David Bowie’s Lazarus Originally Involved Fake Bob Dylan Songs Written by Bowie

David Bowie’s Lazarus was not always a musical based around his 1976 album The Man Who Fell to Earth. In a new piece for GQ, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Michael Cunningham has revealed that he and Bowie collaborated on a musical that featured an alien, poet Emma Lazarus, and a mariachi band. According to Cunningham, Bowie also envisioned that the plot of the musical would revolve around “a stockpile of unknown, unrecorded Bob Dylan songs, which had been discovered after Dylan died,” which would be written by Bowie himself.

Work on the musical was shelved after Bowie suffered a heart attack and underwent surgery in 2004. Years later, Cunningham would see Lazarus in its final form on its opening night. “The Lazarus at New York Theatre Workshop resembled David’s and my musical only in that it centered on an alien,” he said. He goes on to imply that the title of the play stems from Emma Lazarus’ name: “It wasn’t quite clear, at least not from the production, where the title Lazarus had come from, or anyway, not clear to anyone but me.”

Comments are closed.