Along with his final album Blackstar, released shortly after his passing in 2016, David Bowie was working on another project which the music legend described in his notes as an “18th Century musical”. The project had a working title of Spectator, and at the time it was an unknown even to Bowie’s closest collaborators – until the notes were discovered locked in his study in 2016. They have now been donated to the V&A Museum, with the rest of Bowie’s archive.
The notes were exclusively shared with BBC, they show Bowie’s fascination with the development of art and satire in 18th-century London, alongside stories of criminal gangs and the notorious thief “Honest” Jack Sheppard.
Bowie’s notes for The Spectator were found as he had left them, pinned to the walls and stored in his office in New York.
The room was always locked – only Bowie and his personal assistant had a key – so they were left undisturbed until archivists started cataloging his belongings.
They will be available for fans and scholars to view when the David Bowie Centre opens at the V&A East Storehouse in Hackney Wick on 13 September.
“We even have the desk [where he worked] at the Storehouse, as well,” says Madeleine Haddon, the collection’s lead curator.
