Chapter Five: Ziggy Stardust (1971-1972)

and he had good reason. It was September one and he was about to play his first full band gig in months. The friars Aylesbury was one of the coolest venues outside of London, known for his discerning and enthusiastic crowd. Now it was half full with four hundred punters who shelled out fifty pence to see a guy who hadn't had a hit in two years. Even worse, David brought a new and untested group, Trevor Boulder on base, Woody Woodman's on drums, McK ronson on lead, guitar for now.

They didn't have a name. No one knew it at the time, but the Spiders from Mars were making their concert debut. David took the stage first. His androgynous attire and long feminine hair drew gasps from the crowd. They place space audity early on in order to, as he says, get it over with as quickly as possible. It's a bold move to do, is one and only hit right off the bat, but the crowd stays with him. The atmosphere feels intimate, like a living room. The songs get

more up tempo, and the momentum begins to build. Bowie can feel it. His body floods with relief, joy beaming from his face. He packs the rest of the set with songs from his recently completed album, Hunky Dorry, Oh You Pretty Things, Changes and Queen Bitch. The record isn't even out yet, but the crowd eats it up. Bowie's nerves are gone. It's working. They close with a breakneck cover of the Velvet Undergrounds Waiting for the Man, before Bowie strides off stage, arms raised than triumph like a

victorious prize fighter. He's greeted backstage by a handful of fans, including sixteen year old Chris Needs, a future rock journalist and passionate member of the local Bowie fan club. Bowie gives him a warm hello and the two get the talking. His confidence returned, David makes a declaration that falls somewhere between ludicrous boast and statement of fact. I'm gonna be a huge rock star, he tells Needs. Next time you

see me, I'll be totally different. Bowie makes good on his promise four months later when he returned to the Friars Aylesbury on January two. Tickets are now sixty pence to see Bowie, now amusingly, if not humbly, billed as the most beautiful person in the world. The audience has doubled since last time, with many kids making the hour trek from London. Among them are Freddie Mercury and Roger Taylor, looking for inspiration for their new band Queen. They get

more than they bargained for. The lights dimmed. A proto techno version of Ode to Joy from Stanley Kubrick's a clockwork orange blares from the p A system. The music fills the musty old space building to an ecstatic futuristic frenzy of sound and strobe lights. Out of the blinding glare, three figures appear. It's Bowie's banned, glammed up in their new metallic cat suits modeled after the Gang of Drugs from a clockwork orange. They've launched into their opener, Hang

onto yourself, as Bowie himself struts on stage. But is it Bowie? Who is? This other worldly vision with spiky red hair and unnaturally powered complexion, but diamond patterned onesie and red wrestling boots had people at a loss. It was soon apparent that this wasn't David Bowie at all. It was Ziggy Stardust. It was also new, this ambitious and audacious blend of costume, choreography and drama, all in the context of a rock and roll show. And then,

of course, there were the songs themselves. Tie was that become practically holy scripture to pop fans across the globe five years Suffragette City and Starman all heard for the very first time, live and in the flesh. The atmosphere was electric as they kicked off their slow burning curtain closer another new one called rock and Roll Suicide. You're Wonderful give me your hands, Bowie pleaded. At the climactic coda, the crowd raised their arms in a spontaneous display of solidarity.

You're not alone, he wailed, and neither was. He Let the children boogie, he'd proclaimed, and the children responded in kind. Backstage was a madhouse as fans swarmed his dressing room. Some demanded to know where he cut his hair, others where he got his clothes. Some just wanted to touch him, greet him, thank him. One girl was so overcome with emotion that she punched him. Chris Needs was among the crowd. Bowie spotted him right away and waved him over, planting

a playful kiss on his head. Told you I'd be different, laughed Bowie. Or was it gigg A star is born? Proclaimed the local paper the next day. David Bowie wasn't one the trade in cliches, but the headline didn't lie. The effects of that night would ripple outward, touching on every aspect of popular culture, not just music, but film, fashion, social and sexual morays, and the very nature of fame itself. For many, the friars Aylesbury Show was the night the

