Welcome, then, to this month’s edition of Random Bowie. A series that, look you see, is getting somewhat less random. But more on that in a bit. The title gives the game away, really – for this month I have very specifically selected The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars.
If we can all agree that this is the full and correct name for the record, can we all please agree that for the rest of this post it shall be referenced to as Ziggy Stardust. Please? That’s how it commonly gets referred to, and doing so here will save on typing or some smart copy and past action.
Before we start proper it would, I feel, be proper to say a warm hello and welcome to the people who have commented on past posts and those who have gone so far as to share links to these episodes on Bowie fan groups. When I started these I was worried that justice would not be done to the music. It really does mean so very much to me that so many of you are enjoying the reading. Let me not let you down here.
Quick fire fantastic facts to start off with? Certainly. By the common agreed standard of measuring them this was album number five by David Bowie. Not long after its release in 1972 it became the record which changed David Bowie’s stature from respected musician to big, big star. In referencing a comment from the Hunky Dory episode of Random Bowie, before this record Bowie was occasionally stopped in the street by an admirer to get compliments on his music. After this it was more huddled masses of mobs screaming and wanting to touch him.
I have an ambitious idea for this post. It might be that I should not state that, but bear with me – let’s see if this works out together.
And it was cold, and it rained, so I felt like an actor
Why have I specifically chosen October to do Ziggy? Because, at least for us here living in England, it just feels like an October record. True, this could be subliminal, what with the infamous final Ziggy Stardust concert proper being held (and recorded, but more of that later) in October. I would like to think it is something more.
Do you ever get the sense that some albums suit a specific time of year? For me Ziggy Stardust always sounded best in October. Summer has faded. Dark nights creep in. The air turns crisp (hello, Faye) and cold. Drizzle progressing to rain makes everything feel damp and drab. The feel and the vibe of this album has always given a sense, if you like a vibe, of being submerged in this, yet also sounds as though it so desperately rallies against it. Well, that’s my reaction, at the least.
I am, however, keen to stress that this record sounds particularly excellent at any time of the year. Especially when, as instructed on the back of some editions, it is played at maximum volume.
Inspirations have I none
A quite commonly convenient statement made is that David Bowie “basically” created glam rock with Ziggy Stardust. It is a great disservice to do so. Whilst the roots of glam rock are open to healthy conversation and a wonderful exploration of music that influenced it, the likes of Marc Bolan and The Sweet were charting with the distinct glam sound (and look, of course) about a year or so before Ziggy took to the stage.
That said, the convenient statement is of some truth. It would take some doing – or perhaps some flippant laziness – to argue against the fact that Bowie, with Ziggy Stardust, shaped and influenced glam rock. The look, feel, style and sound of glam rock after the release of the album seems woven from the threads Bowie spun.
Bowie’s place in glam rock? Let’s break it down. Credit for the start of the movement “proper” in the charts to Marc Bolan, T Rex and The Sweet. On that note, Marc Bolan was the poster boy, and I mean that in a positive way loaded with respect. Early Roxy Music gave glam a sense of sophistication and class. He might be virtually airbrushed from history now, and I don’t disagree with the reasons for this, but at the time a certain Gary Glitter was the undisputed megastar of glam.
What Bowie was to glam was different. Something bigger, better, more important maybe. He became its icon. The Ziggy Stardust look is the iconic appearance which defines glam rock. To see what I mean, skip forward about (not an intended time but happy accident) five years from the release of Ziggy Stardust. By no means were they the first punk band and it’s debatable if they were the best, but the Sex Pistols are undeniably the iconic band of punk.
And I’m busting up my brains for the words
So is Ziggy Stardust a rock opera? I’ve heard it called this from time to time, but no. As iconic as the record is in terms of glam rock, it’s also, for me, the personification of what a concept album truly is.
A rock opera, to me, would be Tommy by The Who. A linear, clear cut storyline with musicians playing a part. The concept album, to me, is the artists being submerged in the parts, not so much telling a story as living it. Reference points would be Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles, Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys and, to an extent, The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society by, well, The Kinks.
