And so it came to pass: following the use of his own record, Changes as his introductory theme music, David Bowie strolled casually on to the stage dressed in a loose white shirt, crumpled grey trousers and leather sandals.
Cradling an acoustic guitar, he opens with his song, Quicksand, sings contradictorily "I ain't got the power any more".
Well, this for me was the most compelling David Bowie concert since the Masonic Auditorium in Detroit in 1973, when he appeared as Ziggy Stardust fronting his Spiders from Mars.
This man is more artiste - with an "e" - than primal rock 'n' roller, and one's warped mind can't help but question his eternal quest to be minted as contemporary currency.
See, Bowie has rarely inaugurated new pastures, more often melding the footsteps of others: Marc Bolan opened the doors for Bowie's gender-bender arrival, Kraftwerk and Georgio Moroeder shaped his Teutonic Berlin period, Philadelphia soul fertilised his Young Americans flirtation, Bowie's current album Earthling dropped from the drum 'n' bass tree, Adam and Eve'd by Goldie, while its predecessor, Outside followed the trackmarks of Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails.
Dig: Here's Bowie on stage at the Olympia and he's saying "I grew up just south of Mississippi. We didn't get the Blues until about 1948".
Tongue in chic, he teases a few blues licks, sings "I've been driftin', driftin', like a ship on the open sea.." Huh? BB Bowie? Jimi Jones? As the mind attempts to unscramble this twelve bar Blues bar, the band bangs us into Bowie singin' "Talkin' 'bout Monroe" in his ode to Iggy, Bowie's song The Jean Genie.
Listen: I've never, ever seen Bowie both so relaxed and so in control.
Bowie and band, including long-time server Mike Garson on keyboards, the Bootle guitar of Reeves Gabrels and on bass and vocals, Gail Ann Dorsey - who beautifully sings Laurie Anderson's Oh, Superman - carry us through to Velvet Underground, songs by Anderson's hubby, Lou Reed, Waiting for the Man and Whit e Light, White Heat.
A cement mixer on Vaseline, they chum faves like Fashion, Fame, and All the Yo ung Dudes along side loud contemporary drum 'n' bass boogaloo in Hello Spaceboy, Little Wonder and Looking for Satellites with its mantra of yes, "Boyzone" repeated a couple of times.
And there's Bowie the timeless arts lab beatnik, goatee and sax to his lips, mesmerising to the max as he plays the darkly magnetic instrumental V-2 Schneider. Ah yes.
What do old rock stars do, the ones who haven't died or - worse still - taken up jogging? They could do worse than turn into David Bowie as the man on stage at the Olympia so patently did do. As he sings in Heart's Filthy Lesson "Oh Ramona, if there was only some kind of future!"
If there is a future, David Bowie will be part of it.