‘The Ziggy Stardust suit sparked my adolescent awakening’: Moby, Goldie, Natalie Merchant and more delve inside Bowie’s archives

As a huge new public collection opens this weekend, famous fans pick out their touchstones – from the game-changing wardrobe that gave birth to glam to the synthesiser that drove his Berlin years

• Alexis Petridis goes inside Bowie’s mind-boggling 90,000-item archive

Bowie was probably the most inspiring individual I’ve spent any time with. He came to my Blue Note club night in London a few times when it was very underground and he could be left alone. Then he’d come to the studio, where he’d sing through a haze of cigarette smoke like a gorilla in the mist, or I’d take him to see Dillinja in Brixton to hear drum’n’bass, or we’d spend time in his trailer on the Isle of Man set for the film Everybody Loves Sunshine and he’d sit there doing crochet. His thinking was that of an alchemist – he wanted to saturate himself in everything because he knew that inspiration could come from anywhere. He once said to me: “Golds, did you know Michelangelo said that when you blow the dust off a piece of marble, the sculpture’s there inside”? That thought stayed with me.