David Bowie from a decade-long recording hiatus with "The Next Day." He remained musically active until he died of liver cancer two days after the release of his final album, "Blackstar" (2016). Bowie was born David Robert Jones on 8 January 1947 in Brixton, London. His mother, Margaret Mary "Peggy" (née Burns; 1913–2001), was born at Shorncliffe Army Camp near Cheriton, Kent. Her paternal grandparents were Irish immigrants who had settled in Manchester. She worked as a waitress at a cinema in Royal Tunbridge Wells. His father, Haywood Stenton "John" Jones (1912–1969), was from Doncaster, and worked as a promotions officer for
David Bowie discography to the UK Albums Chart with "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars" (1972), which peaked at number five. Following the success of "Ziggy Stardust", sales of "Hunky Dory" improved and it eventually peaked at number three in the UK. RCA re-released the 1969" David Bowie" under the title Space Oddity (with an updated Ziggy Stardust-era photo) and "The Man Who Sold the World", which reached numbers 17 and 26 in the UK respectively. Bowie released nine more studio albums with RCA, all of which reached the top five of the UK Albums Chart, of