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Watch Yungblud, Billy Corgan and more pay tribute to David Bowie during livestream event

Yungblud, Billy Corgan and a number of other musicians paid tribute to David Bowie this weekend during a virtual event ahead of the fifth anniversary of the rock legend’s death.

Last night (January 9), pianist Mike Garson held a livestream event called A Bowie Celebration: Just For One Day featuring a variety of artists paying tribute to the late musician, who died five year’s ago today (January 10).

The likes of Trent Reznor, Perry Farrell, Adam Lambert, Peter Frampton, Slipknot‘s Corey Taylor, Anna Calvi and Duran Duran also took part in the livestream event – which was originally supposed to take place on Bowie’s birthday (January 8), but was postponed by a day following some logistical issues.

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Yungblud, who shared his performance on Twitter, covered Bowie’s ‘Life On Mars’, which was first released on the 1971 album ‘Hunky Dory’.

“it’s rare in this life that you meet someone who shaped your whole existence,” he captioned his tweet. “i felt like i was on a different planet last night. he was there and i was with him. it was truly one of the the greatest moments of my fookin life. thankyou for everything starman.”

Corgan broke out his cover of ‘Space Oddity’ for the show, which he’s performed a few times over the years – you can watch the Smashing Pumpkins frontman’s performance below.

See other tribute performances from Adam Lambert, who performed ‘Starman’ at the Mike Garson fronted event, Duran Duran (‘Five years’) and Boy George (‘Lady Grinning Soul’) below.

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Elsewhere during the event, Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor performed a pair of Bowie covers: ‘Fantastic Voyage’ and ‘Fashion’.

On Friday (January 8), one of Bowie’s final collaborators has dismissed the idea that ‘Blackstar’ was intended to be the singer’s farewell record.

Bowie’s final album was released only two days before he died from cancer in January 2016 – with many claiming that its lyrics can be interpreted as the singer tackling his own mortality.

However, Donny McCaslin – who leads the New York jazz ensemble featured on the album – instead claims that Bowie was planning on more work prior to his death.

“There is the narrative of ‘Blackstar’ being this farewell, which I totally get. But that coexists with the fact that he was just so creative. He was planning on doing more,” he told NME for a new oral history to mark five years of the record.






Meanwhile, David Bowie‘s previously unreleased covers of John Lennon‘s ‘Mother’ and Bob Dylan‘s ‘Tryin’ to Get to Heaven’ have been released for the first time, to mark what would have been the music icon’s 74th birthday.