seventies began. Nothing would ever be the same for rock and roll again, nothing would ever be the same for Day of It either. Hello and welcome to Off the Record, the show that goes beyond the songs and into the hearts and minds of rock's greatest legends. I'm your host, Jordan run Todd. This season explores the life, or rather lives of David Bowie. Today we're gonna discuss the rise

of Ziggy star Dust. Enough said right, The messianic space alien would change David's life and millions of others forever. So turn it up. This episodes made to be played at maximum volume. David Bowie might have been English, but Ziggy Stardus was born in America. The place had mesmerized David as a boy. Now, as an adult, the draw was even stronger. In many ways, The US was Bowie's spiritual home. Gleefully excessive, larger than life, and filled with contradictions.

You could be whoever you wanted there. It was a nation of opportunity, and David was always on the lookout for those. He made his first visit to the Promised Land in January of one on a pr trip. Now in early September, he was going back to inc a new record deal with Our c A. The label was home to Elvis Presley, with whom David shared a birthday. David saw himself as heir to the King of Rocks throne. As soon as the deal was finalized, he called his mother Peggy, told her he was about to be bigger

than Elvis. The new deal was the master work of David's new manager, Tony Defrees, a young but ruthless London entertainment clerk. Most people with one of two reactions to this aggressive but deceptibly soft spoken man. He either feared him and liked him, or feared him and didn't like him.

De Freeze all but worshiped Elvis. Presley's manager, a self styled Colonel Tom Parker, the former Carnival Barker, had transformed Presley into the biggest act on the planet through a mix of audacity, vision and a total lack of scruples. He had a favorite expression, I want everything bigger than everybody. The Frieze was hell bent on following in Colonel Tom's footsteps by making Bowie the new Elvis and making himself very,

very rich. De Frize was just as flamboyant as Colonel Tom pairing huge fur coats with an ever present cigar, and he was just a slippery in business. This earned De Freeze the not so affectionate nickname Deep Freeze. It would take some time before David actually read the fine print of the management deal he guilelessly signed with the Freeze, sowing the seeds of financial chaos that would plague him throughout his commercial peak. But for now, David wasn't concerned.

The Freeze had showed him a piece of paper. They illustrated the fact that he was already a millionaire technically. Sure, the hits were hypothetical at this point and the money merely conceptual, but the plan was in place. All they had to do was do it. Since David was already a millionaire on paper, the Freeze advised him to start acting like it. What is a celebrity really a star is simply would others perceive you to be. From now on, David would travel by limousine. A bodyguard was hired to

ward off non existent crowds. It was a classic case of fake it till you make it. As David would later recall, Tony Defreese had this idea that if we just told the world that I was super huge and entreated me as though I were, then something might happen. Interviews and press access were strictly limited, not like journals were beating down their door anyway. Unauthorized photographers were forbidden.

It was a technique borrowed from the old school Hollywood studio system, creating a garbo esque air of mystique distance. After all breeds demand, David himself put his years of celebrity spotting to good use. He adopted a regal persona, pausing at doors and waiting for others to open them. A star can never be bothered with such trivialities. To the world at large, he was essentially a nobody, but his drummer, Woody Woodman's, they would later say, David would

eat breakfast as a superstar. When he had first gone to New York in early n David had stayed in the Times Square Holiday Inn, but when he traveled there that September to sign his new r c A deal, he'd been booked into the Warwick, a plush midtown hotel frequented by Elvis and the Beatles. Strolling past the nearby Radio City Music Hall, David casually told all on ear shot that he'd play there soon. It seemed ridiculous, but

in eighteen months he would. While in New York, David visited some new friends, a motley crew of colorful actors, drag queens, and assorted speed freaks. They had met a few weeks earlier when this band of brash New Yorkers arrived on the British shores to shock queen and country with a controversial play called Pork. It's been described somewhat

uncharitably as an orgy with already dialogue. The script had been written by Andy Warhol, called from over two hours of recorded phone conversations with ultra hip factory scensters who also made up the cast. The plot, as much as it had one, was jam packed with full frontal nudity, masturbation, homosexuality on stage, douching, and simulated fecal consumption with chocolate pudding.

