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Anybody looking for a Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane and The Man Who Sold The World can now finally find all of David Bowie's personas and their far-out costumes in the same place - a warehouse in East London. Today, the David Bowie Centre has opened in the British capital, nine years after his death. It is home to an archive of thousands of items that belonged to the iconic rock star. NPR's Robbie Griffiths got a private tour of the starman's legacy.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "STARMAN")
DAVID BOWIE: (Singing) There's a starman waiting in the sky. He'd like to...
ROBBIE GRIFFITHS, BYLINE: Have you ever wondered how David Bowie got the ideas for his songs? Now fans can find out at the new David Bowie Centre, which opens this weekend in East London's Stratford. It's a public archive that holds 90,000 items that were owned by the singer, including notebooks chronicling his creative process. Here, for the first time, people can get up close to Bowie's treasures.
HARRIET REED: So on this table, we have some quite unusual items. One of these is the guitar that Bowie used on the Ziggy Stardust tours.
GRIFFITHS: Curator Harriet Reed holds a beaten-up acoustic guitar.
REED: It's a Harptone 12-string Jumbo, and you can see there's some scratches and marks on there. There's actually a broken string as well. So it's a very well-used instrument.
GRIFFITHS: Bowie wasn't just a musician but an artist, and the collection is also home to thousands of notes and drawings he made throughout his career as he moved from one stage persona, complete with backstory, to the next. From Major Tom...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SPACE ODDITY")
BOWIE: (Singing) Ground control to Major Tom.
GRIFFITHS: ...To Ziggy Stardust...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ZIGGY STARDUST")
BOWIE: (Singing) Now Ziggy played guitar.
GRIFFITHS: ...To Halloween Jack.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DIAMOND DOGS")
BOWIE: (Singing) They call them the Diamond Dogs.
GRIFFITHS: Bowie also kept art that was sent to him by his fans, as well as personal belongings - including the key to a flat he shared with fellow rock star Iggy Pop in Berlin in the late 1970s. There are also lots of Bowie's groundbreaking costumes here, including a silk cream jacket from the Ziggy Stardust era and even the pants he wore with it.
REED: These pants here were worn with the jacket. So we've got an embroidered jacket. We've got some quite small pants, I have to say, with a zip up the front. And then we have these long sort of booties.
GRIFFITHS: In some ways, the center is more like a library than a museum. Before they arrive, visitors can go online and choose up to five items they want to view, which are then brought to them in a study room. The David Bowie Centre also has a permanent exhibition, with displays showcasing his influence on fashion and culture.
MADELEINE HADDON: There is nowhere really like this that exists, so it's been tremendous to bring to life.
GRIFFITHS: Lead curator Madeleine Haddon is from New York. She hopes that as well as Bowie aficionados, local people from Stratford - an East London borough where poverty is relatively high - will come here and find inspiration, too. It should help that tickets are free.
HADDON: We are especially engaged with thinking about how we create a museum that feels welcoming and inspiring to young people and is also, you know, a resource for the next generations of artists, designers and makers, especially those who are here within East London.
GRIFFITHS: Alan Edwards, who was David Bowie's publicist for almost 35 years, says this is a place the man himself would have appreciated.
ALAN EDWARDS: This is exactly what David would have wanted. He wasn't a person that was driven by latest chart positions of that. He - you know, his influence and the way he touched people was really important to him.
GRIFFITHS: Edwards recently wrote a memoir about his career and says working with the singer only made him more sure of Bowie's genius.
EDWARDS: David deserves to be looked at like this. And he is the only music person, certainly in Britain, that's ever been treated in this way. He will be with us as long as there's a human race now. He's in that very rarefied sort of air - the canon of great artists like Salvador Dali, Beethoven, Mozart, you know, Elvis maybe.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HEROES")
BOWIE: (Singing) We can be heroes, just for one day.
GRIFFITHS: Edwards thinks Bowie's work will live forever. And here at the David Bowie Centre, staff are trying their best to make sure he's right. Robbie Griffiths, NPR News, East London.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HEROES")
BOWIE: (Singing) And I... Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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