Album Release: June, 1972 --
It's called "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars," and that's a very long name for an album. But not too long for an album that is likely to become a kind of rock codex for the 70's. David Bowie's fifth album is a kind of temporal autobiography (but clearly no ego trip) cast in a mythic mold, Bowie becomes Ziggy, and Bowie's band (The Spiders From Mars) is Ziggy's band. Perhaps by becoming a fantasy David Bowie is able to make fantasy into reality (are we really so sure of that separation anyway?), and to take the idea further, to the conclusion it arrives at with this album, the fantasy becomes tangible, and reality, by its sheer outrage, slips into fantasy.
Much of Bowie's album (his second for RCA Records) is based on an idea of "IT," an event, a happening, the portending of something major in effect, a cataclysm of worldwide proportions, "Five Years," the album's first cut, is an exploration of the five years we have left before "IT" happens, Bowie says "IT" may be WW III, overkill pollution, an extraterrestrial invasion, seemingly, in "Five Years," a negative thing, but later in the album, in "Starman," "IT" seems to become a probably benign event, somehow messianic. The relationship is always to be seen as that of present and coming events as related to Ziggy and his band, "Soul Love" is a song Ziggy sings before he becomes the band's frontman ....... Ziggy still untouched and desperate for something, "Moonage Daydream" is Ziggy's song of deification of sorts.....well on the way to being a rock 'n' roll star. Then, as noted, "Starman" can be seen as an antidote (a positive possibility) to "Five Years."
"Lady Stardust" is an audience view of Ziggy, the superfreak star. And "Star" suggests that the best thing that a rock 'n' roller can do in a time of turmoil and insanity is to be a rock 'n' roller as best as he can...something that makes a kind of at least visceral sense when nothing else makes any sense at all. "Hang On To Yourself" is a band song about the sheer exuberance of being in a going, trucking rock band.
And "Ziggy Stardust" is a song about the star as seen by his band, Ziggy's act, his sexuality, his magnetism make him the "special man" and leader of the group..... and here the possibility of a rock star being shot in performance (after all, politicians are being shot...why not rock stars?) is imagined. "When the kids had killed the man I had to break up the band."
"Suffragette City" celebrates the now familiar relationship of various band dudes with groupies..... though it is suggested that Ziggy is not one to make it with chicks. Bowie says simply that this is a sex song. "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide"....Bowie says, "That's me!' Ziggy may be dead already and this is the potential suicide of anyone who has come to the point of believing that he is alone; but the wouldbe suicide is told, "Oh no, love. You're not alone... you're not alone, let's turn on and be....you're wonderful, gimmie your hands..." A plea for life, a demand for life, Perhaps there is no suicide, or, to go back to the beginning ("Five Years"), maybe it is the suicide of mankind.
Musically Bowie's songs have an absolute appropriateness, a perfect musical shape, Mick Ronson's guitar breaks and "honky" piano playing are sensational and often hair-raising. Bowie's voice seemingly can do just what he wants it to do, It is his instrument really, though he plays guitar and sax on the album, It is a voice that can be physically very intimate (a la Lou Reed), or, as easily, remote, metallic and alien.
Overall this album speaks of man on the precipice of the last few years of earth, and it isn't rhetorical, but very real, frighteningly potential and portending. And yet, implicit throughout, there is some kind of positive expectation, Bowie might just be saying that maybe--just maybe--if we all give each other our hands we might make it after all.
The Spiders From Mars are Mick Ronson, guitar, piano and, with Bowie, co-arranger of "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars," Mick Woodmansey, drums; and Trevor Bolder, bass.
David Bowie speaks of the future as the present, and the present as the future, His album is what is coming in music, hearing it is hearing tomorrow and knowing it. As he sings in "Starman," "He'd like to come and meet us, but he thinks he'd blow our minds."
And our minds need blowing.
"Ziggy Stardust," on RCA Records and Tapes, is a part of continuance and a foretold tomorrow.
