A Glimpse of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972) by David Bowie

The birth of a glam Rock 'n' Roll Star

Apr 22, 2024

A couple of days ago (20 April) it was Record Store Day, and one of the exclusive releases was Bowie’s Waiting in the Sky (Before the Starman Came to Earth), made up of the provisional track listing of what was to become the classic album Ziggy Stardust. This release is a prelude to the next Bowie box - Rock ‘n’ Roll Star!, with demos and other tracks from the period that led to Ziggy Stardust, to be released on 14 June 2024.

Cover of 'The Rise of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars' by David Bowie

Click the cover, or here, to listen to Ziggy Stardust on the streaming service of your choice.

Ziggy Stardust is one of the most important albums in the development of classic rock. In 1970, the messy conclusion to the Beatles story resulted in their split. There was a void. Who could fill the vacuum?

Before Ziggy Stardust, there was no clue that David Bowie would significantly develop rock culture into the 70s. His previous album, Hunky Dory, was a classic, and I argued in a previous Glimpse it might be Bowie’s best album. It’s a folk/pop album, though, not a rock album, and for the most part not outstanding innovative. Only the song Queen Bitch indicated there might be a different, rock, direction for Bowie’s career.

I got into Hunky Dory retrospectively. I appreciate that record, but Ziggy Stardust forms a central role in my lived experience and that of many of my friends. In 1972, I was a tiny cog in a massive comprehensive school, and not enjoying the experience. I was 14 when Ziggy Stardust was released, very definitely formative years. When not playing football, break times were spent discussing new albums, and sometimes swapping tapes to record our latest purchases on a C90 cassette.

Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust incarnation came to our attention via his notorious appearance on the TV music show Top of the Pops, performing Starman. Bowie’s appearance created waves, including the classic parental question “Is that a boy or a girl?” At one point - shock - he puts his arm around guitarist Mick Ronson. There may have been questions in Parliament; there was certainly a feeling that Bowie represented the UK’s version of the last days of the Roman Empire.

Aside from all that, Starman was a great song. It could stand on its own two feet as a hit record, and also be pivotal in explaining Ziggy Stardust as a concept album. When we were discussing the album, we were not attempting to clarify the story. I’m not sure we realised there was supposed to be a story as such, we were just happy with great songs and an underlying sense of weirdness.

Before diving more deeply into Ziggy Stardust, let’s think about concept albums. I’ve not read the book yet, but the recent publication Fifty Years of the Concept Album in Popular Music: From The Beatles to Beyonce by Eric Wolfson (Bookshop.org aff.) suggests “The roots of the concept album are nearly as old as the long-playing record itself, as recording artists began using the format to transcend a mere collection of songs into a listening experience that takes the listener on a journey through its unifying mood, theme, narrative, or underlying idea.” Many concept albums are hard to understand in conventional storytelling terms. Pete Townshend’s Life House (1971, at least in Who’s Next form)? The story has been clarified over the years, but Life House was always more of a theme/idea than a story. The same applies to The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway by Genesis (1974), despite a lengthy short story printed on the gatefold sleeve.

Back cover of 'Ziggy Stardust' by David Bowie

And Ziggy Stardust? Well, according to bowiebible.com it's “A loose concept album about a bisexual, androgynous rocker who became a conduit for alien beings in a dystopian alternate reality.” That’s why Starman was the key: “He’d like to come and meet us but he thinks he’d blow our minds.” Starman blew our minds all right, even if the melody was familiar from The Wizard of Oz - Over the Rainbow.

Several of the other songs blew my mind. The opening Five Years, a slow-burning, dramatic ballad - who opens an album like that? The notion of five years left because the Earth is dying (sounds familiar in 2024, yet where’s the emotion Bowie foresaw?) was profound to a teenager. Bowie does something odd with one of the lines too, as he describes the scenes on the streets after the announcement: “I think I saw you in an ice-cream parlour.” Wait, the listener is in this song?

The album ends with an equally slowly-rising acoustic song - Rock and Roll Suicide. A quiet opening, before eventually an overwrought Bowie (in character, Ziggy) reaches his end.

Every song is a classic, every song builds the atmosphere and extends the musical and lyrical narrative. Moonage Daydream with its wonderful, repetitive/looping guitar from Mick Ronson and the astounding sounds he wrings from his guitar during the coda (the developing musical relationship between Bowie and Ronson was one of the keys to Bowie’s stream of classic albums over the next few years).

The song Ziggy Stardust itself, riffing as the best classic rockers do, yet only the lead-in to the even riffier Suffragette City. As I said at the beginning, Ziggy Stardust is a ROCK album, and one not afraid to use all the shadows, highlights and shades of grey extant in the rock palette, and invent a few new ones too. It’s the sound of an artist who had been around for years, trying different styles and genres on for size and finally finding the ones that fit. The title of the forthcoming box - Rock and Roll Star! - couldn’t be more apt.

What we didn’t fully appreciate, in 1972, was Bowie’s ability to play characters, and invent new personas regularly. So, when he concluded his Ziggy Stardust tour at the Hammersmith Odeon and announced his retirement, it was impossible to understand he meant the retirement of the character Ziggy Stardust. Bowie, always aware and self-aware, knew the ambiguity of his words, and knew there could be a reaction. At that gig was Kate Bush, subconsciously (or consciously?) learning how to introduce character into music. When she wanted to play live yet not tour in 2014, she chose a long run of evenings at the building that used to be called the Hammersmith Odeon (by 2014, it was called the Eventim Apollo). Coincidence?

Bowie wasn’t the first to move from folk (of sorts) to rock. Dylan went electric. Closer to home for Bowie, his friend and rival Marc Bolan blazed the trail from extreme hippy folk sub-Tolkien music to glam-rock. Bowie must have taken note - and then moved his career in the same direction, before progressing into many other musical directions.

The next Glimpse is, indeed, of Electric Warrior.