The Take-Off and Landing of Ziggy Stardust

The Take-Off

The date was July 6, 1972. The count down had begun the day before. No, not the last Apollo 17 mission to the moon. That would come, ironically, some six months later. But what was to become the launching of the Starman himself, David Bowie.  The song “Starman” had been released back in April in England but was going nowhere on the charts. The album “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars” had only been out for a month and had yet to be noticed. Three weeks earlier Bowie and the Spiders performed “Starman” on the appropriately titled ITV show Lift Off with Ayshea. But it proved to be a dry run. Then he landed a spot on Tops of the Pops and the musical reverberations of planet earth were about to be irrevocably altered. 

The video footage, actually shot the day before, opens with a tight shot on a blue 12 string acoustic guitar being strummed whimsically on ethereal chords. The camera zooms back revealing Bowie in his earliest rendition of his “Ziggy” persona, clad in a multi colored  jump suit, stitched by Sue Frost, seamstress for the band. His hair, a combination of possibilities taken from the pages of Vogue, is styled by Suzi Fussey, the future wife of Mick Ronson. Shorter than the later evolved look and convincingly dyed red so it looks somewhat natural. The flame red color would come later, to match his flame red, green mega laced boots.

 The music on tracks but the vocals live, Bowie steps up to the mic and begins to tell a story. Tight, compact, focused yet mysteriously foreboding, but absent of doom. Qualitatively reminiscent of science fiction writers of the day such as Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov.  And eerily foreshadowing films and stories yet to be made and told. 

A young man alone in his dimly lit bedroom kicks back to listen to a DJ playing rock’n’roll on the radio when the signal wavers and mysterious sounds are heard which he interprets to be “hazy cosmic jive”. With the chorus the story turns and the mystery is revealed: 

“There’s a starman waiting in the sky. He’d like to come and meet us but he thinks he’d blow our minds…”

 Bowie sings this, and continues through the resolution of the chorus, so fervently and with such emotional declaration as to suggest it might be he, himself, who has this relationship with the world. 

 Displaying what might be the most perfect rock guitar sound relative to its concept ever derived, Mick Ronson decidedly lands the first note and skips down to the next. His brilliant sense of melody making every note count turns the simple riff along with Bowies chord changes to major into an electric joyous orchestra playing a piece about the four seasons and spring is in bloom.  

Then came the defining moment. The turning point. What has now been cleverly coined as “The point of no return”.  Looking the camera dead in the eye, the chord drops back down to minor and Bowie sings: 

“I had to call someone so I picked on you, oo, oo…” Perfectly timed, he stops strumming and, extending his arm, points directly into the camera lens.

While it seemed clear that Bowie’s master plan for Ziggy Stardust with stunning costume and cosmetic visuals might engage an audience, one problem Bowie seem to have was connecting with an audience. His recurring subject matter, that of a life overshadowed by an overwhelming sense of alienation made it difficult. This is an inherent flaw in the science fiction genre with its often dismally dystopic themes where not only all hope is lost but all emotion is lost. This can produce fascinating reading but making that emotional connection is the problem. You can corrupt emotion as in the classic Wuthering Heights and still make an emotional connection but depleted emotion equals disconnect. Countering this is Bowie’s emotionally dramatic, almost operatic style of singing. And his personalized story telling as in “Starman” where he plays the youth in the first person while in truth he is the starman. As a young teen and Bowie fan I took notice of certain repetitive references to youth such as “let all the children boogie” and “these children that you spit on as they try to change their worlds” that seem to be directed at me and almost anyone young in the world at that time. Instinctually he was reaching out to where he would expect to find his audience. But on this occasion Bowie overcomes all of the obstacles and paradox of alienation with just one gesture of a pointed finger and connects with his audience! Within days of Bowie’s appearance on Top of the Pops , it seems, as the story goes and legend would have it, every alienated misfit youth in England was dying their hair red and wearing make-up. Ziggy Stardust had blasted off! 

Ziggy Goes to America

Whether he was inspired by the story of Ziggy or it just seemed like a good idea, Tony Fries, Bowie’s manager, had a plan. He would make David Bowie a famous rock star by acting and treating him like he was a famous rock star. And RCA would foot the bill.

 After a summer tour of the UK, a short tour of the US was planned to go off in late September. Bowie, though relatively unknown in the US, was to be the first British artist to come to America as a headliner since the Beatles, who until then, were the first and only. Originally to be eight concerts the tour would prove to be successful and was extended for eight weeks. 