Something in is the real Thing. Though it earned a flattering review in the New York Times, the show proved too much for even the downtown scene and closed after just two weeks. When the cast arrived in England that August, the stage of brief run of the production, it was like a bomb of bad taste that exploded over London. The pork performers were gleefully provocative, both on stage and off. As far as they were concerned, even the local drag

queens were practically nuns to them. The British capital had an almighty stick up its rear and was in need of a good shake up. One actress flashed her bare breasts outside the Queen Mother's residence. What's the big deal? She asked. The crowd of Fleet Street reporters who had gathered the Queen's got him. It seemed only natural that such free spirited attention seekers would find their way to David. In fact, they were some of the only Americans who

actually knew who he was. They had come across David's first major profile and Rolling Stone that spring, the one familiar with his music. They were struck by the photos of David looking his androgynous best with his long hair and Mr Fish dress. So when cast member Lee Black Children's came across an ad for one of david shows, he decided to check him out. Philip castmates Cherry Vanilla and Jane County came along from the ride. They got in for free by posing as members of the American

music press, earning them prime seats down front. To their great disappointment, they found not a fellow freak, but a folky in baggy pants and a floppy hat, performing a somewhat lackluster acoustic set with Mick Ronson. Jane County later likened him the Joan bayaz On Downers. Bowie, to his credit, recognized his guests and introduced them to the crowd before playing his song Andy Warhol. In their honor, Cherry Vanilla showed her appreciation by standing up and flashing the crowd. Overall,

their first impression to David was not great. Their disappointment was compounded when they actually met face to face after the show. They liked his wife Angie just fine. She was, like them, a bold and fearless American outgoing in the extreme, but they're regarded David as a drip who mostly kept to himself to surprisingly drab hippie at or was it odds with their elaborate makeup, gaudy glitter and sexy sleeves. Out of politeness, they invited the Bowiees to catch a

performance of Pork the next day at the Roundhouse. To David, the show was nothing less than a revelation. Just three years earlier, British theater was subjected to a censorship board. Now these fabulously dressed New Yorkers were flouting every taboo, taking the underground above ground. David and Angie savored the outrageousness. Clearly rules were a thing of the past. David and Angie invited the cast to lunch at their Hadn't Hall home a few days later. Instead of David the Drip,

they met David Bowie for the first time. He came out of his shell, playing the consummate host and leading the conversation towards his grandest theatrical fantasies. They found the kindred spirit. David's new friends would later marvel at his ability to turn his charm off and on. Able to appear and disappear in a crowd at will, these fact red Denizens were characters in the true sense of the word. They were always on performing for everyone, even if it

was just each other. They seemed to transcend the motion and even their own humanity, becoming something bigger. They were, to use Warhol's word superstars. To hear them tell it, David became their new pet project. We kind of took him under our wing. We all decided to help him out. Jane County would later say, you know, glam them up, make him more outrageous. These full time artificial extroverts helped

inspire David to create a new persona for himself. Little Davy Jones from Bromley had come this far as David Bowie, But who could he be next? David pondered this on his trip to New York that September, where he met up with the Port crowd on their home turf. They even brought him to the factory to say hello to their patron. Far from being one of the great artistic summits of the seventies, David Bowie's meeting with Andy Warhol

was by all accounts pretty painful. Secure already at the factory had been ramped up since Warhol was nearly killed in the night assassination attempt. After ringing a doorbell marked do not ring, David and company were grilled by the guards. The reception was just as chilly when he was finally introduced to Warhol himself, who was inexplicably clad and jobber's high laced boots and a riding crop. I met this man who was the living dead. David remembered he offered

Warhol a friendly handshake. Warhol drew back. This guy's reptilian David thought neither man was known for being particularly chatty, and Warhol thwarted any attempts at small talk. This was merely his socially awkward way, but David took it personally. He desperately wanted to be taken seriously by Warhol and was deeply hurt that he wasn't embraced as an artistic peer. David tried to break the ice by playing the yet to be released Hunky Dorry track Andy Warhol in his honor.

