Reuters Copyright: Reuters

David Bowie gave just one concert in Russia in 1996. It was a flop. Wrong venue - the Kremlin Palace of Congresses, wrong audience - the first rows were filled with new Russia's rich and former party apparatchiks with stony faces.

According to legend, Bowie (pictured above in Athens in '96) was so shocked that he promised not to perform in Russia again.

They were unable to understand the words and didn't get the music. Bowie was one of the Western rock musicians deemed unsuitable for Soviet audiences with his orange hair and strange lyrics. However, his music was played in discotheques all over the Soviet Union by the end of 1980s and his music had a defining influence on leading rock musicians of Russia.

He was copied, loved and revered by a generation of young Russians who saw him as a rebel who invented his own music form.