Celebrating
a half century since landing on the planet Earth, David Bowie’s
breakthrough LP, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders
from Mars, was released 50 years ago today, on June 16th, 1972. Bowie’s
fifth studio album would prove to be the one which finally broke
through on the charts and launched his career into the stratosphere.
Bowie
had been slogging away in relative obscurity since the mid 1960s,
releasing his first album in 1967 and gradually navigating his career
towards a position which would ultimately set him apart from his peers.
He’d do so by creating a distinctive character which transcended the
mundane boundaries of mere pop stardom and cast him in the role of a
mythological alien-savior. While his previous incarnations had tried to
exploit his “freak” potential, the idea of creating a fictional
alter-ego was the key to putting him in a context which maximized his
eccentricity while making it more palatable by virtue of its
other-worldliness.
Before Ziggy, he blurred the lines of gender
on his previous effort, Hunky Dory, where he lounged in his long hair
and gown like Lauren Bacall or Greta Garbo. That sort of gender-bending
ultimately had limited appeal and the album flopped on the charts
despite good reviews. Part of the problem was that it was recorded with
new label RCA when they’d already got wind that he was planning a major
image overhaul, so the label stalled on their promotion in anticipation
of his transformation. Hunky Dory & Ziggy are musically extremely
closely linked. The songs were all written at the same time, the
musicians are mostly the same on both albums and they were recorded
nearly consecutively with only a brief gap between them. But by the
time Ziggy was ready to release, the label were finally ready to commit
to Bowie’s new concept and appearance and they were prepared to
promoting him with some vim and vigor.
Even though Hunky Dory
and Ziggy were closely aligned musically, Ziggy had something else going
on that wasn’t developed on the previous record. It was this
conception of an alien being coming to Earth in an attempting to save it
as the planet was facing an apocalyptic near future, only to become
corrupted by fame. This worked to envelop the project in a coherent
narrative. This was further reinforced by the look and sound of the
band, which took the glam-rock glitz of Marc Bolan and cast it as
extraterrestrial chic. The character of Ziggy Stardust also borrowed
from Bowie’s American friends and inspirations, Iggy Pop & Lou Reed.
He managed to fuse elements of all of them and more into his
characterization and it worked brilliantly to help shroud Bowie with a
stature and mystique that effectively made him seem like a superstar
even before the fans had picked up on his presence.
Once the
album hit the shops, it wasn’t long before it started to gain momentum
with its traction largely increased once the band made a pivotal
appearance on BBC’s Top of the Pops. It was one of those historic
moments when any kid with a TV and latent aspirations of rock stardom
was gonna find a fire lit in their soul once they saw Bowie confidently
strutting his stuff in front of the camera. One can imagine little Sid
Vicious, Peter Murphy, Gary Numan, Bono and dozens of other future stars
glued to their sets and feeling the switch get flipped that would
propel them into the careers they’d have in a few short years thanks to
having seen the Starman on their TV.
Since its release, it’s
become recognized as one of Bowie’s most influential and significant
works. Not only did it set him up for future success, it retroactively
pulled a lot of his back catalogue out of obscurity, foisting albums
like Hunky Dory and singles like Space Oddity into hit status as well.
And while a lesser artist would’ve become trapped in the Ziggy persona,
Bowie quickly transitioned to other characters in order to establish his
chameleon like nature as a trademark, setting fan expectations to be
prepared for his wild and frequent shifts. In many respects, it remains
his most iconic work and a starting point for many when beginning the
journey of exploring his career.
Personally, his success at
this stage also came at a cost and signaled the beginning of his own
private decline into drug abuse, something he’d ultimately have to
overcome within a few years, but fortunately for him and his fans, he
managed to pull out of that spiral. In a way, he lived the life of
Ziggy maybe a bit too closely, so it makes sense he’d want to change out
of that wardrobe and try on another suit quick enough.