In previous episodes I’ve looked at how Bowie seemed keen to engage in subversion as and when he could. His most favourite thing to subvert was himself. A look at the album cover tells you that this was at play here. Note how the names David Bowie and Ziggy Stardust are same font, same size and equal, except Ziggy has more letters in it. The only intention I can think of is that he wanted the audience to be distracted from thinking Bowie, and to hear this literally as his creation.
But then again there is a literal story across the record. Also a metaphorical one. For good measure an allegorical one too. The most important thing, though, and one of the aspects that makes the record so great, is the sensation of hearing it. Defining that doesn’t detract so you’re not wrong if you play it that way, I just don’t.
He knows it’s all worthwhile
The fancy “box” version of the album I got on CD in the early 90s came with a quite elaborate booklet. It contains many quote and other such snippets of comment from David Bowie. At no point does he (did he, so sadly sorry to say) shy away from saying how quite deliberately planned Ziggy Stardust was in terms of making him a big star. As nice as the critical praise he’d got thus far was, Bowie wanted fame and fortune. Ziggy Stardust was his shot at achieving that, and so very few shots have ever hit so hard.
No, there is nothing wrong with this. A trend amongst some music fans is to be horrified when favourite bands or singers do things for money. That’s why they do what they do. A struggling admired artist doesn’t magically live a rent free life.
At one point in the booklet Bowie is attributed as saying that Ziggy was, quite deliberately, “more plastic manufactured pop than The Monkees”. I think that’s a rather nice nod, since it was because of a member of that band he had to change his surname in the first instance. I wonder if that gave him the idea to change his name all together for some records?
Is it right, proper and apt to celebrate and acclaim a record which is confessed to be a deliberate attempt to make money. Yes, of course. The moment a penny changes hands a work becomes commercial. So be it if millions of pennies follow, it doesn’t diminish or for that matter add to the value of the art itself.
Whatever motivations drove him – art, music, money, sex, drugs, rock and roll, fame, fortune, more sex, more drugs, idolization, rock immortality – doesn’t really matter too much. He delivered a beautiful record, man. Fans fell in love with it and, to this day people are still discovering it and falling in love with it. Praise is heaped on it, it gets celebrated, it routinely has acres of appraisal written about it and can be assured of featuring in most “top 10 / 100 / 1000 albums of all time” lists.
My contribution to this praise? Other than this blog post? The only thing I can think to add is that once upon a time I lived in a farm house, one remote and one that I often had to myself. Me and my mate Woodsie used to get p!ssed up on a bottle of vodka, put the album on the stereo, went to the maximum volume dictated by the record and played air guitar and sang / shouted our hearts out to Starman.
I smiled sadly for a love I could not obey
To be honest I am not sure that I am qualified to write on this important aspect of Ziggy Stardust. But I will try, and forgive me if I get the words wrong. Stood, or sat, here in 2017, it can seem quite incredible to believe just how bold, daring and – yes – brave Bowie was with his sexual stance shenanigans at the time of release.
In this day and age you are likely to be vilified, castigated and shamed if you say anything untoward or negative of the gay community. This was not really the case in 1972. The opposite in fact. With anti-homosexual laws only recently abolished back then you were more or less likely to be mocked and have your head kicked in should you do anything which was remotely interpreted as being gay. Thugs appointed themselves as “queer bashers” to ensure “moral standards”. I suppose they do today, but in much smaller numbers.
Bowie of course did not give a fig for this. No, I am not delving into his history as a sexualist – he seemed delighted with it all so that’s all the info I need, thanks. But he did clearly like, no maybe love, the reaction to his ambivalence at presenting an ambiguous sexual identity. By the time we got to Ziggy the occasional cross dressing and playful phrases which suggested something shocking gave way to overt homoerotic imagery. From time to time, at the least.
