build an entire center dedicated to him,” Haddon said. “By the end, they were convinced.”
Some of the items are iconic, others delightfully mundane. There’s the key to the Berlin apartment Bowie shared with Iggy Pop in the 1970s, and his Rarotonga driver’s license from a period filming the 1983 movie “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence” on the South Pacific island.
Bowie also kept many items sent to him by fans, including drawings, paintings and a handmade music box.
Almost a decade after his death, Bowie is a musical icon whose influence on popular culture endures. But it wasn’t always that way.
The archive includes a letter written by Bowie’s father, Haywood Stenton Jones, trying to get teenage David, then a struggling musician, a job with a London company. His son was a hard worker and “a real trooper,” Jones stressed.
Next to it is displayed a brief rejection letter Bowie received from The Beatles’ record label in 1968.
“Apple Records is not interested in signing David Bowie,” it reads. “The reason is we don’t feel he’s what we’re looking for at the moment.”
