{"id":15426,"date":"2025-09-11T06:58:14","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T06:58:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/15426\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T06:58:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T06:58:14","slug":"david-bowie-archive-in-london-chronicles-50-years-of-creativity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/15426\/","title":{"rendered":"David Bowie archive in London chronicles 50 years of creativity"},"content":{"rendered":"

When David Bowie died in 2016, he left a vast musical legacy \u2013 and a trove of unrealised projects.<\/p>\n

Tantalising details of those abandoned and unfinished ideas are revealed in Bowie\u2019s archive, which opens to the public this week.<\/p>\n

The 90,000 items acquired from Bowie\u2019s estate by London\u2019s Victoria and Albert Museum include handwritten notes for a movie in which Major Tom, the fictional astronaut “sitting in a tin can, far above the world” in Bowie\u2019s song Space Oddity, is sent to “a disgruntled America”.<\/p>\n

Curator Madeleine Haddon said the unmade film \u2013 titled Young Americans, as in Bowie\u2019s 1975 album of the same name \u2013 was “reflective on what it\u2019s like to be a Brit in the US, and thinking about international politics and their place in the world”.<\/p>\n

Other might-have-beens include The Spectator, a stage musical about an 18th-century London outlaw that Bowie was working on shortly before his death from cancer in January 2016 at the age of 69.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s about “the relationship between art and politics in London at the cusp of modernity”, Haddon said today at a preview of V&A’s David Bowie Centre. “I would love to see where he was going with that.”<\/p>\n

Treasure trove for fans<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The Harptone 12-string acoustic guitar and case used by David Bowie on Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and Let’s Dance in 1970. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n

The centre, which opens Sunday, is a treasure chest for Bowie fans and researchers, holding everything from stage outfits and musical instruments \u2013 a stringed Japanese koto, Ziggy Stardust\u2019s acoustic guitar \u2013 to letters, lyrics, photos, to-do lists and idea-filled sticky notes.<\/p>\n

The archive chronicles five decades of restless creativity by the shape-shifting musician, who was born plain old David Jones in the London suburbs in 1947.<\/p>\n

Harriet Reed, a theatre and performance curator at the V&A, said Bowie was “an active archivist” of his life and work.<\/p>\n

“The notes he made, the to-do list, things where he\u2019s making a record of the exhibitions he wants to see, the films he wants to see, books he wants to read \u2013 that kind of devouring of culture is really fascinating,” she said.<\/p>\n

Bowie donned and shed personas as he moved through musical styles, from glam rock to soul, electronica and collaborations with British jungle and drum \u2018n\u2019 bass musicians, including A Guy Called Gerald and Goldie. He also acted in movies and on Broadway, collaborated on stage shows, painted and embraced technology, setting up a 1990s internet service provider called BowieNet.<\/p>\n

“He was such a world-builder,” Haddon said. “Music was [just] one angle into the worlds he wanted to build.”<\/p>\n

\"Earthling,<\/p>\n

Earthling, a Union Flag frock coat designed by David Bowie and Alexander McQueen in 1997. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n

The archive occupies part of the V&A East Storehouse, a hybrid warehouse-museum that opened in June in east London\u2019s Olympic Park. As with the storehouse as a whole, visitors can book appointments to see any of the items for free \u2013 and in many cases handle them, under supervision.<\/p>\n

“We want visitors to be inspired by Bowie, to pursue their own creativity, discover new stories and make unexpected connections between Bowie, contemporary discussions and themselves,” Haddon said.<\/p>\n

Since the bookings site opened this month, the most requested item is a distressed frock coat that Bowie created with British fashion designer Alexander McQueen for his 50th birthday concert at Madison Square Garden in 1997.<\/p>\n

An impact beyond music<\/p>\n

\"Man<\/p>\n

Man Who Sold the World, a wide sculpted bodice designed by David Bowie and Mark Ravitz in 1979. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n

Bowie\u2019s impact on fashion is attested to by the 400 costumes in the archive, including Japanese designer Kansai Yamamoto\u2019s knitted jumpsuit for Bowie’s androgynous alien rock star persona, Ziggy Stardust, and the white suit Bowie wore on his 1983 Serious Moonlight tour.<\/p>\n

“The Alexander McQueen costumes and some of the Ziggy costumes are proving particularly popular,” said V&A archivist Sabrina Offord.<\/p>\n

About 200 items are displayed in cabinets in the archive\u2019s main room, a selection made in consultation with local 18- to 25-year-olds as part of a project to provide opportunities for local young people<\/p>\n

“Many didn\u2019t know who he was or they had a lot of questions about why the V&A wanted to build an entire center dedicated to him,” Haddon said. “By the end, they were convinced.”<\/p>\n

‘A real trooper’<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A pair of shoes wore by David Bowie on Ziggy Stardust in 1972. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n

Some of the items are iconic, others delightfully mundane. There’s the key to the Berlin apartment Bowie shared with Iggy Pop in the 1970s, and his Rarotonga driver’s license from a period filming the 1983 movie Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence on the South Pacific island and in New Zealand.<\/p>\n

Bowie also kept many items sent to him by fans, including drawings, paintings and a handmade music box.<\/p>\n

Almost a decade after his death, Bowie is a musical icon whose influence on popular culture endures. But it wasn\u2019t always that way.<\/p>\n

The archive includes a letter written by Bowie\u2019s father, Haywood Stenton Jones, trying to get teenage David, then a struggling musician, a job with a London company. His son was a hard worker and “a real trooper”, Jones stressed.<\/p>\n

Next to it is displayed a brief rejection letter Bowie received from The Beatles’ record label in 1968.<\/p>\n

“Apple Records is not interested in signing David Bowie,” it reads. “The reason is, we don\u2019t feel he\u2019s what we\u2019re looking for at the moment.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When David Bowie died in 2016, he left a vast musical legacy \u2013 and a trove of unrealised…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[156,157,111,139,69,1745],"class_list":["post-15426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-uk-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}