FEATURE:
David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars at Fifty
The Iconic Musician’s Greatest Album?
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THERE is definitely a case to be made…
IN THIS PHOTO: David Bowie in 1972/PHOTO CREDIT: Masayoshi Sukita
that The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars is David Bowie’s greatest album. Released on 16th June, 1972, it turns fifty very soon. I have written about it before, but I have been looking through the tracks and it acts almost like a greatest hits collection! Certainly, there are four of five of Bowie’s best songs on The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Reappraised as one of the most important and influential albums ever, the album also has one of the strongest side ones ever. With Five Years, Moonage Daydream and Starman in the first side, the second has Lady Stardust, Suffragette City and Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide! At the start of a run of albums that ranks alongside the greatest ever, maybe embodying the persona of Ziggy gave Bowie license when it came to the songs. There is something to be said about how a persona or identity can inspire musicians to write in a way they would not have if they were writing as their ‘normal self’. Although there is much debate, I feel The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars is definitely high up on the list. If you disagree about whether or not it is Bowie’s best album, you cannot deny its iconic and influential status! This Wikipedia article talks about the legacy of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars:
“Ziggy Stardust is widely considered to be Bowie's breakthrough album. Although Pegg believes Ziggy Stardust wasn't Bowie's greatest work, he states that it had the biggest cultural impact of all his records. Trynka states that besides the music itself, the album "works overall as a drama that demands suspension of disbelief", making each listener a member of Ziggy's audience. He believes that decades later, "it's a thrill to be a part of the action."
In retrospectives for The Independent and Record Collector, Barney Hoskyns and Mark Paytress, respectively, noted that unlike Marc Bolan, who became a star a year before Bowie and influenced his glam persona of Ziggy Stardust, was unable to stay in a position of stardom in the long run due to a lack of adaptability. Bowie, on the other hand, made change a theme of his entire career, progressing through the 1970s with different musical genres, from the glam rock of Ziggy Stardust to the Thin White Duke of Station to Station (1976). Hoskyns argued that through the Ziggy persona, Bowie "took glam rock to places that the Sweet only had nightmares about". Ultimate Classic Rock's Dave Swanson stated that as the public were adapting to glam, Bowie decided to move on, abandoning the persona within two years. Writing on Bowie's influence on the glam rock genre as a whole, Joe Lynch of Billboard called both Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane records that "ensured his long-term career and infamy". He argues that both albums "transcended" the genre, are "works of art", and are not just "glam classics", but "rock classics". In 2002, Chris Jones of BBC Music argued that with the album, Bowie fashioned the template for the "truly modern pop star" that had yet to be matched”.
Every track on the album has its worthy and important place. Threads, layers and stories of this epic and amazing opus, Far Out Magazine ranked the songs on The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars last year. I think Bowie’s fifth studio album is not only among his very best. It is one of the greatest albums ever released. Rolling Stone asked its readers in 2013 which Bowie album was the best. The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars claimed the top spot:
“The world has just five years left and it seems like there is no hope, but suddenly an alien rock star named Ziggy Stardust enters the body of a man and offers us salvation in our dying days. Sadly, he "took it all too far" and wound up killing himself in a "Rock and Roll Suicide." It's a story that virtually nobody has ever bothered to follow, but that hardly matters. The songs on Ziggy Stardust represent the high point of the entire glam movement. Also, Bowie was reborn onstage as Ziggy Stardust, providing a much-needed rock star in an otherwise bleak music landscape. Even better, parents hated him. Bowie has had bigger hits and more acclaimed albums, but never in his career did he seem quite as important or refreshing. This is the Bowie album that will be in the history books”.
