On 3 July 1973 David Bowie was performing at the Hammersmith Odeon. Towards the end of the show he approached the microphone saying: "Not only is this the last concert of the tour - it is the last concert we will ever do." The audience reaction was instant and dramatic. A piercing cry, followed by a wave of audible dismay, tears even. The crowd had taken the announcement to mean David was retiring, when he was actually referring to the character he had been playing on the tour: Ziggy Stardust.
The fans didn't appreciate the difference. The trouble was, neither did Bowie.
The story of the rock and roll concept album is not a particularly happy one. For every 'Village Green Preservation Society' or 'The Wall' there's a 'Psychoderelict' or 'The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table'. Almost by definition, a collection of pop songs designed to tell a tale with characterisations, plot twists and high drama, is over ambitious. Unsurprisingly many, many artists have so over-reached themselves they tumble over the cliff of pretentiousness in the attempt. I'm sure every band that ever wrote a concept album was convinced their work had the brilliance to pick a careful route through a broad minefield and arrive at visionary genius. When Bowie created The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, he was as liable to disaster as Wakeman or Townsend. That he dodged each bullet, and strode over every chasm is testament to his extraordinary strengths.
Bowie's gift was never as a musician. He was an adequate guitarist and useful pianist, but he was never about the instrumentation (as Hendrix absolutely was). His songwriting was exceptional (at least until around 1983), but Bowie soared above his contemporaries in his ability to imagine and believe. It was no affectation or afterthought when David referred to himself as The Cracked Actor, because in the early seventies he was much more akin to the performers in an ancient Greek amphitheatre than a pop star. Mick Jagger always took to the stage as an exaggerated Mick, Dylan built a mysterious persona but still projected a version of Bob. They were too attached to, and impressed by, their own importance to risk anything else. For Bowie, the art lay in the creation of a fictional figure in which he then became so immersed, the original individual all but vanished.
Remember, David Bowie was an invention - his first tentative step towards the eradication of David Jones and the inception of something extraordinary. Granted, the name change was imposed to avoid confusion
with the Monkees man, but the desire was to bring fantasy to life. Before he stepped through the looking glass and emerged as Ziggy, Bowie had already worn the helmet of Major Tom - a drug addicted astronaut
floating in a tin can. It's intriguing to note this early character was a flawed human who went into space and lost his mind, whereas Ziggy was a glorious alien who came to Earth and to be corrupted by drugs, showbiz and insanity.
Space Oddity, the song in which Tom first appears, gave Bowie his breakthrough hit - which must have fuelled his confidence for cracked acting. Realising his audience would relish him all the more in disguise, he knew he had the skills to execute such a masquerade without ridicule. Before stardom (and Stardust) Bowie had studied mime under Lindsay Kemp. Now he could draw down the arts he had mastered and integrate them with his music.
Many performers adopt an alter-ego through shyness or self-doubt, but I don't believe Bowie did. For him, this was artistic and psychological experimentation - and his experiment was so successful because he believed it. Bowie didn't just play Ziggy, he was Ziggy. His approach to the character was straight out of the Lee Strasberg method school. Strasberg said: "The actor creates, with his own flesh and blood, all those things which all the arts try in some way to describe."
This is absolutely what Ziggy was about. The songs on the Ziggy Stardust album used guitars and poetry to build a dystopian world and describe a story against its backdrop. If that's all Bowie had done it would still have been a masterful effort. But David then used his body and mind to show us the living embodiment of his leading character.
If you imagine David Bowie removed the face paint and feather boas after the show, returning to his hotel and leaving Ziggy at the venue, you're wrong.
"Why leave him (Ziggy) on stage? Looking back it was completely absurd. It became very dangerous. I really did have doubts about my sanity. I can't deny that the experience affected me in a very exaggerated and marked manner. I think I put myself very dangerously near the line. Not in physical sense but definitively in mental sense."
What Bowie omits from this quote is the increasing use of cocaine which accompanied this life consuming performance. But even there he was living in parallel with his creation. Whether through narcotics or theatrical psychosis, he was very close to the edge over which we see and hear Ziggy descend.
Occasionally in rock music, the planets align and an impressive stroke of creativity is enhanced by circumstances and fortune to become transcendent. The Ziggy Stardust album allows no room for 'if onlys' or near misses. Repeated plays never reveal concealed errors or weaknesses. It hits its mark with every track, every note. You couldn't change a moment because there is nothing demanding change.
If background, timing, inspiration and sheer talent, ensured the album was a masterpiece, then Bowie's good fortune to be working with Mick Ronson, Trevor Bolder and Woody Woodmansey was almost absurd. As Bowie became Ziggy, this triumvirate became The Spiders From Mars. While the pint-drinking, football loving Ronson was unlikely to delve quite so deeply into his psyche as his boss, Mick was still the perfect foil for Stardust. From matey shoulder hugs, to Bowie fellating Ronson's Les Paul, he was every bit as essential to the show as Ziggy himself. The 'Spiders' sensational work on the Ziggy album is no small accomplishment in itself.
Very sadly, Mick Ronson died in 1993.
Although Bowie 'killed' Ziggy at that immortal show in 1973 (incidentally, it was after this gig Steve Jones and Paul Cook stole the microphones for use in their band), his ghost remained.
As his creator says "I fell for Ziggy too. It was quite easy to become obsessed night and day with the character. I became Ziggy Stardust. David Bowie went totally out the window. Everybody was convincing me that I was a Messiah, especially on that first American tour (late 1972). I got hopelessly lost in the fantasy. But Ziggy really set the pattern for my future work."
And while he felt compelled to terminate his alter-ego before his own Rock and Roll Suicide, Bowie's experiment was far from over. Aladdin Sane (in a way, Ziggy in rehab), Robert Newton (The Man Who Fell To Earth) and the Thin White Duke were all in the wings, ready to step into Stardust's footlights. Recovery obviously demanded a few more characterisations before David could regain Bowie.
Debates regarding Ziggy's origins rattle on. Did Bowie lift the idea from Marc Bolan's Zinc Alloy? Or maybe it was a reflection of his deranged friend Iggy Pop? Others propose a re-invention of the crazed, unfathomable singer The Legendary Stardust Cowboy or a means of coping with the fear of mental illness. Ultimately, it doesn't much matter. The source material is insignificant because in anyone else's hands the Ziggy Stardust concept would have been, at best a curiosity and at worst, a farce. In 1972, nobody but David Bowie could execute such an audacious pretention and make it so startlingly compelling, frighteningly convincing and creatively sublime. In fact, Bowie's powers were so potent, one could almost believe they were extraterrestrial.
