David Bowie, “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars”

Chris McJaggerly:

I’m writing in January 2016, the month of David Bowie’s death.  Essays and podcasts about Bowie are everywhere.  Most of them talk about his persona and his costumes.  Too few of them delve deeply into his music.  Bowie was a great song-writer and a great singer.

Ironically, for a rocker who used what might be called “gimmicks” to get attention, Bowie’s early music was remarkably ungimmicky and accessible.  The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars is an example.  It’s mostly mid-tempo rock songs with sing-able melodies and straight-forward rock instrumentation.  Contrary to what you might expect –if you know him only by his Ziggy-era persona — Bowie did not do primal screams like the John Lennon of this era (see Plastic Ono Band), he didn’t challenge listeners with faint or buried melodies (as the Velvet Underground did) and he was not an early adopter of the synthesizer (the synthesized Who’s Next, by a band that seems less gimmicky, came out the same year as Ziggy).  Bowie was a skinny guy in make-up and tight pants, pretending to be a guitar-playing bisexual space alien prophet, performing some pretty normal sounding rock and roll.  Normal sounding, except for the fact that it’s way better than normal.

Thematically, of course, Ziggy was not normal.  As I said, it’s about a guitar-playing bisexual space alien prophet.  Unlike some celebrated “concept” albums (I’m talking about you, Sgt. Pepper’s), the listener can follow the conceptual thread through the whole record.  The apocalypse is coming in five years, resources on earth are dwindling, the guitar-wielding prophet wants to bring the kids back to rock and roll, but at the same time he knows an alien invasion of the over-taxed planet is coming.  His disciples take the message to heart, but when the aliens arrive they can only watch as the prophet is torn apart.  That’s how Bowie described the concept to Rolling Stone, and you can hear it in the record.

Certainly it’s a ridiculous, over-the-top, dated Seventies-era story, easy to laugh at from the perch of the here and now.  But it’s told with such empathy for outcasts and weirdos, and—as mentioned—the music is so accessible that anyone who has ever felt like an outcast or a weirdo is bound to sing along.  “Rock and Roll Suicide,” the last track, is a powerhouse, with Bowie pleading with outcasts to love themselves and feel comfort in their community.  Bowie belts out “you’re not alone!” and at the end of this sci-fi rock opera, the weirdos of the world feel like he’s putting his comforting hand on their shoulders.  I wouldn’t be surprised if a few desperate, depressed kids back in 1972 didn’t change their minds about suicide after listening to Ziggy.  David Bowie must have been their hero.  He was the cool weirdo.

Ziggy is the middle album in a three record group Bowie released between 1971-1973, that also includes Hunky Dory and Aladdin Sane.  All three are must-listens.

I give Ziggy 33-1/3.

Tom Heerman:

Christ, Chris.  It’s out of 33 1/3 possible, remember?  So this is the best record ever, according to you, today.  I do love it, but I think you might be listening with a tear in your beer.  I better play it right now.

Ben Gurstelle:

I am going to assume that I came to this album a lot later than Chris or Tom.  I was aware of David Bowie as a kid, mostly through my dad’s copy of Changes One and the movie Labyrinth, but he was not, until sometime within the last decade, particularly important to me.

Tom Heerman:

It took me a few listens to begin to remember why I appreciated this record 4 and 20 years ago.  Its a crying shame that I have not played it in that long.

Chris:

Glad you cleared the obstacles to Ziggy enjoyment.  Now you’ve got a go-to classic rock album back in your quiver.

The Bowie story is amazing.  He wanted to be a rock star from the time he cut his first single in the mid-sixties as a teenager, but for years he couldn’t pull it off.  He tried to be a folky and a hard-rocker.  No traction.  So in 1972, he turned himself into this alien character and just declared that character (and implicitly, himself) to be a rock star.  And it worked.  Not only did people pay attention to Ziggy, suddenly Bowie’s back-catalog (“Changes,” “Life on Mars?,”“The Man Who Sold the World,” “Space Oddity”) got airplay.  It was like he suddenly emerged as this fully formed rock star with enough material to do a full-length show.

I can’t think of anyone else with a similar story.  Maybe Peter Frampton.  But he sucks.

Tom:

Talking of Frampton: We listened to Frampton’s Do You Feel Like We Do a few weeks ago, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, all 13 minutes.  You should check it out. It rocks like an Allman Brothers jam.  Super good guitar song, including the Talk Box thing.. “I want to thank you!”  or should I say “why want woo wank woo”.

Chris:
Do you feel?

Ben:

I am going to assume that I came to this album a lot later than Chris or Tom.  I was aware of David Bowie as a kid, mostly through my dad’s copy of Changes One and the movie Labyrinth, but he was not, until sometime within the last decade, particularly important to me.

My (far too late) introduction to this album was actually a live show in 2007.  My band was performing at “Glitter Ball,” a glam-rock-themed charity event.  We opened and played a few songs by T. Rex and Sweet.  Then, some friends of ours walked one at a time onto the stage in full Spiders from Mars regalia and proceeded to play TRAFOZSATSFM straight through.  The drummer sat down first and started playing the first bars of Five Years, and from maybe the second repetition of that simple beat I was transfixed.  When the bass, piano, and vocals kicked in I was blown away.  I rushed home after the performance – instead of doing my usually post-show drinks routine –downloaded the record and listened to it 2 or 3 times in a row that same night.  I can’t think of many other times I have had such an immediate connection with an album.  Every track can be appreciated on its own, but they work together even better. There are 11 songs on here and I’ve had 10 different favorites at one point or another (current might be “It Ain’t Easy”), but the album opener and closer might be most important.

The instrumentation and spacing in Five Years is phenomenal, slowly building to the crescendo creating a wonderful sense of anticipation, and the lyrics are cutting. The song boils over with kinetic energy as the band joins in to sing “fiiive years” with Ziggy.  After that songs ends, you know you are in for a ride.  Five Years is emblematic of the entire album, both as its thematic mission statement and in its composition and structure.  The album has the same overall structure as the song – after the Five Years prelude the story begins in earnest with Soul Love in sort of a slinky laid back groove and then progresses from there, pushing the guitars forward and the arrangements to bigger spaces over each song until it finally bursts in the noticeably faster-paced Suffragette City before settling into the coda of Rock ‘N’ Roll Suicide (which may be the best final track to an album ever).  If Five Years is a guide to where the album is going, Rock ‘N’ Roll Suicide is the summation of the saving power of music that Ziggy wants to provide.  I think, like Chris, that Ziggy probably did succeed in saving some people.

I agree that Bowie’s characters tend to get too great a share of the attention and if it weren’t for albums like this, those characters probably wouldn’t be mentioned at all.  The persona of Ziggy, however, is crucial to the impact of the album too.  Shapeshifter Bowie was able to embody the music he wanted to make; the music was the point but he personified it.  As Tom says, he sings Ziggy the song as Ziggy the character about Ziggy the rock god — Heavy.  That extra layer brings something to the songs that few others have ever even attempted to do.  I don’t know about you guys, but whenever I see Bowie as Ziggy, I hear this album.  When I see Bowie as the Thin White Duke, I hear TVC15.  Pierrot is Ashes to Ashes. The music is the character, no matter what part Bowie was playing.  Ziggy was the best of the bunch.

33 1/3 (A++).