Bowie, who hated to fly, left a week early with his wife, Angie, by boat. Arriving in New York City, they then took a charted Greyhound bus to Cleveland where the first US Ziggy concert takes place at Music Hall ending with a ten minute standing ovation. Next is Boston and then Carnegie Hall in New York City, where the marquee reads “Fall in Love with David Bowie”. While there he does an interview with Rolling Stone magazine and is featured in Time and Newsweek. And all along the way, though he has no money of his own in his pocket, he stays in the best hotels and is transported by limousines.   By late October he’s in Santa Monica playing the Civic Auditorium. The concert is recorded by RCA as well as broadcast live on FM radio which spawns the infamous bootleg of the concert. By the end of November he is introduced to the audience at a Mott the Hoople concert as a “man who is already a legend”. 

Shortly before the start of the tour, after a short audition which included a jazzy rendition of “Changes”, pianist Mike Garson was hired to fill in the sound. Seemingly an odd choice for a band based in rock. Albeit, with the help of Mick Ronson, the sound was quintessentially glam rock. But Garson’s Jazz training and era jumping capabilities proved to mix inspirationally with Ronson’s sense of dynamic arrangement and guitar style. The proof being in the pudding on the Ziggy follow-up album “Aladdin Sane.” 

Written during the tour, recorded partly in New York in early December after the last show, completed in early January in London and released in mid-April, 1973, the album pressings were considerably louder than “Ziggy Stardust”. The rock’n’Roll more manic and played with wild abandonment. “Jean Genie” was recorded in the middle of the tour and released as a single before rest of the album was recorded. The songs “Aladdin Sane”, “Time” and “Lady Grinning Soul” feature Garson’s piano expertise and the inner-weaving of Ronson’s guitar and the piano, especially on “Time” is truly inspired. The harder rock songs pay homage to the Rolling Stones, prompting some critics to call the album a sell-out.  

But Ronson’s guitar playing has never sounded better and Bowie’s take on America provides the story content, producing lyrics of outrageousness and eclectic themes of “passionate bright young things” and “America in Flames” that are tied together by the central theme, A lad insane. Both appalled and captivated by American mixed culture, Bowie applies a bi-polar approach to the subject matter. His half-brother was an institutionalized schizophrenic at the time and this was always hovering over him and influencing his thoughts and moods. The whirlwind result was another collection of mind blowing songs based in an extravagant style of Rock laced with daring musical deviations that explode off the vinyl. The album cover with a lightning bolt painted across Bowie’s face is, perhaps, his most iconic image of the Ziggy period or any other, for that matter. 

The month before “Aladdin Sane” came out Bowie concluded his second US tour at the Hollywood Palladium. Having squeezed in some shows in England and Scotland in between the two American tours the next stop was Japan. Bowie takes in some traditional Japanese Kabuki Theater and spends time with Japanese fashion designer, Kansai Yamamoto, who presents him with nine Aladdin Sane Kabuki costumes that Bowie had commissioned from him when they first met in New York. Sometime during the Ziggy formation process Bowie had been introduced to Kabuki Theater. It was from there that he took the flaming red hair and pale white base with contrasting rouge makeup style. All along the way, it seems, Ziggy had been a work in progress, constantly evolving, eventually into the Aladdin Sane character with the lightning bolt being Bowie’s idea as a symbol of the duality of the mind. Yamamoto’s costumes were the latest integration into the Ziggy/Aladdin Sane character.

 The Landing 

Bowie and the Spiders did ten shows in two weeks in Japan then finally returned to England. Bowie by way of Moscow where he took the Orient Express to Paris and then by Ferry and Hovercraft arriving back in England on May 4, 1973. In less than a year he had achieved stardom in three major music markets. But there was a catch. It wasn’t clear who was more famous; Bowie or Ziggy. And this scared Bowie. He had “created a monster” and now he had to kill it. Besides, he didn’t want to do it anymore. The high decibel super charged hard rock sound of the band show after show left his ears ringing. He knew he could drag it out for quite a bit longer but ran the risk of becoming only Ziggy in the public’s eye and eventually disappearing into oblivion. It had to end. Ziggy, as prophesied  in the Ziggy Stardust finale “Rock’n’Roll Suicide”, had to die. 

 But for the British fans Bowie was returning as a super star and they couldn’t get enough of him. Over the span of 45 days Bowie saturated the UK, playing in 37 towns and cities selling out at every venue. The final show of the Ziggy Stardust Tour was on July 3, 1973 at the Hammersmith Odeon, London. 

At the conclusion of the show the band returned to the stage. Poised to play the encore, Bowie steps up to the mic and makes this announcement:

 “Everybody… this has been one of the greatest tours of our lives. I would like to thank the band. I would like to thank our road crew. I would like to thank our lighting people. 

 Of all of the shows on this tour, this particular show will remain with us the longest (cheers from the audience) because not only is it… not only is it the last show of the tour, but it’s the last show that we’ll ever do. Thank you” 

And with that, amidst a chorus of boos from the audience, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars did indeed play the last song they would ever play together.

 The song, of course, was “Rock’n’Roll Suicide”.