FEATURE:
Didn’t Know What Time It Was…
David Bowie’s Starman at Fifty
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THIS 28th April…
PHOTO CREDIT: EMI
it will be fifty years since the release of David Bowie’s iconic hit, Starman. I know I am going in early, but I wanted to look ahead to a classic track and a big anniversary! The lead single of his fifth studio album,. The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (which is fifty in June), it one of Bowie’s best-known and loved songs. I think that therw was a lot of curiosity about space and space travel in 1972. Elton John released Rocket Man (I Think It's Going To Be A Long, Long Time) in April 1972. In 1969, David Bowie released the Space Oddity album. It’s title cut came out in July that year. It was an exciting age of space exploration, so it is only natural artists would reflect this. I wonder how people will mark the approaching fiftieth anniversary of Bowie’s epic Starman. I want to bring in a couple of features that give us more depth and story regarding the creation and release of one of the best songs ever. Bowie Bible are first up:
“David Bowie’s ‘Starman’ single was released in the United Kingdom on 28 April 1972.
Sales were initially slow, and it was at number 41 in the charts at the time of Bowie’s game-changing Top Of The Pops appearance in early July.
Bowie had not had a hit since ‘Space Oddity’ in 1969, and many assumed that ‘Starman’ was its follow-up – despite having released several albums and singles in the interim. Yet the new single cast off the image of the old long-haired singer-songwriter, and Bowie’s glam image spawned a legion of imitators.
The success of ‘Starman’ lifted the sales of Bowie’s back catalogue, and led to reissues of some of his earlier works. It also guaranteed interest in The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars, which was an instant hit upon its release.
Then ‘Starman’, backed with ‘Suffragette City’, was released as a single on 28 April in the UK. Suddenly we were on the radio again, and when the Ziggy Stardust album itself came out on 6 June it went straight in at Number 7, peaking at Number 5. Finally we were headline news.
Mick Woodmansey
Spider From Mars: My Life With Bowie”.
Almost fifty years after its release, there is still speculation about Starman and its origins. As Ziggy Stardust, Bowie created this alter-ego (one of many) where he was almost alien and subterranean. Whereas Ziggy was retired in 1973, this brief incarnation was among the most fascinating. Starman is one of Bowie’s greatest moments. Far Out Magazine provide some lucid and rich detail about a song that has taken on a life of its own:
“Ziggy Stardust once had a dream and, in his dream, he was advised by something called ‘the infinites’ to write a message of hope, that despite the world ending in a matter of five years, Ziggy would have to deliver the news of belief to the youth of the masses, explaining that they are now the leaders of the world – the future. This ‘message of hope’ is David Bowie’s second and milestone hit, ‘Starman’.
In an interview with the American writer William Burroughs for the Rolling Stone, Bowie explained that he wanted to turn Ziggy Stardust into a musical. “The time is five years to go before the end of the earth. It has been announced that the world will end because of a lack of natural resources. The album was released three years ago,” said Bowie to Burroughs.
When he wrote his fifth and life-changing album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, he had envisioned creating a musical out of the album. Within this context, imagine ‘Starman’ as the central musical theme of the show; it is played at the beginning of the musical and at the end of it.
The song truly solidified Bowie’s character of Ziggy Stardust within the minds of impressionable youths as the rock alien’s anthem. ‘Starman’ was the first single for the record and would secure Bowie’s imminent rise to fame. The story of ‘Starman’ is told from the perspective of someone listening to Ziggy Stardust’s message from the sky.
Bizarrely enough, despite this song being Ziggy’s manifesto, it was the last song to be written for the record, almost as an afterthought. He wrote it in response to the head of RCA, Dennis Katz’s request for a single. It would end up replacing a cover of Chuck Berry’s ‘Round and Round’. It was written in the same session as the tragic denouement of the album: ‘Rock n’ Roll Suicide’.
“So, we came out of the studio and in about a month he had written ‘Starman’ and we were back in the studio by January,” Spiders From Mars’ drummer, Woody Woodmansey recalled. “It was an obvious single! I think Mick and I went out in the car after David played it for us the first time, and we were already singing it, having only heard it only once.”
He continued: “It might seem strange, but we just hadn’t done anything that commercial before. I always thought Bowie had that ability, that any time he felt like it, he could write a hit single. He just had that feeling about him. I think he chose not to right through his career. If he felt like it, he would write one, and if he didn’t, he wouldn’t. That was just the impression of working with him. It’s not a fluke to be able to write all those amazing tunes.”
How did Bowie write ‘Starman’? Legend has it that he took the octave jump in Judy Garland’s ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’ and adapted it to the chorus of ‘Starman’. When Bowie performed it at the Rainbow Theater in August of 1972, he would sing “there’s a starman, over the rainbow”.
1972 was glam rock’s year, and Bowie paid full attention to it; after all, he would play an integral part in influencing it. The key ingredients that went into the song were T-Rex’s ‘Telegram Sam’ and the Motown song ‘You Keep Me Hanging On’ by The Supremes, which is where Bowie got the idea for the ‘morse code’ sound from and uses it on the instrumental bridge leading into the chorus. Spiders from Mars’ Mick Ronson, while he doesn’t always receive the credit that’s due, helped Bowie tremendously with the arrangements of his songs, and ‘Starman’ is no different”.
Ahead of its fiftieth anniversary on 28th April, I wanted to write about Starman. A song that is beloved by Bowie and non-Bowie fans alike, I think we will be discussing this incredible anthem (if that is the right word?) for another fifty years – so strong and compelling is Starman. A magnificent opus from an artist who sadly, is no longer with us, through Starman, the iconic David Bowie…
WILL live forever.