie accepted in the studio as the last notes played,
But the clues are there, encoded and undeniable. You put

(15:17):
the record on for the first time, It's night winter
and quiet. The first track rolls in. The lyrics go
a solitary candle in the center of it all. I'm
a black Star. You feel a shift, and you don't
understand why not yet. Then Lazarus begins. His voice arives,
like a ghost stepping into view. Look up here, I'm

(15:40):
in heaven. You pause on some instinctive level, your chest tightens.
You don't know why. He sounds like a man leaning
over the edge of mortality, whispering secrets from the other side.
You only know the truth feels close, undeniably close. Outside
the city, lights flicker inside. Bowie's performance feels like a

(16:02):
transmission from a place beyond language and death. The same
quiet presence from the studio is now in your room,
to a polite, invisible witness to the farewell. While the
world celebrates his album, Bowie is back home in New York, fading.
The strength he used to finish the record was borrowed,

(16:24):
borrowed from his future, borrowed from his last days. He
spends time with his family, says small, quiet things, not traumatic,
not poetic, just love and gratitude and peace. Tony checks
in daily bad day. He asked one evening, Bowie smiles faintly. Oh,
they're all bad days now, tone, But don't worry, I've

(16:44):
had plenty of good ones. And then, on January tenth,
three days after the album is released, David Bowie leaves
the world. He does not rage, he does not fight.
He simply slips into the silence he earned death, patient
as ever is there, not triumphant, not cruel, just ready.

(17:07):
He takes his hand with the gentleness of a valet
escorting a performer off stage after his final curtain, and
Bowie goes, not defeated, not diminished, just finished. Tony Visconti
hears the news early. He sits down, slowly, tears hit
the floor. He stares at the wall, at nothing, at everything.

(17:29):
He thinks of the booth, the songs, the frail man,
still laughing through the pain, the embrace after the final mix,
the presence in the corner, and that ticking clock. He
whispers to no one in particular. You did it, Dave,
You actually did it. David Bowie didn't just die. He

(17:50):
authored his own ending, composed it, designed it, performed it,
released it. And then and only then did he let go.
The last light of a dying star sent across the universe.
Three days before it finally went dark. I hope you

(18:12):
enjoyed Script nineteen, The Last Light of a Dying Star.
This has been Johnny's Dead Air podcast. I'm Johnny Hartwell,
thank you so much for listening.