There will also be talks exploring Aladdin Sane, Bowie, and his cultural significance. The National Poetry Library presents Aladdin Sound with ten of the UK’s most exciting poets in the Centre’s Purcell Room on 21 April.

The day’s talks will close with writers Paul Burston and Golnoosh Nour on the cultural impact of Bowie’s androgyny and his playful subversion of gender identity. My father’s image of Bowie is often called the Mona Lisa of Pop. It’s important to remember it was the result of a short studio shoot using film, which then had to be sent out for commercial processing. There were no instant digital images or photoshop then. It’s extraordinary how it’s lasted and been endlessly reworked. Wherever I go in the world, it’s always somewhere on a t-shirt. Chris Duffy, Chris refers to the cover as "the Mona Lisa of Pop", and it remains Bowie’s most recognisable album sleeve. It also provided him with a brand logo in the form of the flash but it’s the small teardrop on Bowie's shoulder that adds a further uncanny quality.

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His son Chris explains: “Duffy’s father was from Athlone and his mother from Mayo. They moved to London, and while he was conceived in Ireland, he was born in London.” From Ziggy to Thin White Duke, to the Lodger, Scary Monsters. So he fundamentally understood the power and importance of image.”

Bowie, morphing from Ziggy Stardust, his previous persona, to Aladdin Sane, insisted on a lightning flash. “The image asks more questions than it answers: many dissertations have been written about its meaning,” Duffy said. “Bowie was very clever at putting something out there, and letting everyone else come up with some kind of theory on it.” Featuring a two-month long exhibition (6 April – 28 May) as well as a stellar line-up of live music and talks inspired by the album (21 & 22 April) The Southbank Centre Archive will also present a separate free display exploring David Bowie’s history with the Centre, stretching over 50 years, and his ongoing legacy. From his performance in the recently opened Purcell Room in 1969, to later performances alongside Lou Reed and his curation of Southbank Centre’s annual contemporary music festival, Meltdown, never before seen archival material will be available for public view. Photographer Chris Duffy calls the image “the Mona Lisa of pop”. It was shot by his father, Brian Duffy, a renowned celebrity photographer who died in 2010. Bowie and Brian Duffy enjoyed a fruitful creative partnership: Aladdin Sane was the first of three album covers they shot together.It was actually Brian Duffy’s suggestion to change the album title from A Lad Insane – a reference to Bowie’s half-brother, who was schizophrenic, as well as Bowie’s state of mind – to Aladdin Sane. Duffy also changed the lightning flash – inspired by Elvis’ Taking Care of Business logo – from anchor tattoo-sized to full face makeup. Ziggy is quite polite in a way,” says Bobby Gillespie, frontman with Primal Scream. “Whereas Aladdin Sane, the band are hot from touring. It has that raw live energy. It’s definitely a more druggie sound, more of a decadent atmosphere, it’s more ragged and a bit sloppier. It’s in your f***ing face. And all the better for it.” The cover had a profound effect on many who saw it. Gillespie was at primary school in Glasgow when a friend brought the album into class. “The first thing was the image, this creature of indeterminate sex. It’s very powerful stuff for an 11-year-old to be… I’m not gonna say ‘exposed to’, because that makes it sound seedy. But to be presented with. I thought it was attractive, but not in a sexual way. More just – I’d never seen anything like this before. It messed around with the idea of what a man could and should be. It was revolutionary”. He later had the opportunity to photograph Bowie alongside his father in 1980 for his 14th studio album Scary Monsters. Another significant player he brought on board was David Sanborn who added tenor sax to a new version of ‘The Prettiest Star’, released as a single three years earlier with Marc Bolan on guitar. Bowie was already looking ahead. “David would sit listening to Aretha Franklin,” says Garson of their time travelling across America in 1972. “He was thinking of Young Americans; he jumped a couple of albums.”

Chris Duffy first met the Starman musician in 1973 when he was recording Aladdin Sane in London as his father was working with Bowie at the time. It’s a work that continues to inspire today’s contemporary artists and the gender fluidity of the images still resonate deeply in queer culture in the UK and across the world.” It’s been suggested Lear, amongst others, was the inspiration for ‘Lady Grinning Soul’. “It almost has a French influence. David was also reading a lot of French philosophy at the time,” adds Underwood. “It also sounds to me like it could be Berlin at a burlesque club after the war.” We’re honoured to pay tribute to David Bowie, who made his Southbank Centre debut in 1969. The Aladdin Sane album cover portrait is considered to be one of the most influential pop culture images of the past half century, and the music remains fresh and contemporary, so we wanted to recognise this major anniversary and reflect on the album and its artwork’s enduring legacy. It’s a work that continues to inspire today’s contemporary artists and the gender fluidity of the images still resonate deeply in queer culture in the UK and across the world. On the Aladdin Sane celebrations, Southbank Centre Artistic Director Mark Ball It confused people,” Cann says. “And I can understand that. But if you’re a Bowie fan and understand what was going on, you know that it was completely different.”

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Duffy’s image became “the Mona Lisa of pop”, according to his son, who curated the exhibition at the Southbank Centre in central London and has written a book, Aladdin Sane 50: The definitive celebration of Bowie’s most iconic album and music’s most famous photograph. It's a spine-tingling moment when Garson begins to play some of the tune’s higher notes over Zoom to illustrate the influence of French composer Claude Debussy. “There’s a lot of classical influences,” he explains. “Chopin, Franz Liszt, there’s some Rachmaninov mixed with my voice adding some jazz chords.” On14th April, 2023,one week before its Golden JubileeALADDINSANEwill be issued as alimited edition 50th anniversary picture disc LP pressed from the samemaster. I think that was Duffy putting his Daliesque abstract stamp on it, the image would still look striking without it but the watermark makes it even more mysterious. It could be a teardrop, it could be a mercury water droplet, and its shape is also quite phallic. David didn’t know about that until afterwards, Duffy just put it on there.”

Bowie describedALADDIN SANEas ‘Ziggy Goes To Washington: Ziggy under the influence of America’. The album was to be Ziggy Stardust's last stand, and the persona was laid to rest three months after the album's release in July 1973 at the infamous final showwith theSpidersFromMarsat London’s Hammersmith Odeon. It was in this rather surreal atmosphere that Bowie wrote his sixth album Aladdin Sane, currently celebrating its 50th anniversary with a remastered reissue and Aladdin Sane: 50 Years event season at London’s Southbank Centre, including a tribute concert featuring Scissor Sisters’ Jake Shears, Anna Calvi and Roxanne Tataei. The exhibition, which is based in the Spirit Level at the Royal Festival Hall, will explore this idea of how Bowie continuously reinvented his image throughout his career and inspired his fans to do the same. Bowie, one of the most influential and revered musicians of the 20th century, died with liver cancer on January 10 2016, two days after his 69th birthday.Aladdin Sane perhaps more than any other Bowie album achieved that aim. One of Garson’s abiding memories is perpetually-exploding speakers. “Our recordings were being blasted out and every night. The speakers would blow out and they would have to replace it. God knows what it was costing.” The two-month long exhibition runs from 6 April-28 May and explores the creation of the album’s artwork. A line-up of live music and talks inspired by the Bowie’s sixth record is also booked. It will also look at the music scene of the early 1970s, when Bowie and Brian Duffy first met, and go on to chart the relationship that developed between the musician and photographer.