David Bowie: You’re Not Alone

By Mark Nevin

What a treat to be gifted a complimentary ticket for a preview of ‘David Bowie: You’re Not Alone’ at Lightroom in London’s Kings Cross.

On arrival, I passed the enormous Google HQ building, where a female busker sang a folksy version of ‘Space Oddity’. Then, as I approached my destination, another did a jazzy ‘Heroes’ – a couple of entrepreneurial opportunists or on Lightroom’s payroll? Whatever, it was a nice touch and the spirit of The Dame was among us.

Inside, not knowing what to expect, I walked downstairs and through, a surprisingly long, concrete tunnel towards whatever it was I was about to witness. The orchestra and Stylophone of the ‘lift off’ intro of the real ‘Space Oddity’ echoed loudly from the impressive sound system. It is hard to believe that this recording was made 57 years ago; it sounded thrilling. I entered the vast main space, perfectly on cue for the Bo Diddley-esque 12-string guitar chords that herald the ‘This is ground control to Major Tom’ section. And there he is, the size of King Kong, in his perfect prime, the thin white beautiful David, my amazing friend, who in 1972 pointed directly at me from inside our Radio Rentals television and sang: ‘I had to phone someone so I picked on you.’ My life, and those of my contemporaries, were never the same: we were indeed, not alone, we had someone to show us the way out of the dreary greyness that was England in the Seventies.

The show is a glorious and epic 350-degree, multi-media extravaganza, an ever repeating loop of Bowies, big and small, in endless reinvented personas, singing (what a voice!), talking (what an accent!), posing (what is he wearing!?!), generally being god-like and turning everyone there back into awestruck teenage fan boys and girls.

The kaleidoscopic celebration of an extraordinary life revolved around us, a swirling and epic digital collage in the William Burroughs cut-up style that Bowie famously employed in his songwriting process. It certainly was the ‘immersive experience’ promised in Lightroom’s publicity blurb.

‘He’s smashing,’ exclaimed a weeping teenager outside the last show of his Ziggy Stardust tour at Hammersmith Odeon. He was, and I am so grateful to have been born into the moment that allowed me to experience his arrival among us in real time, back when we didn’t even know what a google was.

This wasn’t genocide, this was rock and roll.