As musician Nile Rodgers once noted, David Bowie did not just make art - he was art. So it is apt that his life and work should be celebrated in the V&A Dundee, within earshot of the first venue he played in Scotland under his new stage name. David Bowie and the Buzz were not even the headline act that night at the Palais de Dans in 1966, but it was the start of a relationship with Scottish fans which continues today.
David Bowie: On Tour is the first exhibition to showcase items from the singer's archive, which was acquired by the V&A in London in 2023. Many of the 100 items selected from the 90,000 housed in the David Bowie Centre, which was built to contain the sprawling archive, have never been seen in public. Among them, his first instrument, a saxophone, which his father bought him for Christmas in 1961, the stopwatch he used when songwriting, his 1988 passport and an advance copy of The Velvet Underground's 1967 record I'm Waiting for the Man.
Listen to news from Tayside and Central on BBC Sounds It also includes a letter of complaint from his London neighbours in December 1973, addressed to a "Mr Bowy". The curt missive reads: "We would be very grateful if you would be considerate enough to have the music played much more softly and stop at a reasonable hour." Leonie Bell, director of the V&A Dundee, said: "It offers something very special, the chance to encounter personal and intimate objects which reveal how David Bowie thought, worked and continually reinvented himself." Bowie meticulously saved everything from the early portion of his career, charting his rise to one of the world's most enigmatic and influential musicians. He later worked with professional curators to document and order it so he could use his own personal archive to rework projects he had previously abandoned.
Bowie also used it to fill in gaps where his personal items had been given away or lost. The show also examines Bowie's many Scottish concerts and the impact they had on fans. John Reilly was only 11 in May 1973, when the legendary Ziggy Stardust landed at the Caird Hall in Dundee.
Images of Bowie in a striking Kansai Yamamoto bodysuit take centre stage in the exhibition above a case of Polaroid photos and memorabilia from the show. Despite gathering much of it, self-confessed super fan John, a former Dundee United footballer, did not join the 2,500 fans inside. He went on to right that wrong by seeing Bowie live 49 times before his death in January 2016.
But the Dundee gig remains the one that got away. "I thought it would be like a football match, and I'd just crawl in under the turnstiles behind my dad," John, now 64, recalled. "I've got a couple of pals who were there and frequently remind me of what I missed out on but I like to think I made up for it after that." John gave his children the middle names Bowie and Dalglish to represent his two great loves.
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