Although he released two albums during the final dozen years of his life, David Bowie had effectively retired from active duty, focusing on his family and, as his extensive posthumous catalog of sound and vision shows, curating his life’s work. It’s been a treasure trove for longtime fans, but one thing in particular has been missing: Videos of his legendary concert tours from the 1970s. Aside from the legendary 1973 “Ziggy Stardust” farewell concert — which has been available for years but was finally released in its entirety in a 50th anniversary edition — there are TV appearances and occasional live footage, but nothing in full.
All that will change on Feb. 14, 2027, when “Stage,” Brett Morgen’s immersive concert experience of Bowie’s 1978 tour, will be premiered at Berlin’s Uber Arena. It is even less conventional than the director’s previous Bowie documentary, the Grammy-winning “Moonage Daydream,” which Variety described as “the first graduate-school music doc.” It will be presented on multiple screens in arenas, with immersive sound and an elaborate light show. The tour was a landmark in Bowie’s career for many reasons.
It was focused on songs from the challenging first two albums from his so-called “Berlin Trilogy,” “Low” and “Heroes,” which combined angular rock music with atmospheric instrumentals and included extensive contributions from Brian Eno. These songs often required patience from the audience, yet they show also included earlier crowd-pleasing hits like “Fame,” “The Jean Genie” and “Rebel Rebel,” as well as nearly half of his “Ziggy Stardust” album, which he’d barely performed live for several years. Bowie had commissioned director David Hemmings, who starred in the classic 1966 film “Blow-Up” and directed the considerably less-classic Bowie-starring film “Just a Gigolo.” However, Bowie was unhappy with the results and, as he often did, moved on.
But perhaps most strikingly, the shows featured Bowie the person, rather than a specific character he’d decided to inhabit, like Ziggy Stardust (1972-73), Halloween Jack (1974) and the Thin White Duke (1976). There is no character — maybe just this one time, right? Because in my opinion, even on [later] things like ‘Serious Moonlight,’ he’s playing a character.
It features elaborate lighting design by renowned lighting designer Patrick Woodroffe, whose credits include collaborations with the Rolling Stones and Elton John, and a specially created sound mix from Academy Award winner Paul Massey (“Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Michael,” “Moonage Daydream”). In this exclusive interview, Morgen spoke with Variety for nearly an hour about “Stage,” Bowie’s career, and some other tantalizing items residing in Bowie’s vast archive. Let’s start at the beginning.
How did this project come about? In 2017, I was invited to tour the David Bowie archive in preparation for “Moonage Daydream,” it’s this big, cavernous room filled with materials. Immediately, a stack of 35-millimeter [film] cans caught my attention, and I made a beeline for them and saw that they said “Stage.” The archivist explained to me that this was a concert that David had commissioned in 1978, and the materials hadn’t been touched in nearly 40 years.
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