Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars

Upon the release of David Bowie’s most thematically ambitious, musically coherent album to date, the record in which he unites the major strengths of his previous work and comfortably reconciles himself to some apparently inevitable problems, we should all say a brief prayer that his fortunes are not made to rise and fall with the fate of the “drag-rock” syndrome — that thing that’s manifesting itself in the self-conscious quest for decadence which is all the rage at the moment in trendy Hollywood, in the more contrived area of Alice Cooper’s presentation, and, way down in the pits, in such grotesqueries as Queen, Nick St. Nicholas’ trio of feathered, sequined Barbie dolls. And which is bound to get worse.

For although Lady Stardust himself has probably had more to do with androgony’s current fashionableness in rock than any other individual, he has never made his sexuality anything more than a completely natural and integral part of his public self, refusing to lower it to the level of gimmick but never excluding it from his image and craft. To do either would involve an artistically fatal degree of compromise.

Ziggy Stardust

Aladdin Sane

A lightning bolt streaks across David’s face; on the inside cover the lad is air-brushed into androgyny, a no less imposing figure for it. Though he has been anointed to go out among us and spread the word, we find stuffed into the sleeve, like dirty underwear, a form requesting our name, address, “favorite film and TV stars,” etc., plus $3.50 for membership in the David Bowie Fan Club (materials by return mail unspecified).

Such discrepancies have made David Bowie the most recently controversial of all significant pop artists — all of it owing to the confusion of levels on which he operates. His flamboyant drive for pop-star status has stamped him in many people’s eyes a naked opportunist and poseur. But once it is recognized that stardom represents a metaphysical quest for Bowie, one has to grant at least that the question of self-inflation is in his case unconventional.

The twin impulses are to be a star (e.g., Jagger) and to be a star (e.g., Betelgeuse). The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars depicted an impending doomsday, an extraterrestrial visitation and its consequences for rock and society. Although never so billed, Ziggy was a rock opera, with plot, characters and musical and dramatic momentum. Aladdin Sane, in far less systematic fashion, works over the same themes — issuances from the Bowie schema which date back to The Man Who Sold the World. Bowie is cognizant that religion’s geography — the heavens — has been usurped, either by science or by actual beings.

Aladdin Sane

Pinups

With everyone from the Band to Don McLean doing oldies albums, the Who revisiting the Mod era, and David Bowie’s guitarist Mick Ronson’s obvious brilliance in the genre (as evidenced by his one-man Yardbirdmania on “Jean Genie”), the idea of an album re-creating mid-Sixties English rock classics seemed perfect. And every song included has been a personal favorite for years.

To Bowie they have been more — they are representative of a phase of the London scene he was very much a part of as leader of Davy Jones & the King Bees. He had the roots, perspective and proper motivation to make this album a success. Unfortunately, something went wrong in the execution.

Although many of the tracks are excellent, none stands up to the originals. That might be understandable when dealing with the Who (I doubt if they could equal their own “Anyway Anyhow Anywhere” today) or Pink Floyd. But even in 1965, any of a thousand bands could have done “Everything’s Al’ Right” as well as the Mojos, and even the McCoys did a better version of “Sorrow” than the Merseys or Bowie.

Pinups

Diamond Dogs

After a 1977 performance that still ranks among the wildest, most manic musical performances to ever hit daytime TV, Iggy Pop chats with talk show host Dinah Shore, the top-charting female singer of the ‘40s, with his collaborator pal David Bowie by his side; jazz vet Rosemary Clooney flanks Shore. Their interview is mutually respectful and endearingly sincere even as the host tries to navigate Pop’s nihilistic answers. Aiming to steer the conversation in a positive direction, she asks her guest if he’s influenced anybody, and the punk pioneer—much to everyone’s delight—nonchalantly replies, "I think I helped wipe out the '60s."

Great quote, but here’s the thing: Pop never sold enough to do that directly. Instead, it was Bowie, his most ambitious student, who revolutionized '70s music and style by uncovering the discomfort and despair of urban life that hippie idealism denied. His third consecutive UK chart-topper and U.S. Top 5 breakthrough, 1974’s *Diamond Dogs—*Bowie’s first record of original material since killing off the Ziggy Stardust character that made him an instant superstar back home—remains rooted in his still-reigning glam scene that knocked most utopian '60s rockers off the UK charts with glistening shards of pansexuality, sci-fi fantasy, and bespangled spectacle. His bleakest album until recent swansong Blackstar, Diamond Dogs is a bummer, a bad trip, "No Fun"—a sustained work of decadence and dread that transforms corrosion into celebration. Whereas Ziggy features its titular messiah, Diamond Dogs has jackals that live on corpses the way Bowie fed off rotting urban culture and reckless rock'n'roll.

Diamond Dogs