Released - June 1972
Genre - Glam Rock
Producer - David Bowie & Ken Scott
Selected Personnel - David Bowie (Vocals/Guitar/Saxophone/Piano); Mick Ronson (Guitar/Keyboards); Trevor Bolder (Bass); Mick "Woody" Woodmansey (Drums); Rick Wakeman (Piano)
Standout Track - Five Years
It occurs to me that, while I've now written a few reviews of Bowie's early albums on this blog, I've yet to actually say much about my own personal experiences with Bowie's music and how I came to discover it, and I've found so far that those recollections are often the most enjoyable bit to write (and perhaps the most enjoyable to read, I wouldn't like to put words in your mouth though). Well, it seems fitting now I've realised that omission to save that story for this, the album that will always be remembered as his defining moment, his magnum opus. Growing up in a musical family, with a step-dad who was steeped in classic rock of the 70s and a brother who at the time was a bigger music-lover than me (though I have since far outstripped him in terms of sheer obsessive anorak points), Bowie was of course a figure I was aware of from a very young age and, like a number of my favourite artists, I owe my first awareness of him to my brother Barney. As with Tom Waits, when he first introduced him to me I didn't much care for him, only to discover him myself years later and quickly let them become figures of obsession and fascination to me. (By this logic, I can reasonably assume that Red Hot Chilli Peppers, one of Barney's favourite bands in his teens who I have hated passionately for over ten years now, will one day be my favourite band of all time. I don't look forward to it). Barney was a big fan of Bowie's and used to regale me with stories from something called "The David Bowie Black Book," some sort of nerd's annual that told you how he damaged his eye and so on and suchforth. Being a dyed-in-the-wool Elton John and Sting fan at the time, Bowie felt like he had some sort of iconoclastic, dangerous streak that I didn't think was good for me, but I dutifully listened to his greatest hits and enjoyed a few songs - notably "Let's Dance," "Changes" and "Life On Mars?", I seem to remember - but it never got much further than that.
At uni, having developed a greater love of music in the meantime, I decided that Bowie was such a towering figure in the history of music that I needed to be better versed in him, so started listening to albums like Hunky Dory and this, supposedly his two crowning achievements. I enjoyed them, but it still took me another couple of years for my love of his music to really go nuclear. In fact, it was the fact that I had become fascinated by ambient pioneer and audio wizard Brian Eno (more on him another day) in the meantime, that prompted me to discover that, more than being a glam rock dinosaur from the early 70s, Bowie had gone on to continue pushing musical boundaries into new and strange areas, with Eno as one of his semi-regular cohorts. Suddenly, Bowie took on far greater significance for me - he had always been an enjoyable and talented and immensely charismatic figure who intrigued me, but I hadn't known that he was such a pioneer, such a versatile and daring innovator across the entire spectrum of popular music. Perhaps it was that iconoclastic streak, the desire to keep pushing boundaries and to challenge his audience and to be willing to throw away everything he'd done and start again in a new direction, that reminded me of Tom Waits, who had recently become the most significant cultural icon in my life. So it was that over the subsequent years (this was in 2010, I think) that Bowie became my newest object of fascination and obsession, and I wouldn't rest until I'd heard all his work and also understood the man behind it.
And so, on to Ziggy Stardust itself. Whether he had done it entirely independently from the hero of the moment Marc Bolan, who in 1971 was basking in the success of Electric Warrior and the subsequent sensation dubbed "T. Rexstacy," or whether Bowie's songwriting post-Hunky Dory was heavily indebted to Bolan's giving birth to glam rock is up or debate - Bowie has always been a musical magpie, able to take snatches of elements in the world around him and transform them into something better. Either way, Bowie suddenly found himself writing the same sort of glitzy, theatrical, short and concise, stomping pop-rock numbers that Bolan had popularised. "Queen Bitch" on Hunky Dory had been an early prelude of the kind of music that would come. He had already made an album on which he was almost drowned out by his backing band in The Man Who Sold The World, and had followed it up with an album that kept its focus squarely on him as a central figure, keeping his sidemen in the shadows. Now he set about creating an album of perfect synergy, with a charismatic and otherworldly figure at its helm but that showcased a tight, well-honed band in perfect synchronicity with each other. The new songs were more vital, daring and exciting than anything Bowie had written up until that point. But there was something else incubating in his mind that would truly set his next album apart from any number of glam rock competitors.
Simon Goddard's book Ziggyology tells the story of the construction of the Ziggy Stardust concept and myth in fascinating detail, but it all seems to begin a couple of years previously when Bowie met the British rock & roll singer Vince Taylor, whose career had fallen apart around him and led him into a downward spiral into madness and depression, convinced he was an alien or a god. Bowie had also recently encountered Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground (who had recently lost frontman Lou Reed and replaced him with their current bassist, Doug Yule) as well as the man then known only as Iggy (the surname "Pop" to be added at a later date) and his band of raucous proto-punk noisemakers, the Stooges. All of them had prompted him to reflect on the notion of using music as a means of portraying something other than yourself, of playing a part onstage. After all, all music is a form of artifice, so why not make it overt? Taking cue from the newly fashion-conscious and theatrical tastes of the new glam rock scene, Bowie drew on traditional Japanese costumes to create the look and identity of his new musical alter-ego, Ziggy Stardust, who would co-exist in his mind for the next two years or so.
