“Memo for radio show - list of favourite records": Jeff Beck, Roxy Music and Miles Davis all make the list of David Bowie’s 15 favourite tracks

The David Bowie Centre at the V&A East Storehouse opens on Saturday and among the treasure trove of Bowie-related items that have been unearthed to go into the archive is a list of his favourite songs.

It’s a simple note that says: “Memo for radio show - list of favourite records,” and proceeds to list 15 tracks. Some of those are by names that we’ve long known are Bowie influences - Scott Walker and his brothers are in there, as is The Legendary Stardust Cowboy, an eccentric '60s performer who was a huge influence on the creation of Ziggy Stardust.

The Beatles’ Across The Universe is on the list, which of course Bowie covered on Young Americans. His contemporaries Roxy Music make an appearance with Mother Of Pearl. His love of jazz is represented by Miles Davis and Charles Mingus and classical (because every castaway on Desert Island Discs always picks at least one classical track) by Ralph Vaughan Williams and Richard Strauss.

It’s often forgotten that Bowie was part of the generation of Britons whose world was changed forever by the arrival of rock n’ roll to these shores and old school rock is represented by Little Richard and Alan Freed and His Rock N’ Roll Band.

The full list is as follows:

• Ralph Vaughan Williams – Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
• Richard Strauss – Four Last Songs
• Alan Freed and His Rock N’ Roll Band – Right Now Right Now
• Little Richard – True Fine Mama
• The Hollywood Argyles – Sho Know A Lot About Love
• Miles Davis – Some Day My Prince Will Come
• Charles Mingus – Ecclusiastics
• Jeff Beck – Beck’s Bolero
• Legendary Stardust Cowboy – I Took A Trip On A Gemini Spaceship
• The Beatles – Across The Universe
• Ronnie Spector – Try Some Buy Some
• Roxy Music – Mother Of Pearl
• Edgar Froese – Epsilon in Malaysian Pale
• The Walker Brothers – The Electrician
• Sonic Youth – Tom Violence

Among the other odds and ends discovered in the archive are a list of ‘ins’ and ‘outs’ written in 1995 that spoofs the similar lists style mags such as The Face used to run. Among the ‘ins’ are ‘chaos surfing’, ‘no tidy endings’, ‘ennui’ and ‘David Bowie’ and the ‘outs’ are ‘post modernism’, ‘religion’, ‘irony’ and (ha ha) ‘David Bowie’.

They are among 90,000 items at the Centre that trace Bowie’s “creative processes as a musical innovator, cultural icon, and advocate for self-expression and reinvention.” Has to be worth a visit for any self-respecting Bowiephile, you’d think.

Find out more on the V&A website.