\n<\/p>\n
Bowie was probably the most inspiring individual I\u2019ve spent any time with. He came to my Blue Note club night in London a few times when it was very underground and he could be left alone. Then he\u2019d come to the studio, where he\u2019d sing through a haze of cigarette smoke like a gorilla in the mist, or I\u2019d take him to see Dillinja in Brixton to hear drum\u2019n\u2019bass, or we\u2019d spend time in his trailer on the Isle of Man set for the film Everybody Loves Sunshine and he\u2019d sit there doing crochet. His thinking was that of an alchemist \u2013 he wanted to saturate himself in everything because he knew that inspiration could come from anywhere. He once said to me: \u201cGolds, did you know Michelangelo said that when you blow the dust off a piece of marble, the sculpture\u2019s there inside\u201d? That thought stayed with me.<\/p>\n
I hope the archive has some of his interviews, especially this one where he talks about DJ culture, the internet and what it\u2019s going to mean: everyone having access to music and the general saturation. Nobody else understood the change that was coming like he did. He said things about it like: \u201cTreat this thing like a velvet claw. It\u2019s very soft and passionate on your skin, but it can cut you like a knife.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/span>One of Bowie\u2019s Ziggy Stardust costumes, designed by Freddie Burretti.<\/span> Photograph: Richard Davis\/V&A, London<\/p>\n Visits to museum-library collections rank high on my list of peak experiences. I\u2019d always imagined the poet Emily Dickinson as deep in thought or mourning or enraptured. Then at the Emily Dickinson museum I saw her favourite white cotton house dress: something meant for cleaning house or baking bread, and for all her forceful words issued on paper, the dress revealed that she was a thin-boned tiny bird of a woman, even smaller than me. I have a feeling the Freddie Burretti costumes would give me a similar insight about Bowie.<\/p>\n When I was a 14-year-old kid growing up in rural New York State, someone gave me a copy of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars and it delivered me entirely to another place. On the back cover, Bowie wore a quilted suit with a geometric pattern, a tight fitted jacket unzipped to the waist and matching trousers. He was otherworldly, cocky, dangerously hip, androgynous, provocative. Burretti\u2019s fabulous costumes during the Ziggy Stardust to Diamond Dogs cycle refined Bowie\u2019s androgynous glitter god persona. If I couldn\u2019t have access to them all, I\u2019d settle for some time alone with that iconic album cover suit that played such an important part in my adolescent awakening.<\/p>\n As a teenager I found The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust in the bottom of a wardrobe. It\u2019s one of the only things I have of my dad\u2019s \u2013 a man I never knew but at least we share a taste in music. For me, this Ziggy costume is about collaboration, trust and bravery. A conversation in a London club [El Sombrero] with designer Freddie Buretti created an androgynous science fiction figure, the first of Bowie\u2019s iconic characters inside a kind of time lord. Bowie\u2019s marriage of music, fashion and art felt so beguiling and eternal that his passing almost felt like another transformation. I\u2019d love to spend time with this costume to understand how that was possible, how it started and what it would lead to.<\/p>\n When David and I lived opposite each other in New York he would sometimes call up and say: \u201cHey, do you wanna come over and play guitar or piano on this song?\u201d One night as I was leaving the apartment he shared with Iman, going down this very fancy hallway filled with art, he shouted: \u201cHold on \u2013 I want you to have this\u201d and gave me his black fedora hat. When I rewatched him in the film The Hunger recently I thought: \u201cHey, there\u2019s my hat!\u201d For years it went missing, I presumed stolen by the crack addicts I\u2019d invite back to my apartment at the end of the night when I was still going hard with liquor and drugs.<\/p>\n Two house moves later I was in LA unpacking some boxes and there was the David Bowie magic hat. I\u2019m so glad to have it back, but otherwise the Bowie artefact I\u2019d most like to spend time with is this poster for a gig in Hamburg in 1978. There\u2019s a drawn self-portrait and underneath are some of his records: Low, \u201cHeroes\u201d, ChangesOneBowie and Space Oddity. In terms of a moment in time, you can\u2019t do any better. I\u2019d love to be able to go back to 1978 and see him performing songs from those records and Station to Station, my favourite Bowie album.<\/p>\n <\/span>Returning \u2026 David Bowie\u2019s Thin White Duke costume.