From 80s disco anthems to underground club classics, via Massive Attack, David Bowie, and Leigh Bowery’s own crew of close friends and creative collaborators.

In February, a new retrospective celebrating artist, provocateur, musician and club kid avant la lettre Leigh Bowery opened at Tate Modern.

A towering figure in every sense, Bowery was born in Melbourne and moved to London in 1980. Almost immediately he made his presence felt, reinventing himself as a kind of living work of art, pulling on threads from the worlds of fashion, drag culture and music. The latter – as you might expect from someone who came to prominence among the demi-monde and sticky floors of London’s gay clubs – was particularly important. A creative powerhouse generally untroubled by convention and boundaries, as his infamy grew, so did his creative vision: Bowery helmed club nights, started his own off-the-wall art-pop band, performed and designed costumes for dancer and choreographer Michael Clark, and even art directed a music video for trip-hop pioneers.

Here are ten tracks to pull you into his strange, influential world.

1

X-Ray Spex - 'Germ Free Adolescence'

1978

Poly Styrene, X-Ray Spex’s radical, confrontational frontwoman, was friends with Leigh Bowery and would attend his influential club night, Taboo. On the band’s 1978 single Germ Free Adolescence, Poly’s droll lyrics, “Rinse your mouth with Listerine / Blow disinfectant in her eyes,” and vivacious delivery march to a similar beat as Bowery’s in-your-face performances. The lyrics dissect a perverted obsession with cleanliness, which you could argue Bowery shared, given that he once gave himself an enema on stage.

2

David Bowie - 'Ashes to Ashes'

1980

In 1994, Minty, the art-pop band Leigh Bowery started with friends Richard Torry, Nicola Bateman and Matthew Glamorre, gave their first performance to an audience that included fashion designer Alexander McQueen and artist Lucian Freud. The band covered David Bowie’s Ashes to Ashes alongside their own experimental originals. The bizarro performance and mind-boggling costumes would have tickled even the farthest-out reaches of Bowie’s imagination. 

3

Lime - 'Your Love'

1981

Your Love is an 80s dance anthem by married Canadian couple, Denis and Denyse, that embedded itself in the decade’s club scene. Opening with laser-strafing synthesisers and clapping to the beat, it soon launches itself, full throttle, into soaring, gay disco heaven. It gives a flavour of the frenetic singles spun by Taboo DJs like Princess Julia, Jeffrey Hinton and Rachel Auburn to keep the dancefloor moving till sun up. 

4

Patrick Cowley feat. Sylvester - 'Do You Wanna Funk?'

1982

Patrick Cowley was a disco pioneer who helped define the propulsive Hi-NRG genre that proliferated at gay clubs in the 80s. Do You Wanna Funk? is a collaboration with his pal and androgynous disco singer Sylvester, who lends his stratospheric falsetto to the track’s twinkling synths and insistent machine beat. Lyrically playful and risque, the song’s ascendant energy bottles up the blissed out atmosphere of the legendary gay club nights Leigh Bowery and his crew presided over.

5

Lana Pellay - 'Pistol in My Pocket'

1986

A bold, innuendo-laced disco delight, Pistol in My Pocket was another Hi-NRG club classic. The singer, Lana Pellay, cut her teeth as a drag queen performing in working men’s clubs across northern England before dabbling in post-punk bands, moving to London, coming out as trans and cementing her reputation as a disco diva in the city’s gay club scene. Leigh Bowery would make her costumes and featured in the music video for Pistol in My Pocket.

6

The Fall - 'New Big Prinz'

1988

In 1988, Leigh Bowery designed the outlandish costumes for Michael Clark’s disorienting post-punk ballet, I Am Curious Orange, soundtracked by The Fall. Instead of tutus, the dancers were dressed as citrus fruits or draped in sequin tops, technicolour tights, embellished bolero jackets and aqua-blue headpieces. It wasn’t the only time Bowery worked with The Fall’s Mark E. Smith – he also appeared in the cantankerous but visionary frontman’s 1986 play, Hey! Luciani: The Life and Codex of John Paul I.

7

Divine - 'Shoot Your Shot'

1984

Drag queen, performer and filmmaker John Waters’ iconic muse, Divine, became a disco diva fixture on the gay club scene after joining forces with Hi-NRG innovator Bobby Orlando in 1982. Orlando wrote a number of Divine’s singles, including Shoot Your Shot – a glitter-blast of driving new wave synths and rolling basslines, which sets camp, repetitive lyrics to a marching, early New Order-style beat. 

8

Minty - 'Useless Man'

1994

The Minty art-pop project continued after Bowery’s death, with the band including this outrageous single describing a “spunk-loving, ball-busting, cock-sucking, fist-fucking useless man” on their 1997 album Open Wide. The chaotic, collage-style music video animates a 1994 black-and-white photograph of Bowery with fabric covering his face and exaggerated makeup painted over the top. The track has been remixed for the club time and time again. 

9

Massive Attack - 'Unfinished Sympathy'

1991

In 1991, Leigh Bowery art directed the music video for Massive Attack’s Unfinished Sympathy, shot on the sunny streets of West Pico Boulevard in Downtown LA. According to the band, Bowery “tried to dress down and go low-key” by showing up in a “massive parka, a mad pudding-basin wig, big Stone Roses baggies and dripping with sweat”.

10

ANOHNI and the Johnsons - 'Hope There’s Someone'

2005

Leigh Bowery’s vivid legacy has left its mark across generations of artists and musicians. ANOHNI, for one, has cited his fearless work and expression as an inspiration. While her soulful, reflective compositions might seem poles apart from the frenetic disco beats and outré fits of Bowery’s world, he helped pave the way for her deeply personal, theatrical and politically charged oeuvre. 

Leigh Bowery! runs until 31 August at Tate Modern

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