Ziggy Stardust

It's mid 1972 and David Bowie's been doing some low-key gigs, trying out material from a new album about to be released, the (almost) rock'n'roll Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars, which RCA, his record company, are getting excited about.

David Bowie: Ziggy Stardust

The singalong Starman single is released and starts to receive encouraging chart action and most importantly, sales to teenagers.

David Bowie: Starman

"...There's a starman waiting in the sky, he'd like to come and meet him but he thinks he'd blow our minds..."

Following the famous "dress cover" on The Man Who Sold The World and its openly gay, erotic Width Of A Circle track, then Hunky Dory's gay tracks, Life On Mars & Queen Bitch, Bowie gets the gay-permeated music biz buzz-buzz-buzzing when he announces in an interview: "I'm bisexual".

Bam!

It's hard to understand the furore that Bowie created by "admitting" that preference in the early 1970s. What would be tittilating now, was scandalous then, but with the pop media controlled by/open to to gays, Ziggy Stardust opens to ecstatic reviews and widely distributed publicity shots of Bowie going down on guitarist Mick Ronson's axe during the song Width Of A Circle during his gigs. Incidentally, Mick Rock, Bowie's official photographer (and music-video maker)captured the whole Ziggy experience in his photo-book, Moonage Daydream...

"...Moonage Daydream is the perfect book for any fan of David Bowie...or any fan of rock and the rock n' roll supergods..." Amazon reviewer Susan Fensten

"...this is a fabulous book for Ziggy-lovers. David is simply stunning in his satin, tat, mascara and rouge, and you'd be a fool to pass by such beauty..." Amazon reviewer Fraggle

So, how does Ziggy Stardust stand up these days?

Well, reasonably well.  Stripped of its gay and spaceman trappings, Ziggy is a surprisingly middle-of-the-road, rock'n'roll album probably the least experimental major work of Bowie's long and varied career. It's a vague concept album, taking place in a pre-apocalyptic world that has only five years left. The setter for this is the still rather powerful Five Years:

"...Pushing through the marketplace, so many mothers sighing. News had just come over, we had five years left to cry in. News guy wept and told us Earth was really dying, cried so much that his face was wet, then I knew he was not lying...We've got 5 years, that's all we've got. Five years..."

After that it all gets kind of vague in terms of a plot but the spaceman appears on Earth, becoming a bisexual rock star, who somehow soothes the hearts and souls of his fans.

The story unfolds through the eyes of:

• passers-by (?) 

Soul Love "...Soul Love, she kneels before the grave. A brave son who gave his life to save the slogan that hovers between the headstone and her eyes for they penetrate her grieving..."

• Ziggy's fans

Star "...I could make it all worthwhile as a rock'n'roll star...just watch me now..."

Ziggy Stardust   "... Ziggy played guitar, jamming good with Weird and Gilly and The Spiders From Mars. he played it left hand but made it too far, became the special man, then we were Ziggy's band. Ziggy really sang, screwed up eyes and screwed down hairdo, like some cat from Japan, he could lick 'em by smiling, he could leave 'em to hang, came on so loaded man, well hung and snow white tan..."

Lady Stardust   "...People stared at the makeup on his face, laughed at his long black hair, his animal grace. The boy in the bright blue jeans jumped up on the stage and Lady Stardust sang his songs of darkness and disgrace..."

• his groupies  

Suffragette City   "...Well, she's a total blam-blam, she said she had to squeeze it...but she...and then she..."

• his band

Hang Onto Yourself "...We don't dance, we don't talk much, we just ball and play but we move like tigers on Vaseline. Well the bitter comes out better on a stolen guitar, you're the blessed, we're The Spiders From Mars..."

• and to a certain extent, Ziggy's himself

Moonage Daydream "...I'm a space invader, I'll be a rock'n'rollin bitch for you...keep your 'lectric eye on me, babe, put your ray-gun to my head, put your space-face close to mine, love, freak out in a moonage daydream..."

...but eventualy kills himself on stage (I think) during the album's closer,

Rock'n'Roll Suicide

"...Time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth. You pull on your finger, then another finger, then your cigarette. The wall-to-wall is calling, it lingers, then you forget. Ohhh! youre a rock'n'roll suicide..."

However, by having so many people tell the story and with all the songs sung by Bowie, there's little dramatic focus, so the narrative is very, very vague. However, Ziggy Stardust made David Bowie a household name around the world...but other than building hype through astute manipulation of the pop mafia, I'm not quite sure how that happened, because the songs on Ziggy, while all good, just aren't that distinctive. Mind you, if you visit the wikipedia link below, you'll find that many critics disagree with me, and consider it one of the great rock albums.  I find Ziggy interesting, yes, playful, yes, but one of the greatest ever, no.

Nevertheless, at the age of 14, I remember the Ziggy David Bowie as being exotic, exciting and just about the most interesting person in the universe...other than that minx from a couple of years below me at school, spunk-rat Joanne McLelland, (who now looks like a withered, bitter old prune). "Oh yes, he was alright, really quite outta-sight..."

David Bowie: The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust

"...It was a cold February evening in South London in 1972. I was a skinny 19-year-old, employed by my grandfather to collect the empties in his jazz and blues club. I had a call to deliver drinks backstage to the band. On arrival with a tray of brown ale, I was met by a bloke in army combats and wrestling boots. "Thanks mate." he said, taking the tray. I did my usual "Any chance of an autograph?" and offered him a slightly soggy beer-mat and biro. He obliged, signing 'Rock on, Ziggy Stardust'. I thought his name was David something. No matter.

