David Bowie’s bedroom could soon be London’s newest tourist attraction.
The house where the musician grew from suburban schoolboy to rock ‘n’ roll starman has been bought by a charity that plans to open it to the public.
The Heritage of London Trust said last Thursday that the 19th-century railway worker’s cottage in the south London suburb of Bromley will be restored to its 1960s decor and open to the public next year.
Visitors will be able to visit the 2.7m by 3m bedroom, "where a spark became a flame,” the charity said.
Bowie, born David Jones, lived in the house with his parents from 1955, when he was eight, until 1967, when he was a 20-year-old working musician hungry for fame.
Geoffrey Marsh, co-curator of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s hit 2013 exhibition David Bowie Is, said the house is where "Bowie evolved from an ordinary suburban schoolboy to the beginnings of an extraordinary international stardom.
"As he said, ‘I spent so much time in my bedroom, it really was my entire world. I had books up there, my music up there, my record player.'"
From Bromley, Bowie went on a creative journey that took him to Philadelphia, Berlin and New York, through eye-popping style changes and musical genres from folk-rock to glam, soul, electronica and new wave. His songbook includes classics such as Space Oddity, Changes, Life On Mars, Starman, Young Americans and Heroes.
The heritage trust scrambled to buy the house when it went on the market last year. It hasn’t said how much it paid, Other houses on the street have recently sold for upwards of 500,000 pounds (RM2.7mil) - modest by London standards.
The house project, backed by Bowie’s estate, has received a 500,000 pound (RM2.7mil) charity grant and is seeking to raise another 1.2 million pounds (RM6.5mil) in donations. The heritage trust aims to open the house in late 2027 for public visits and creative workshops for children.
Heritage of London Trust director Nicola Stacey said the house will offer visitors insight into Bowie's creative origins, and into domestic life in the 1950s and 1960s, a period of huge social change.
"I’m keen that it doesn’t feel static, it doesn’t, feel sterile, there’s a sense of the family living there,” she said.
"And a sense of that you’ve really walked into David Bowie’s life in the 1960s.”
The announcement came as fans marked a decade since Bowie’s death at age 69 on Jan 10, 2016, two days after the release of his final album, Blackstar.
A decade on, Bowie’s cultural legacy in music, style and design continues to inspire. His 90,000-item archive opened to the public last year at the V&A Museum's David Bowie Centre in east London.
She said "the idea of reinvention” that Bowie embodied remains inspiring today.
"We’re used to people having all sorts of different personas and we celebrate it in a way that it wasn’t celebrated back in the 1960s," she said. "And he helped pave the change.”
George Underwood, a childhood friend, said that the house was where "we spent so much time together, listening to and playing music.
"I’ve heard a lot of people say David’s music saved them or changed their life,” he said in a statement.
"It’s amazing that he could do that and even more amazing that it all started here, from such small beginnings, in this house. We were dreamers, and look what he became.” - AP