It's easy for the brilliance of the Ziggy Stardust concept to get lost under the weight of its "story," concerning a world approaching an Apocalypse in which an alien messiah figure comes to earth in the form of a rockstar (Ziggy) who spreads a message of peace and earth to the people of the earth before his delirious fans turn against him and prompt his death. The story was never what mattered - what mattered was the sheer ambition of it, the incredible audaciousness of doing something so brazen and unprecedented, the way it seized on the popular imagination to unlock an immense counter-cultural wave that made everyone feel included - previously marginalised groups like gay and bisexual people suddenly felt embraced in a cultural movement that pointed at some sort of bold new exciting future.
One could go on for days about the cultural and historical significance of Ziggy Stardust, and many have, but at the end of the day, what you can't get away from is the sheer fact of its brilliance. It's one of those albums that's swathed in an absurd amount of historical significance, but that manages to never disappoint. Bowie is more confident and vocally perfect than ever, the bleating and mewling of the past lost in his total absorption of his new alien character. The band around him sound tighter than ever - nobody drowns anybody else out, they serve the music perfectly, and no member is given short shrift. Bolder and Woodmansey are the perfect stolid rhythm section as Bowie and Ronson deliver the major setpiece moments over the top. Things start out with the achingly wonderful "Five Years," which starts with a slow, ricocheting drum beat and Bowie's simple, rigid piano chords. It tells the story of a world five years from destruction and simply reports, with blanked-out passivity, on a series of images from the world's response to the news. Spiralling into a nightmarish cacophony after Bowie's heart-rending wail of "I kiss you, you're beautiful, I want you to walk," it fades out over his increasingly deranged screams of "Five years!" It's simultaneously one of the most terrifying and exciting, but also the most tender and beautiful songs Bowie and co have ever delivered, and the album sometimes struggles to live up to it. "Soul Love" is a song so good it would easily steal the show on most albums, but here barely registers because it's surrounded by so many other classics. "Moonage Daydream" is perhaps the ultimate Ronson showpiece, with his colourful solos elevating the song to classic status, while the simple recorder descants Bowie had played with on "All The Madmen" make a welcome return in the sing-along chorus.
"Starman" is the classic single everybody knows from this album, but even that, too, is one of the album's less incendiary moments, though it's soaring chorus and jubilantly feel-good bridge are among the finest moments in early 70s glam rock. The album does sag a little in the middle, with a trio of songs that are perfectly decent but mark a bit of downtime after the barnstorming opening, before a devastatingly good sweep of closing songs. "Hang Onto Yourself" is the most reminiscent of "Queen Bitch," riding another jaunty Ronson guitar riff and Bowie's pounding piano, while "Ziggy Stardust" itself is a rousing, dangerous, fist-pumping anthem to the entire concept behind this, Bowie's magnum opus, with Ronson's classic riff again to the forefront. "Suffragette City" comes very close to being the best song on the album, and ups the ante once more in the "Just how good a riff can Ronson deliver?" stakes. It's perhaps his finest work with Bowie, a driving, swaggering riff that propels a fearsome beast of a song, both dangerous and playful at one at the same time, while the mid-song crescendo and Bowie's gleeful squeal of "Wham bam, thank you ma'am!" have become rock legend. After a trio of guitar-heavy songs, the focus shifts back onto Bowie as a figure in isolation for the meditative closer "Rock & Roll Suicide," a reflection on the desperation of Ziggy's need to destroy himself in the wake of his success. It starts as a quiet and contemplative meditation on embracing death and by the end has escalated into a doom-laden repetitive cycle of chanted choruses while Bowie screams "Gimme your hands 'cos you're wonderful!" as the record winds to its close.
Ziggy Stardust is too often called a concept album and the truth is, it doesn't need the portentous weight of that label to be interesting. Most of the songs were written independently of the concept itself, which was happened upon in the late stages of the album's development and only informed the composition of a few songs as well as the way in which Bowie went about promoting the thing. But at the end of the day, with or without all the godlike aliens and suicides and sci-fi trappings, this is just one of the finest records of effortlessly brilliant rock music of all time. It manages to inspire with its upbeat pop hooks as often as it compels with its hard rock credentials, or terrifies with its austere, raw emotion. Thankfully, for the first time in Bowie's career, the buying public were 100% behind his new offering. There was no longer any whiff of a "Space Oddity"-style one-hit wonder that would quickly burn out. Courtesy of a legendary appearance on Top Of The Pops, Bowie would soon become the hero of the nation's youth. Here was a man who delivered the same kind of catchy, hard-hitting pop music that their previous hero, Marc Bolan, had given them. But now it was done with a sense of theatricality and optimism and promise not seen before. It opened the door to a whole new kind of music and, for many kids at the time, to a whole new way of life. Bolan had won the battle in 1971, but in 1972 Bowie won the war and made music history. One of those albums you just do have to listen to, regardless of how often people say it.
Track Listing:
All songs written by David Bowie except where noted.
1. Five Years
2. Soul Love
3. Moonage Daydream
4. Starman
5. It Ain't Easy (Ron Davies)
6. Lady Stardust
7. Star
8. Hang On To Yourself
9. Ziggy Stardust
10. Suffragette City
11. Rock 'n' Roll Suicide
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