Friday 15 June 2012

Boys, with toys, electric irons and TVs. Happy 40th Birthday to Bowie's 'Ziggy Stardust'

Continuing my spirited but sporadic autobiographical trawl through the Bowie back catalogue, it seems fitting that we give his 1972 breakthrough album ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars’ (usually referred to as just ‘Ziggy Stardust’ or ‘Ziggy’) the Chairman’s once over, considering the album celebrates it’s 40th Anniversary this week. Crikey – 40 years?


40th Anniversary celebrations abound. Some of which would put the recent spectacle of HRH’s Jubilee to shame. I for one would have loved to have gone and had my sagging, jacket potato face photographed in Heddon Street, just off Regent Street, where the iconic front cover photo of Bowie was taken, standing under the ‘K West’ sign (no longer there) guitar in hand. I didn’t make it to Heddon Street, but I did manage to make it into the brim of Drew Crow Star’s top hat during his excellent rendition of ‘Moonage Daydream’ recorded and filmed as his own tribute (it's on You Tube!) That will do nicely.

When I first heard Ziggy I was 8 years old and it would have been early in 1973 (Bowie of course was by that time a global superstar, just about to release the follow up; ‘Aladdin Sane’ and would, just a few months, later kill off Ziggy completely in a shock announcement at the end of a gig at the Hammersmith Odeon – but such was the pace at which the great man moved in those days) Although by that time I already loved music and records genrally, I was, lets face it, only 8, and therefore concepts, complex lyrics and quality of production would have been lost on me for a good few years yet, but I had already been blown away by the legendary Top of The Pops performance of ‘Starman’ the previous year and I already owned my first Bowie single, a copy of ‘The Jean Genie’, which was a gift from a Catholic missionary priest and friend of my Mum’s (he sent it to me in the post, along with a copy of ‘Burning Love’ by Elvis for my sister Maria) but that is, of course, another story.

My brother Brian – a regular in these blog tales of mine, was sent down one evening to St Paul’s in Wood Green to meet me from cubs and of course walked me home along the alley-way alongside the railway lines – the alley-way we were under no circumstances allowed to walk along – and said something like “right then Col; I’m going to smoke a cigarette. You are not going to say anything to Mum and Dad and when we get home I’m going to let you listen to my Ziggy Stardust LP” Seemed like a result to me.

Much as I’d love to go on and on about how it ‘blew me away and changed my life’ etc, it didn’t really - at first – certainly not as much as the fear and thrills on first hearing as ‘Diamond Dogs’ (see earlier entry) or the tears of anger on my first hearing of ‘Low’ (see future entry) but it was still a very special experience. Looking back, that cunningly contrived piece of (I have to say – having never been a snitch – unnecessary) bribery by my beloved brother was the real beginning of my love of Bowie’s music and that first listen became a second, third, etc until poor old Brian probably got fed up with hearing the album because I played it so much.

Nowadays I make no secret of it, Ziggy is not my favourite Bowie album (fond of it as I am). I think he had made better before it (Man Who Sold The World) and would go on to make better after it (where do I begin?) but I am pretty sure it is his best album – if that makes sense. Forty years on, in an era where, sadly, Bowie has not released a new album in nearly a decade, it continues to be massively influential and a very important record, containing some of Bowie’s finest songs; ‘Moonage Daydream’, ‘Rock And Roll Suicide’, ‘Starman’ and ‘Suffragette City’ to name just a few.

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to see the great Mike Joyce doing a DJ set at a photo exhibition preview at Camden Proud. He played ‘Suffragette City’ early on in the set and it was enough for me to just look around the room and see the affect it still has on kids of all ages. I also remember like it was yesterday – of course – when the Ziggy album was 20 years old back in 1992; at that time Nicky Campbell was a Radio 1 DJ doing the 10 – 12 slot (not sure where Peel was) and he described Ziggy as ‘the Sgt Pepper of glam rock’ I thought that statement was a bit crass at the time and still do, however, if you consider that The Beatles initial idea of Sgt Pepper was to create a fictional band behind which they could hide themselves, then I suppose the comparison makes sense.

Ziggy Stardust was the first of many personae and characters behind which the real David Bowie (if there ever was or is a ‘real’ Bowie) hid. All he had to do was give these characters life, which he did, astonishingly.

So, a very happy 40th birthday to this fine record. If you haven’t heard Ziggy for a while, give it a birthday listen. If you have never heard it – now is the time. Just remember to pay good attention to the strict instruction on the LP sleeve;

‘To be played at maximum volume’

More to follow…….