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Bells at Oslo's City Hall to honour David Bowie

AFP/The Local
AFP/The Local - [email protected]
Bells at Oslo's City Hall to honour David Bowie
Bowie performing at an Oslo concert in 2004. Photo: Heiko Junge / SCANPIX

Just days after adding a Motorhead song to honour rock legend Lemmy, the bells at Oslo's City Hall will now also ring to the tune of David Bowie's 'Changes'.

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'Changes', from David Bowie's 1971 album 'Hunky Dory' will join the musical lineup at the Oslo City Hall on Tuesday. 
 
"We received so many requests and there was such unanimity that we just decided to do it. To be honest, there wasn't really even any discussion about it," bell ringer Laura Marie Rueslatten Olseng told AFP.
 
The clock tower at Oslo's City Hall marks the passage of time with different musical pieces every hour.
 
Featuring such classic composers as Edvard Grieg, Eric Satie and Vivaldi, as well as more modern hits such as 'Imagine' by John Lennon, the programme is sometimes changed to reflect current events.
 
Bowie will thus join a playlist already featuring heavy metal group Motorhead, which was added after the death of the band's frontman Ian "Lemmy" Kilmister last week.
 
 
A few days after the Paris attacks on November 13th, the bells played "Til Ungdommen", a Norwegian hymn about peace.
 
So why pick 'Changes' from Bowie's five-decade career? 
 
 "Musically, the chords and the melody suit the programming machine" for the bells, said Olseng. "And it's a song that came out many years ago and which means something to a lot of people."
 
The first bars of the song will ring out every day at 7pm until May 31.
 
Bowie died on Sunday after a bout with liver cancer. Tributes to the singer poured in from all over the world, including a strong reaction from Berlin, where Bowie lived in the late 1970s. 
 

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