The band took to the stage and played most of the Ziggy album to a crowd of around 50 youths, who witnessed the first ever public performance of Bowie as Ziggy. I think we all went out and bought the album. In the thirty-plus years since, the hairs go up on the back of my neck every time I hear Mick's opening riff.

If you don't have this album, buy it now. It stands as the pinnacle of glam-rock, and launched thousands of imitators (my brother and I included, for a short while). That autographed beer-mat? I threw it away a few months later - bit of a shame, in retrospect..." Amazon.co.uk A. Stevens reviewer

"...This is a perfect album...on par with Dark Side of the Moon, Led Zeppelin II or any other great album from the era..." Amazon reviewer Scott B. Saul

"...It was a toss up. Rod Stewert & The Faces or David Bowie. The Faces tickets were 15 bob...75p. Bowie tickets were 12/6d..about 62p. The financial hardships of youth won. Bowie it was.

Liverpool Stadium was a vast cavernous boxing stadium with the ring/stage in the cente. Holding about 5000 the 200 or so who turned up to hear acoustic pop/folk artist David -Space Oddity-Bowie were in for a big suprise. Sitting at the front of the second tier, Angie and I had a lovers tiff. She stormed out with a long haired RAF great-coated young trog in her wake. In the empty foyer I attempted to pour oil on troubled waters. The audience now tired of Bowie's prima donna-esque failure to appear on time were starting to slow hand clap.

As we struggled to mend our communication breakdown within this echoing cold space, four creatures from another planet materialised. Bowie, Ronson, Woodmansey and Bolder...The Spiders from Mars bounced down the stairs from their dressing room in the gods. I stared open mouthed at Bowie...Bowie looked curiously at me...as did his fellow spiders...and they disappeared into the bowels of Liverpool Stadium. Without a word we positively ran back into the stadium and proceeded to watch the best LIVE concert I've ever seen !

The album is one of the few...that I would grace with five stars. Absolutely perfect. The seamless quality of the compositions and the sharp, raw production...is just what rock & roll is all about!..."  Amazon.co.uk A. Stevens reviewer Arthur Dooley 

Ziggy Stardust T-shirt

Bowie At The Beeb is a remastered collection of LIVE performances during the years 1969-1972, containing LIVE versions of the following tracks from Ziggy Stardust:

• It Ain't Easy
• Hang On To Yourself (2 different performances)
• Ziggy Stardust (2 different performances)
• Five Years
• Moonage Daydream
• Suffragette City
• Starman
• Lady Stardust &
• Rock'n'Roll Suicide

David Bowie: Bowie At The Beeb

"...The first CD could be a symphony of flatus and I'd still give this 5 stars for the nearly immaculate performances on the second disk. In particular, Hang Onto Yourself, White Light/White Heat, and Suffregette City, featuring Mick Ronson making this totally hot kissing noise with his guitar, crackle with energy. It is truly a thrill to hear these old favorites in such a new...and exciting light. Bowie and Co. burn down the BBC studios, repeatedly. Any rock fan (but especially an old Bowie fan, of course) is likely to meltdown in ecstasy upon hearing this..." Amazon.com reviewer Rich Latta

A few months after Ziggy came out (should that be 'was released'?), Bowie released the single John I'm Only Dancing.

Like most Bowiephiles I bought it but I have to admit, it's fairly lacklustre as a song but the subject matter is a little interesting. Seemingly it's about about gayboy #1 reassuring gayboy #2 that he (#1) isn't trying to bed the girl that he's dancing with.

The single was banned in the USA and is now best remembered by Bowie-ologists for the different mixes and re-recordings that have been floating round for years.

A completely different version of John I'm Only Dancing was recorded in 1974 at the Young Americans sessions in Philadelphia but was dropped from the album when the New York sessions with John Lennon yielded Fame & Across The Universe. 

However, that version of John I'm Only Dancing was released a few years later as a single in some parts of the world and is now on Young Americans as a bonus track.

Incidentally, the cover-shot for the single is a still from the single is from David Bowie's movie acting debut, the cult film, The Man Who Fell To Earth. 

For more info, see:

• wikipedia Ziggy Stardust
• David Bowie LIVE Five Years, 1976
• photographer Masayoshi Sakita's Ziggy photo gallery 

A small but integral  part of the Ziggy story included Bowie's wife Angela and their much-discussed marriage, given Bowie's professed bisexuality. Angela's book, Backstage Passes, doesn't let you forget that she played her part, too.

Angela Bowie: Backstage Passes

"...they married (he proposed by asking if she could deal with the fact that "I don't love you"?) into an open, bisexual union. A child, several albums and a drug addiction later, they split..." Amazon reviewer E.A. Solinas

For more info, see:

• comprehensive Angie Bowie interview, talking about her marriage to Bowie, Ziggy, Aladdin Sane etc.
• Gay News' Bowie's Gay Rock article, 1972
• typically fawning Bowie article of the time from Let It Rock, 1972
• The New York Sunday News' with a shockingly accurate prediction of Rock'n'Roll merchandising from hearing David Bowie's commercialisation plans
• Rolling Stone, 1974, Bowie & author William Burroughs discuss Bowie's future (eventually stillborn) plans for Ziggy