David Bowie's handwritten lyrics for Rock n' Roll Suicide and Suffragette City sell at auction for £89k

28 November 2023, 20:04

By Jasmine Moody

David Bowie's handwritten lyrics for two of his songs, which both feature in The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust, have sold for £89,000 at auction.

The double sided lyric sheet contains the singer's drafts, notes and corrections for his songs Rock n' Roll Suicide and Suffragette City.

Omega Auctions, based in Uxbridge, west London, predicted the page could sell for between £50,000 and £100,000.

Both songs were featured in Mr Bowie's 1972 The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

The sheet accompanying the page stated that it was handed to the original owner by Mr Bowie at Trident Studio, with some other pages of original lyrics.

However, some did not survive.

Previously, the auction house sold another of the singer's sheets, containing David Bowie's handwritten lyrics for Starman, which was sold for £203,000.

In 2021, another of the singer's lyric sheets sold for £57,000 at auction and contained handwritten lyrics for Jean Genie.

David Bowie, whose hugely successful career spanned five decades, died aged 69 in 2016.