David Bowie was a master of persona, adopting various characters throughout his multi-era career. He had a deep understanding of the crucial factors to developing an image and identity, adopting various signifying features to communicate his ideas with a wide audience. He was an avid collector, and the David Bowie Archive holds material selected by Bowie and his team which contribute to his carefully curated professional image and identity.
The David Bowie Archive contains around 90,000 items of material and represents the professional life of David Bowie. The collection holds handwritten lyrics, costumes, instruments, sketches and thousands of photographs over Bowie’s career. There is a wealth of material generated by David Bowie himself but, amongst it all, is material collected by the artist and his team over the course of his career. Examples of this include the extensive collection of badges in the archive.
From military insignia in Ancient Rome through to the rusty pins and DIY badges that have become entwined with popular culture, badges have long served as visual identifiers and communicators of a person’s identity or interests. The rise of DIY culture in the 1960s meant people started to use badges as a means of sharing opinions, as well as demonstrating their support of different causes and musical artists. In doing so, sporting a badge became a way of fostering community and establishing identity. David Bowie understood the importance of this, and the vast range of badges in the collection evidences this.
These badges represent the various phases throughout Bowie’s career. They were originally catalogued as part of the Album & Show (DBA/2) or Theatre & Film (DBA/4) project files, based on the imagery associated with the badge. What’s interesting about this specific part of the collection is the combination of official merchandise, and some bootleg material. Information from David Bowie’s recordkeeping team notes that most of the badges, apart from the pieces of official merchandise that were saved, were sent to David Bowie’s office. This includes a wealth of handmade fan badges, often related to different community groups or utilising graphics the makers had designed themselves.
fanzine and Bowie Friends fanzine
It wasn’t just the Bowie fans getting creative with the DIY approach! Also in the archive is this badge, which David Bowie had made himself:
The badge features an image of David Bowie and Beat poet William Burroughs with the words “2 wild boys” written on it. The image was taken by Terry O’Neill in 1974 and first appeared in a February issue of the Rolling Stone magazine, where an exclusive interview between Bowie and Burroughs featured. Bowie was a big fan of Burroughs and frequently used the ‘cut-up’ writing technique popularised by him. Cut up from a contact sheet from the session, and coloured in with felt-tip pen, Bowie adopts the DIY technique to create a badge of an artist he admired. Creating badges of one’s idols is a core part of fandom, and it’s wonderful to have examples of Bowie fans doing this, alongside Bowie participating in this aspect of fan culture.
As well as saving badges sold as official merchandise, he also collected badges as mementos. This includes a badge from the 17th Annual Grammy Awards Ceremony in 1975. David Bowie had presented the award for ‘Best Rhythm and Blues Performance by a female artist’ to Aretha Franklin at the ceremony. Finally, in the Lazarus (DBA/4/1/36) project file, amongst scripts, tickets, and Bowie’s rehearsal notes, is a small rocket pin badge that David Bowie gifted to each member of the cast and crew on the opening of the production. It was a token of appreciation and recognition of their hard work, but also a significant piece of memorabilia that has become part of the story of Lazarus.
The catalogue for paper-based material in the David Bowie Archive includes sketches, writings, lyrics, press cuttings, books, and photographic prints. The catalogue is structured thematically, and you can find brief descriptions of the content you will find in each file. Visitors can explore the collection in person by scheduling advance appointments with the Archives team.
