'David Bowie was my best friend - he gave me a priceless gift'

He was the man who fell to Earth - and inspired generations of future shape-shifting music stars, from Madonna to Lady Gaga.

But David Bowie’s other-worldly creativity, and ability to constantly reinvent his image, style and music, left just as indelible an imprint on the world of fashion, art and culture, too.

It’s the reason why the singer, who died in 2016 aged 69, is being honoured with a permanent gallery at London’s V&A (Victoria and Albert Museum), which opens in September.

The new David Bowie Centre, at the museum’s V&A East Storehouse location, will house over 90,000 items relating to Bowie’s life and works, including his costumes, sketches, paintings, writings and set lists.

We got a sneak peak at some of the exhibits, offering fans fascinating insights into the mind of rock’s enduring enigma. They include Bowie’s paint palette covered in the last colours he used, the asymmetric knitted catsuit he wore as Ziggy Stardust and the lyrics he cut up and mixed up to write his 1977 song ‘Blackout’

Bowie’s lifelong friend Geoff MacCormack says the new permanent gallery shows just how much of a legacy the Space Oddity star left.

In an exclusive interview, Geoff, who was also Bowie’s backing singer and percussionist, says: “David became a fashion icon. His whole show was about what he was wearing and his different personas. He was very clever at constantly changing himself.”

And he said that during the years he spent touring the world with Bowie gave him something that allowed him to emulate his success - bravery. He says: "David made people braver. He encouraged people to do their thing without fear, including me. He instilled his bravery into others, and today we see what a incredible legacy he left.”

But Geoff, who went to Burnt Ash Primary School in Bromley, Kent, with Bowie says it wasn’t immediately obvious that he would leave such an impression on the world.

He recalls: “Our friendship was based on the appreciation of music and humour. We used to listen to Radio Luxembourg together, but he’d also get a lot of the latest records because his dad worked for the Dr Barnardo’s charity organising fundraising shows.

“David’s dad bought him a little record player, and he was the only kid I knew who had one. I remember listening to rock’n’roll, and seeing his eyes open wide. We were born just after the war, we still had ration books and there were bomb sites all over the place, so it was a pretty grey world until that music hit us.

“He was fascinated by the stuff coming over from America, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Screaming’ Jay Hawkins, it was just like alien music, slightly disturbing but in a cool way. We were at the birth of rock’n’roll and it felt like a whole new world.”

READ MORE: Back to the Future cast today - from disease tragedy to five marriages

“He was definitely different. He was into reading some really quirky stuff, especially American magazines. I remember one time him telling me a story he was reading, about two wrestlers who had fought to the death, really gory stuff with eyes being gouged out and stuff.

“I remember the more wide-eyed I was the more he got into performing this recital for me. We were only about eight or nine.”

At that stage, Geoff says, his friend’s quirkiness didn’t extend to his dress sense. “David went to a different school to me. I was a Mod, so I was more into fashion, but David was more of a studious type,” he says.

“I think it was once he started doing well and had a personal tailor, Freddie Burretti, that he started experimenting with his clothes. Freddie lived in the basement of 89 Oakley St, where David also rented a flat, and he used to just walk down and try on his new creations.

“The same way David pushed boundaries and challenged conventions in music, he did with his costumes, performances, stage sets, everything.”

Geoff, whose book, David Bowie: Rock ’n’ Roll with Me, charts their friendship through candid photographs, recognises many of the items that will be displayed at the V&A. He contributed backing vocals to a number of Bowie’s albums and spent three years touring the world with him.

During their time together in America, when Bowie was filming The Man Who Fell to Earth, the star took up painting. One of the works on show at the V&A will be a self-portrait of the singer.

Geoff says: “We lived in a ranch in Santa Fe, and that’s the first time I saw him paint. The style was very similar to the self-portrait. But he didn’t always like what he did. David was very confident about his music, but not particularly so about his paintings. But he still kept them, whether or not he liked them.”

Another fascinating item at the V&A is an example of Bowie’s ‘cut up’ technique in his songwriting, inspired by his contemporary William Burroughs. He took existing text, cut it into pieces and rearranged them to create new lyrics and meaning.

Geoff recalls: “The first time I saw him do it was for Diamond Dogs, at the Olympic Studios in Barnes, London. William Burroughs actually turned up in the studio while he was doing it.

“It was incredible to see. He was able to give what he was writing about a slight swerve. A cut up sentence becomes more interesting, taking you somewhere else, by chance, rather than by choice.”

Geoff was also with Bowie when he departed from his glam rock style and recorded the soul album Young Americans - with backing vocals from Ava Cherry and the then-unknown singer Luther Vandross.

He remembers: “We were in the middle of the Diamond Dogs tour in 1974, and I was one of the Diamond Dogs, who’d mime and dance. It was a brilliant show, with a huge set built to look like a city, and loads of moving parts including a moving bridge.

“We both loved soul music, and David decided to do a soul album. But he wasn’t very patient. If he was into something he’d get on with it, even at the expense of ditching an amazing and very expensive theatrical show. So that’s what he did.”

Bowie abandoned Diamond Dogs, took the month of August 1974 off to record the new album, then re-branded the tour ‘The Soul Tour’.

Geoff’s fondest memory of his time with Bowie is an adventure of a lifetime when he joined him on a world tour, following the release of Ziggy Stardust.

Because of Bowie’s phobia of flying, that meant sailing from the US to Japan and taking the Trans-Siberian Express train across China and Russia back to the UK.

He recalls: “It was great for me, I was travelling with him and hanging out with him on their long journeys.

“At the time, his management wanted him to look like a star, before he was a star, so he would do stuff on a grand scale. So we’d stay in grand hotels, go first class on the ships, he was living beyond his means but it was an incredible time.”

After finishing his US tour, Bowie and his entourage needed to reach Japan for the next leg. Geoff says: “The only way was to get a boat from LA. We stopped off at San Fransisco and went out with Bet Midler. Then onto Vancouver and Hawaii.

“When we got to Japan, we hung out with Kansai Yamamoto, the designer who David had found years before and was already using his clothes. He had some new costumes for him, which he wore on the Japanese tour, and then the British tour later that year.”

One of the designs was the famous one-legged, zig-zagged jumpsuit which visitors will be able to see at the new exhibition.

Geoff says their spell in Japan, and the long train journey back, inspired Bowie’s future creations. He says: “Everything we saw and listened to crept into his music at some stage.

“Japan in 1973 was a very alien society, really weird. Coming from there, getting a boat to Siberia, another completely alien experience, then the Trans Siberian through Siberia, China, Russia.

“Then East Germany, which was really unfriendly because the guards boarded the train and they were kicking in doors. What we saw on those trips definitely gave him ideas.”

Geoff was also on stage with Bowie when he dramatically announced Ziggy Stardust’s “retirement” at London’s Hammersmith Odeon in July 1973. Bowie went on to achieve his first US No1 with Fame, then won new fans in the 80s with hits like Let’s Dance and Under Pressure, with Queen.

Geoff, now 78, went on to set up his own hugly successful advertising production company, which he says was also inspired by David Bowie.

He says: “I’d never done it before, but David was always saying just do stuff. He threw me in the deep end. I wouldn’t have done it if it were not for him. Like with so many other people, he made me braver."