{"id":544104,"date":"2026-04-22T05:36:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T05:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/544104\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T05:36:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T05:36:10","slug":"david-bowie-youre-not-alone-review-ziggy-glam-and-berlin-grime-in-a-bum-shaking-yet-sanitised-immersion-david-bowie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/544104\/","title":{"rendered":"David Bowie: You\u2019re Not Alone review \u2013 Ziggy glam and Berlin grime in a bum-shaking yet sanitised immersion | David Bowie"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a decade now, the posthumous David Bowie industry has been in full, unremitting swing. There have been umpteen reissues, box sets, books, documentaries, exhibitions and an ever-expanding range of merchandise that occasionally makes you wonder if there\u2019s anything on which that quote about not knowing where he\u2019s going but promising it won\u2019t be boring can\u2019t be printed. After 10 years, the possibility that the public might be suffering from Bowie fatigue has been raised, but the appetite seems insatiable. Hence You\u2019re Not Alone, an hour-long 360-degree film directed by Mark Grimmer \u2013 lead designer for the V&A\u2019s blockbusting 2013 exhibition David Bowie Is<\/a> \u2013 showing at London\u2019s \u201cimmersive exhibition space\u201d Lightroom.<\/p>\n

double quotation markAt this size, you really notice the filthy look bassist Trevor Boulder shoots Bowie during Rock\u2019n\u2019Roll Suicide<\/p>\n

A lot of what\u2019s been produced since Bowie\u2019s death is clearly aimed at diehard fans. You\u2019re Not Alone sets itself a trickier task: keeping them onside while appealing to a younger audience, allegedly more resistant to Bowie\u2019s allure than those who remember his imperial phases first-hand. You sense the desire to cater to the latter in the way it concentrates on Bowie\u2019s biggest-streaming songs: you get a lot of Let\u2019s Dance, but no mention of Ashes to Ashes or Sound and Vision.<\/p>\n

The big draw for old hands is the unseen footage of him performing at Earls Court in 1978, which is great, although there\u2019s more than that on an Easter-egg level. The show\u2019s use of multiple camera feeds from DA Pennebaker\u2019s film<\/a> of Bowie\u2019s final Ziggy Stardust show in 1973 \u2013 and indeed the sheer size at which the footage is screened \u2013 mean you really notice the absolutely filthy look bassist Trevor Boulder shoots Bowie during the climactic performance of Rock\u2019n\u2019Roll Suicide: in fairness, Bowie has just tacitly informed Boulder he\u2019s out of a job in front of 5,000 people.<\/p>\n

It does a great job of tricking you into thinking that you\u2019re in the audience \u2026 David Bowie: You\u2019re Not Alone at Lightroom, London. Photograph: Jordan Pettitt\/PA<\/p>\n

Estate-approved, You\u2019re Not Alone offers a distinctly sanitised version of Bowie\u2019s career, with the scrabbling try-anything pre-Ziggy years largely expunged (which means not just passing over The Laughing Gnome, but Hunky Dory to boot), no direct references to bisexuality \u2013 unless you count the sight of Bowie camply fluttering his eyelashes during the famous Top of the Pops performance of Starman \u2013 no flirtation with fascism, mullet-sporting Glass Spider era or indeed membership of Tin Machine. An interview featuring Bowie addressing the way his lunge for mainstream commerciality on Let\u2019s Dance quickly sent him into an artistic tailspin is followed by the suggestion said artistic tailspin was rectified with the release of 1993\u2019s Black Tie White Noise: hmmm. Still, the surround sound succeeds in burnishing his undervalued 90s oeuvre, lending both the industrial-influenced I\u2019m Afraid of Americans and the drum\u2019n\u2019bass experiments of Little Wonder a literally bum-shaking power: they sound fantastic.<\/p>\n

And, ultimately, what is here is more than spectacular enough \u2013 and indeed genuinely immersive enough \u2013 to make you overlook what isn\u2019t, whether due to time constraints or discreet airbrushing. It does a great job of tricking you into thinking that you\u2019re in the audience for the aborted initial leg of the 1974 Diamond Dogs tour. There\u2019s a fantastic moment when Bowie discusses the impact of William Burroughs\u2019 cut-up technique on his writing, and pieces of paper on which he\u2019d scribbled fragments of lyrics litter the floor beneath your feet: similarly, when he talks about Brian Eno\u2019s influence on his approach to recording, you find yourself surrounded by handwritten prototypes of Eno\u2019s Oblique Strategies cards.<\/p>\n

Celebratory montage \u2026 David Bowie: You\u2019re Not Alone at the Lightroom in London. Photograph: Jordan Pettitt\/PA Wire<\/p>\n

During the section dealing with his Berlin years, the room feels authentically grubby, suddenly chilly and a little claustrophobic: set in that context, \u201cHeroes\u201d is rescued from its grim latter-day fate as an air-punch-inducing, straightforwardly celebratory sporting montage soundtrack, and given its ambiguous quotation marks back. Everyone knows Bowie\u2019s prescient views on the impact of the internet on society \u2013 the famous Jeremy Paxman interview that continually does the rounds on social media gets another airing here \u2013 but it turns out that Bowie\u2019s crystal ball was also pretty clear when it came to the way pop music was headed: subject to a \u201cdemystification process \u2013 it\u2019s becoming more about the audience,\u201d he avers a little sadly at one point, some years before anyone approvingly described a pop star as \u201crelatable\u201d. \u201cIt\u2019s almost as if the artist needs to accompany the audience\u201d.<\/p>\n

Given the number of times you hear him talking about concealing himself behind the theatricality of his performances, and discussing his desire to \u201cthink myself into another person\u201d onstage over the course of the film, there\u2019s a certain degree of chutzpah involved in drawing to a conclusion with an ostensibly emotional reading of the ballad The Loneliest Guy from Bowie\u2019s final live performance in 2004. He might well have been playing a role that night too, but it\u2019s presented as if it offers a glimpse into his soul, prefaced with interview clips of him discussing ageing and his fear of death. And yet, it works in context, disarming your quibbles and packing a suitably tear-jerking punch. It feels like You\u2019re Not Alone in miniature: you can certainly pick holes in it if you like, but while it\u2019s happening, it\u2019s hard not to be swept away.<\/p>\n

David Bowie: You\u2019re Not Alone is at Lightroom, London, 22 April to 4 October<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For a decade now, the posthumous David Bowie industry has been in full, unremitting swing. There have been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544105,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-544104","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-gb","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}