{"id":3582,"date":"2025-09-05T11:26:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T11:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/3582\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T11:26:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T11:26:10","slug":"david-bowies-secret-final-project-revealed-after-being-discovered-in-his-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/3582\/","title":{"rendered":"David Bowie’s secret final project revealed after being discovered in his study"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Bowie<\/a>\u2018s secret final project has been revealed after being unearthed in the late musician\u2019s study.<\/p>\n

READ MORE:\u00a0David Bowie\u2019s earliest years \u2013\u00a0as told by the people who knew him best<\/a><\/p>\n

In 2016, Bowie shared his final creative offering in the \u2018Blackstar<\/a>\u2018 album, which was released only days before his passing and saw him confront his own mortality amid an 18-month battle with cancer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now, it\u2019s emerged that his final months were spent working on a separate project, described in his notes as an \u201c18th century musical\u201d titled The Spectator, details of which he kept under wraps, and its existence remained unknown even to his closest collaborators until the notes were discovered locked in his study in 2016.<\/p>\n

The room was always locked, accessible only to Bowie and his personal assistant, so all of his handwritten notes were left undisturbed until archivists began cataloguing his belongings. They have now been donated to the V&A Museum, with the rest of Bowie\u2019s archive.<\/p>\n

They will be available for fans to view when the David Bowie Centre opens at the V&A East Storehouse in Hackney Wick on September 13<\/a>, with\u00a0The Last Dinner Party<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Nile Rodgers<\/a> curating special exhibitions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Along with\u00a090,000 items related to the iconic artist, the collection will trace Bowie\u2019s \u201ccreative processes as a musical innovator, cultural icon, and advocate for self-expression and reinvention\u201d, and have been acquired by the V&A through the David Bowie Estate, the Blavatnik Family Foundation and Warner Music Group.<\/p>\n

Photos of the musician\u2019s notes shared with the BBC <\/a>show Bowie was highly interested in the development of art and culture in 18th Century London, and was also drawn to stories about criminal gangs and notorious thief \u201cHonest\u201d Jack Sheppard.<\/p>\n

Had he completed the musical, The Spectator the musical would have realised one of Bowie\u2019s lifelong ambitions. Speaking in 2002, he touched on his ambitions to write for theatre, telling BBC Radio 4\u2018s John Wilson: \u201cI guess I could have just written for theatre in my living room \u2013 but I think the intent was to have a pretty big audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shorlty before he died, Bowie wrote Lazarus <\/a>the musical with Enda Walsh, which was was inspired by Walter Tevis\u2019 novel The Man Who Fell to Earth, the\u00a01976 movie adaptation of\u00a0which Bowie starred in.<\/p>\n

The show was first performed during a six-week stint in New York in late 2015 and early 2016 and then moved to London\u2019s Kings Cross Theatre from November 2016 to January 2017.<\/p>\n

Songs from the musical were\u00a0later released as a posthumous album<\/a> and also turned into a VR experience<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"David Bowie\u2018s secret final project has been revealed after being unearthed in the late musician\u2019s study. READ MORE:\u00a0David…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3583,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[156,157,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-3582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3582","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=3582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}