It is interesting how various journalists react to the album and the tracks. The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars changed everything that came after it. I hope that the fiftieth anniversary of this masterpiece gets people thinking and debating. My favourite album from Bowie is Station to Station though, oddly, I think The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars is technically his best! From the imagery and persona of Ziggy Stardust to the sheer quality of the songs, together with the production from Bowie and Ken Scott, this is a historically important album. This is what SLANT said in 2004 about Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars:
“Trying to imagine popular culture without the influence of David Bowie’s copper-headed prefab rock star alien is practically impossible (or at least a lot less interesting) but the aspect of Bowie’s breakthrough album and the resulting phenomenon that usually gets overlooked is the music itself. Like Marilyn Manson’s music today (though he’s yet to come up with anything as insidiously catchy as “Hang On To Yourself,” but give him time), Bowie’s contributions to the pop music lexicon have been overshadowed by the eye shadow of his characters. Unlike some of the lesser glam acts that followed in Bowie’s platformed footsteps, the tunes on The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars, somewhat loosely held together by the concept of the Earthbound exploits of the interplanetary rock star, strangely avoid the trap of being so much dated, post-hippie nonsense.
Kicking off with the ‘50s-styled opener “Five Years,” then setting off on slinkier, more soulful territory with “Soul Love,” Bowie and band (featuring gardener-turned-guitar hero Mick Ronson) establish early on that the album could almost serve as a travelogue of the history of pop music, as seen through the eyes of both the alien protagonist and his adoring fans. You’ve got the unbridled rock ‘n’ roll hysteria of “Suffragette City” (all together now: “Wham bam, thank you ma’am!”) and “Star,” which is delivered with a no-nonsense, workmanlike sensibility by the Spiders while being carried over the top by Bowie’s amped-up croon. There’s the trippy frippery of “Moonage Daydream,” resplendent in early ‘70s hallucinatory imagery (“squawking like a big monkey bird,” indeed) and wigged out leads courtesy of Ronson and producer Ken Scott (who never really seemed to receive as much credit in shaping the sounds of Bowie’s early output as Tony Visconti would on later albums). And of course, there’s the big single: the saccharine-sweet “Starman” being the most overtly pop of the album’s 11 tracks, replete with swirly strings, cosmically-conscious lyrics and a chorus that still, some 32 years later, gets arms aloft during Bowie’s current stadium romps.
Bowie was always partial to the pomp side of pop, especially in the early phases of his recording career, and Ziggy Stardust carried all the drama of a Shakespearean play (as seen on acid, of course). “Lady Stardust” is a love song addressed to both the androgynous astro-rocker and to rock ‘n’ roll itself, with its lilting piano motif married to a stadium-sized chorus. And with the title track we have the ultimate glam rock (hell, the ultimate rock anthem), with a riff that would provide air guitarists decades of enjoyment accompanying the tale of the wayward rocker from Planet X, capped off with the dramatic tag that would become the alien’s epitaph: “And Ziggy plaaaaaayyyed…guitar!”
Still, a pop masterpiece is nothing without a killer final act, and it’s with “Rock & Roll Suicide” that Bowie draws the Ziggy saga to a close. Like the album opener, it has the innate heartrending properties of weepy, wall-of-sound shrouded pop classics of a bygone era, married to a message of the redemptive power of rock ‘n’ roll: “You’re not alone!” shrieks Bowie, shouting from some rooftop that exists in the mind’s eye of the listener, staving off the mundane of the everyday with an exhortation to give him our hands, and to follow his lead. And as Ronson tears off another lighter-waving lead and the strings swell to a final, definitive stroke, you’re sent reeling, as if you’ve made the journey back to Earth from some far-flung intergalactic locale, previously visited only in dreams. Truly timeless pop—truly timeless art in general—is transformative; you emerge somewhat different after experiencing it. And in giving in to his own imagination and creating his own world, Bowie changed ours immeasurably, and for that many a pop fan should be eternally grateful”.
It is so sad that Bowie is not around to toast and reminisce about Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars fifty years later (the legend died in 2016). Although he adopted other personas and guises through his long career, I don’t think he managed to create a character as compelling as Ziggy Stardust! I think Bowie was at a real creative peek in 1971 and 1972. Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars is a remarkable and utterly timeless work of brilliance that will shine, inspire and survive strong…
THROUGH the rest of time.