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Rare “holy grail” footage of David Bowie performing Heroes at Earl’s Court in 1978 is to feature in a new immersive show about the singer’s life and creative practice.
Extended footage of the performance has been pieced back together by the team behind the new Lightroom exhibition, who had access to new camera angles found on film reels discovered in the artist’s archives.
Mark Grimmer, the show’s producer, who was also behind the landmark V&A show David Bowie Is in 2013, said placing the performance of one of the star’s most loved songs in an immersive space – where it can be seen from multiple angles and perspectives at once – will be transformative.
He said: “It’s a holy grail; fans haven’t seen it before. The quality of the material is amazing and he was absolutely at the height of his powers. We just had to get out of the way and let the performance speak for itself.”
The show, You’re Not Alone, which opens in April at the venue in King’s Cross, London, also contains Bowie’s final performance as Ziggy Stardust at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1973. “We were able to get the multiple camera feeds, so while there is an edit out there, we could go back to the source,” said Grimmer.
Lightroom’s executive producer, David Sabel, adds that the immersive space – which is a vast “three-storey concrete box” with projections on all four walls and the floor, and a spatial sound system – has been used to put visitors “inside” the performance.
“You feel like you’re joining the crowd back in 1978,” he said. “You don’t get a linear experience – you get a more three-dimensional one.”
Grimmer spent hours in the 90,000-item Bowie archive at the V&A East, as well as the singer’s New York archive, pulling out interviews and ephemera that provide the core of the exhibition, which is divided into seven non-chronological “chapters”.
Other elements, such as the stage models for the Diamond Dogs tours, are also used to create digital renderings of the designs that will be projected on the walls of the space.
“He kept everything,” said Grimmer. “He knew one day someone would come and look through this stuff. They’re not objects for veneration to be kept in a box; we want to bring the handwritten notes and photography to life through animation.”
The hour-long show is narrated by Bowie, whose interviews are used to provide commentary on the different parts of his creative life from the construction of his different personas, such as Aladdin Sane, to his interest in mime.
Grimmer said that after spending time in the archive, there were certain key themes the singer returned to throughout his life, until his death from cancer in 2016.
“Spirituality was always very important to him,” he said. “So was transience and the idea of mortality, which was something that was on his mind long before he was ill.”
Sabel added: “There’s a strong sense of what you do with a life. He had a voracious appetite to consume art and culture throughout his life.”
You’re Not Alone is the fifth show at Lightroom, which launched in 2023 with a David Hockney exhibition that was also produced by Grimmer. It has also hosted shows dedicated to Vogue and catwalks, while Tom Hanks narrated its space exploration project, the Moonwalkers. It is one of a small group of immersive venues in London.
In January, Heritage of London Trust announced it had acquired Bowie’s childhood home – a terraced house in Bromley, south London.
The home is to undergo a £500,000 restoration to give it back its 1960s appearance and is due to open in late 2027.