How many men at the time, I wonder, found themselves horrified, shocked, sickened and yet most peculiarly (queerly, even) aroused by that famous image. Yes, that one. The one where David Bowie would appear to be performing fellatio on the most stunningly priapic guitar of Mick Ronson.
The androgynous and thus somewhat by default bisexual nature of Ziggy Starust, in particular as captured on film in that final performance, is beautiful. No, alas, I am hetero. I accept that, and several gay friends over the years have assured me it’s fine, it would be impossible for me to be gay with my complete lack of fashion sense or concept of hair style. But just how excellent is it that Ziggy Stardust has inspired the courage in thousands, many thousands, of people to be comfortable and confident in their own sexual identity, whatever that is. Even a boring straight such as I.
So inviting, so enticing to play the part
Bypassing the cover earlier I then have five, including this one, sections to write with super splendid subheadings. Yeah, I think I need that good luck, and your good will and patience, now.
Sometimes artists get trapped by songs when they go on tour. It is unthinkable, for instance, that the Rolling Stones would do a set that didn’t feature Jumpin’ Jack Flash or Satisfaction. The same goes for U2 with Where The Streets Have No Name and With Or Without You. Allowing for Changes being as close to an ever present in sets, Bowie never really let himself get boxed in by Ziggy Stardust.
No one song from the record was ever incorporated as any sort of “I had better do this as the fans expect it” part of a set. It was rare, however, that something from the album did not feature. From what I can work out it was only the Hours tour that saw no Ziggy material at all. The two big 80s tours, Serious Moonlight and the less said about the better Glass Spider, didn’t always have a song from the album on the set, but virtually all shows featured the decidedly Ziggy era Velvet Underground cover White Light/White Heat.
What can we draw from this? That he cherished the album and loved the songs, all the way across his career. We are, after all, talking about an artist so prolific that he could have done a two hour set of well known songs that discarded an entire decade of his work. Whenever he selected a Ziggy Stardust song for a set it never felt like it was being performed out of obligation or for fan service, but for pure passion.
Sure, no Ziggy Stardust songs featured on the Tin Machine tours, for no Bowie solo material did. Which makes something wonderful to see. If chance permits, check out the one official live video of Tin Machine, Oy Vey, Baby. A rather optimistic fan at the front spends most of the concert stood near the front, waving his vinyl copy of Ziggy Stardust at Bowie to see if he can’t encourage him to do a number or two from it. He didn’t.
She will come to the show tonight, praying to the light machine
A frustration is that many acts were not captured live in their prime. No one thought to make as high as quality as possible a recording of the likes of The Beatles, The Who, The Stones and Led Zeppelin in concert in the 60s. Yes, some footage and recording exists, but the quality is not usually all that it could have been. Not so by the 70s, and not so with Ziggy Stardust.
Blessed be you and every generation of your family, whoever it was that arranged for the final concert of Ziggy Stardust to be filmed. It is beautifully done, and stands along with Talking Heads Stop Making Sense and Prince’s Sign O The Times as how to properly do a concert film. Indeed it does end infamously, perhaps we will get to that in a bit.
Both the DVD (has it been shot out on Blu Ray yet?) and CD (or vinyl) of Ziggy Stardust The Motion Picture are well worth getting. The performance captured is outstanding. Really lovely as a visual treat, though, in particular when Bowie evokes his mime days during The Width Of A Circle. And all them lovely costume changes.
Just as essential is Santa Monica 72. Ah, them were the days. Once it was the case that obtaining this high quality bootleg was a symbol or sign of you being a serious Bowie fan. Now, of course, it has had a cleaned up official and proper release. It’s a brilliant live recording. I would normally play this one more than the official concert film soundtrack not to be flash but because it has a boss cover of Waiting For The Man on it, the Velvet Underground cover Bowie used to do before just doing White Light/White Heat instead.