<\/span> Photograph: Richard Davis\/V&A, London<\/p>\n The first time I saw David in this outfit was in a news article announcing that he had \u201carrived on UK soil\u201d, which was a thing then. Then the concert at Wembley was an unforgettable experience. This period was a move away from his decadent years and he was trying to clean up, which was reflected in the outfit: clean cut, white shirt and trousers, black waistcoat, slick hairdo. I\u2019d also choose [to see] one of Bowie\u2019s notebooks containing his handwritten lyrics, sketches or fragments of thought. Those pages are where his worlds first took shape, so to spend time with those would feel like being allowed into his head, to witness the beginnings of what would affect the lives of so many.<\/p>\n It\u2019s near impossible to pick just one item from such an inspiring collection but I was surprisingly drawn to this one. There\u2019s a pristine, tailored aspect to it where he\u2019s wearing this lovely suit with the perfectly untied necktie, but the live recordings from that tour are wild and unpredictable. It\u2019s so immaculately presented yet he uses what was by then an incredible suite of songs as the basis for experimentation. This is all the different eras of Bowie in one photo. He\u2019d just become a megastar but the photo captures a human look, as if he\u2019s wondering: \u201cIs everyone enjoying it?\u201d But on the other hand he is absolutely in command, looking cooler than he ever has.<\/p>\n <\/span>Casting a spell \u2026Bowie\u2019s crystal ball from the movie Labyrinth.<\/span> Photograph: David Parry\/V&A, London<\/p>\n I remember watching Labyrinth when I was eight years old and my mother telling me: \u201cThat\u2019s a musician called David Bowie.\u201d To me he was always Jareth, the king of the goblins, a sort of child-catcher figure who gazes into this crystal ball. It wasn\u2019t until much later that I saw a video of Live Aid and realised who he was. Then in my teens I started listening to his records and loved them all. I still find it hard to compute that the same person could do Under Pressure with Queen and shapeshift into the king of the goblins in the same period, but that\u2019s how transformative he was \u2013 and nobody did it better.<\/p>\n <\/span>Unpacking the future of pop \u2026 EMS Synthi AKS synthesiser used by Brian Eno and David Bowie for \u2018Heroes\u2019, Low and Lodger.<\/span> Photograph: Olivia Singleton\/V&A, London<\/p>\n Until I first heard this synth on Low, I\u2019d only known Bowie as the writer of hit songs such as Life on Mars and Changes, which my parents would play over Sunday lunch. The more esoteric, experimental, Berlin-era Bowie was a version I could claim for my own. My fascination with analogue synths started there and Brian Eno\u2019s synths on those albums fundamentally shaped me as a producer and artist. I\u2019ve been lucky enough to recently get to work with Pete Townshend\u2019s incredible collection of vintage synths as I\u2019m making a new album. But getting to see the one that started it all for me would be priceless.<\/p>\n <\/span>Approaching star \u2026 David Bowie\u2019s draft lyrics for Life on Mars.<\/span> Photograph: Geoff Pugh\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n I\u2019ve got enough Bowie posters to keep me happy for the rest of my life and his clothing wouldn\u2019t fit me, so I\u2019d love to have or get close to the lyrics to Life on Mars. Taken out of the context of his entire body of work, it stands out as a beacon of brilliance. The lyrics would look great above my jukebox next to my original lyrics of Marc Bolan\u2019s One Inch Rock.<\/p>\n The David Bowie archiveopens at the David Bowie Centre at the V&A East Storehouse, London on 13 September<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bowie was probably the most inspiring individual I\u2019ve spent any time with. He came to my Blue Note club night in London a few times when it was very underground and he could be left alone. Then he\u2019d come to the studio, where he\u2019d sing through a haze of cigarette smoke like a gorilla in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21425,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[13145,5110,7488,13152,13151,999,13150,13147,13149,13146,13148,7606,13144,7388,13143],"class_list":{"0":"post-21424","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-adolescent","9":"tag-archives","10":"tag-awakening","11":"tag-bowie","12":"tag-bowies","13":"tag-david","14":"tag-delve","15":"tag-goldie","16":"tag-merchant","17":"tag-moby","18":"tag-natalie","19":"tag-sparked","20":"tag-stardust","21":"tag-suit","22":"tag-ziggy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Anthony Szmieriek \u2013 Freddie Burretti\u2019s Ziggy Stardust costume (1972)<\/h2>\n
Joe Elliott, Def Leppard \u2013 Life on Mars handwritten lyrics (1971)<\/h2>\n