How Ziggy Stardust And Low Changed The World

The Man Who Changed The World...

This one was a little late coming through, but the March issue of BURNLOUNGE magazine in the USA has voted The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars The #1 Concept Album Of All Time. Read what they had to say about David Bowie's 1972 classic above.

The current fortieth anniversary issue of Rolling Stone magazine has a similar poll wherein it lists 40 Songs That Changed The World. You can read what they had to say about the song Ziggy Stardust below...

Not to be outdone, the June issue of MOJO magazine in the UK has another poll guaranteed to fire up a bit of debate, 100 Records That Changed The World, compiled by 100 musicians of some note from Brian Wilson to John Lydon, via U2 and Radiohead.

The piece is accompanied by the full-page illustration below which has David Bowie in pretty good company.

Two Bowie albums make the Top 100, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars and Low. Only two other artits manage two albums in the Top 100, Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones, with The Beatles boasting a total of three.

The musicians who have taken up the task of explaining just why they think the Bowie albums are so important, are Brett Anderson and Ian McCulloch. Here follows brief snippets from both followed by MOJO's own "Without this, no..." comments.

Ian McCulloch on Low

"...His voice is fantastic and magnetic, just pure Bowie...I loved the wordless vocals on the second side too, they're so mesmerising and different. Eno helped, but Bowie was running that show. Low pretty much invented the '80s, alongside Kraftwerk, just as Bowie had invented the '70s...Low was like a guidebook to synth punk. If the Pistols and Ramones drove you to pick up a guitar and add plenty of chords, Low was what you can do with one finger, a synth and your imagination."

Without this, no...synthpop, wedges, "getting Eno in", the '80s generally.

Brett Anderson on Ziggy Stardust

"Ziggy Stardust was a career-defining album...It's certainly the iconic glam record. Bowie's vocal on Rock 'N' Roll Suicide is untouchable, and those chord changes at the end of it are completely unexpected without sounding contrived...There's something prosaic about the album's cover, this photo of Bowie just standing in this little London backstreet, but his Ziggy persona seems all the wilder for that. A mate of mine remembers watching Starman on Top Of The Pops, and he said the buzz in the school playground was that Bowie was from outer space."

Without this, no...UK punk, pop androgyny, gay-acting straights.

So there you have it...your world is quite different thanks to David Bowie...But then again, you already knew that.