So where were the spiders while the fly tried to break our balls
On the subject of the Ziggy Stardust concert film, then. That infamous ending. As in the “not only is this the last show of the tour but this is the last show we will ever do” line. Rock legend and urban myth has it that this came as quite a surprise to, ostensibly, the Spiders in the form of the musicians Mick Ronson, Trevor Boulder and Mick “Woody” Woodmansey.
Apparently those three felt that, of all the things rock and roll gave them, money was the one they wanted the more of. And they insisted that Bowie should be giving them more. Bowie disagreed, and so simply ended the venture.
There’s a bit at the start of Ziggy Stardust where Bowie is looking at the receipts for the performance. A similar scene exists in the Ricochet documentary. A friend of mine, who has requested not to be named, drew my attention to these up until then fairly forgettable scenes. My friend was, shall we say, “part of the crew” on one Bowie tour. They said that Bowie was very interested and very meticulous about the money in. He wanted to know the value of the show, and let that to an extent dictate how long a set he should do and what level of effort he felt would match the value. A bit cold perhaps, but when you think music business you would do well to always remember the second part.
I don’t share the above to be malicious or show off or cast Bowie in a bad light. That is just me throwing out a bit of information that has kicked around in my head for several years, so if I am gone then it is not. Whether it should stick around or not is up to you.
Don’t lean on me man
I haven’t really discussed much of anything in regards of the actual music on the album, have I? Oh well. Whoops.
A reason I have avoided this album for Random Bowie is what must I say of the record? There is not a bad track on it. Far from it. If anything the special edition CD I have, featuring unreleased and single only tracks like Velvet Goldmine and Sweet Head, suggest that he could have recorded an even longer and even better record than the one that he did. But he kind of did I suppose, as Aladdin Sane is, in simplistic terms, an extension of the Ziggy Stardust era.
Is Ziggy Stardust Bowie’s best record? Each and every one of us has an album we declare that. For many it is this one, but not for me. Bloody close, though. I get worried when people say that this is (sorry, sadly, was) his greatest ever, as the implication is that the next 40 years (!) was in some way downhill for him.
Erm, yes, then. The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars is an album you should own. No question. Even if you think you hate David Bowie, you should own this record and play it and love it. And, if possible, the live recordings mentioned earlier.
Oh no, love, you’re not alone
The album ends, then, with Rock N Roll Suicide. A haunting, brooding classical quality piece of music, with the melody brazenly pinched by many. The two best well known borrowers would be Morrissey with I Know It’s Gonna Happen Someday and R.E.M. with Everybody Hurts. For the former Bowie did extract some delightful revenge on the Black Tie White Noise album.
What was Bowie saying on this song? Mostly, maybe, that Ziggy was dead at the end of the record for all rock stars die. If not physically die then fade away. Except no, of course, they don’t always. To reference them once more (and you could do a lot worse than read my Listening To Who series of blog posts) it has now been over 50 years that The Who have expressed the wish that they “hope I die before I get old”.
I’ve often wondered if It’s Only Rock N Roll by The Rolling Stones was meant as response to Rock N Roll Suicide. Jagger, sorry Sir Michael, has in the past spoken of his meaning with the lyrics, but still. It starts off with a reference to “suicide on the stage” and does overall say “hey, hang on, this is fun, man”. Bowie and Jagger were friends, of course. Wonderful connection if it turns out to be the case.
And, well, that is just about that. Have I done this great record justice? I sincerely hope so. Whilst there’s no set pattern to these blogs I write on Bowie albums this one feels like I’ve diverted well away from the 40 or so minutes of music it is all supposed to be about for the most part. This all was, however, the only way I could think to write of this record in a way that was different from how others have written and would be, I pray, interesting.
Yeah, I could have gone track by track, I could have looked at the early versions of some of the songs (these will feature as and when I do The Man Who Sold The World), could have looked at the history of recording, the chart success, etc. In this instance I would say rather not worry so much about those aspects and just listen to the album.
My great and deep thanks, as ever, for you taking the time to read all of this.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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