David Bowie – The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars

I was in the Army when David Bowie swayed across America ... androgynous, beautiful, graceful, and stoked to the gills with anything that was set before him.  And me [?], I didn’t just want to be David Bowie, I wanted to be a boy, posing as a girl, stoked to the gills with anything that would make me feel no pain.  And then I laughing at how silly this all sounded.  Here I was, a girl, in the Army, uniformed like a boy, ducking bullets, and side stepping real pyrotechnics ... with a supply closet full of all the pharmaceuticals I could ever hope for ... in Vietnam, a country known for the best illegal substances the world had ever seen.  And on our bases the music was loud, and as I sat on the end of my cot, rubbing my hands through my short cropped hair, gazing at this album cover, I realized that I was David Bowie, in perhaps a more surreal setting than even he could have ever imagined.

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars was such a musical eclipsing event that this album would never be equaled by David again.  The record has all of the hooks, a great story line, and though I’m sure few would consider this to be a concept album, it certainly was.  David assembled a wonderfully fresh group musicians displaying stunningly free and conceptual ideas ... and most of all, it was theater at it’s very best.

There’s not alot I have to say about this release that hasn't been said over the last thirty years, other than it must be part of your musical collection ... as much as Sgt. Pepper or Let It Bleed.  David found a way of magically transposing Lou Reed’s street wise antics, and mixing them with the space age fanfare of the day [, we had just walked on the moon a couple of years before], and the whole world stood at a door over which a sign read, ”ALL IS POSSIBLE.”  And for a brief moment, while Ziggy roamed free, before his capsule crashed and burned, we all believed it was true.

*** The Fun Facts: The location of the film shoot. The Ziggy Stardust photo was taken outside of the K West Company at 23 Heddon Street, a small, block-long dead end street in central London, just west of Carnaby Street, with the artwork being created by Terry Pastor of Main Artery.  The building has since been painted white.

The phone booth David is standing in on the back of the jacket is rumored to have been auctioned or sold to an American fan in the late Seventies, though where it is now is anyone’s guess.  At the time of the photo shoot, the phone number in the UK was +44 0207 7348 719.

The character was inspired by British rock 'n' roll singer Vince Taylor, whom David Bowie met after Taylor had had a breakdown and believed himself to be a cross between a god and an alien. However, Taylor was only part of the blueprint for the character, other influences included the cult musician Legendary Stardust Cowboy and Kansai Yamamoto, who designed the costumes Bowie wore during the tour.  An alternative theory is that, during a tour, Bowie developed the concept of Ziggy as a melding of the persona of Iggy Pop with the music of Lou Reed, producing "the ultimate pop idol".  A girlfriend recalled his "scrawling notes on a cocktail napkin about a crazy rock star named Iggy or Ziggy", and on his return to England he declared his intention to create a character "who looks like he's landed from Mars".

Review by Jenell Kesler