Warhol listened dispassionately before wandering away. Minutes later, one of the factory lackeys informed David that Andy hated it. The only thing that seemed to impress Warhol where David's bright yellow patent leather shoes, a gift from his friend and musical rival, Mark Bowan. Warhol was so intrigued that he grabbed his polaroid and began photographing them obsessively, jabbering about

shoe design the whole time. Before he left, David took part in one of Andy's famous screen tests where guests are placed in front of a camera and encouraged to do whatever comes to mind. David thought back to his miming days with Lindsay Kemp and acted out his own disembowment, ripping out his guts bit by bit. It was pretty much how he felt about the visit. Andy stood off camera, murmuring, oh that's nice in a sickly sing song. David's meeting

with another Warhol associate, Lou Reid, went marginally better. Lou had been one of David's ultimate rock heroes since he first got his hands on an advanced copy of the Velvet Undergrounds debut back in six He devoured the album and even incorporated several songs and was early set, making him likely the first person in England to cover rawl rockers like Waiting for the Man in White Light, White Heat. David had thought he met Read during his previous visit

to New York when he caught a Velvet show. It was only after that he realized Lou had left the band and the man he had been showering with praise was actually his replacement, Doug Yule. Now he was sharing dinner with the real Lou Read, but he was barely a shadow of his former self. Since leaving the Velvet Underground, Lou had effectively retired from the music world, moving back home with his parents on Long Island and taking a job as a typist that his father's accountancy firm for

forty dollars a week. He was clearly going through a bad patch, and David found them drunk and sullen. Not even some flirtatious whispers from David could bring Lou out of his dark mood. That night, the pair ended up at Max's Kansas City, the dive bar of choice for the downtown glitterati. On any given night, Debbie Harry might be your waitress, or you'd share a bathroom line with

Leamas Burrows, Alan Ginsburg or Robert Rauschenberg. The walls were lined with art worth millions today, donated by poor but talented customers too hard up to pay off their bar tabs. It didn't take money to get into Max's Kansas City. It took style. One patron would remember, people looked different, but everyone looked right. Upstairs was a venue where The Velvet Underground had been the house band, and later a young Bob Marley would make his New York debut opening

for an equally green Bruce Springsteen. But the back room was the inner sanctum. This was where Andy Warhol and his Factory superstars held court at their round table. Dan Flavin's massive fluorescent light sculpture permanently bathed the room and a sinister but flattering blood red glow. It looked like a hip and beautiful version of hell, where the elegant

would get elegantly wasted. Lu departed the scene uncharacteristically early that night, but David was about to meet another of his heroes, the man who had one day described as his twin Adam Iggy Pop. He'd been turned onto the Detroit Live Wire during his first trip to America earlier in the year, and was instantly entranced by the dark

and raw rock from his band, The Stooges. More than just their sound, David was fascinated by Iggy's persona born Jim Osterberg, this shortened shy intellectual had built himself the ultimate rock and roll vehicle, an uninhibited diet Nitian demon capable of unleashing a torrent of noise and destruction. His animalistic stage antics were already legendary, including but not limited

to vomiting, nudity, self mutilation, and inciting riots. Bowie had cited Iggy as his favorite singer in a recent British interview, but now Iggy had fallen on hard times. Drug abuse in general bad behavior forced the Stooges record label to drop them, and the group soon split. Iggy felt deeper into heroin and bounced from crisis to crisis. O d s Ban crashes and that time he got stranded in the rough Detroit how Projects wearing a pink tutu. Long story.

His worsening addiction left and barely able to function, and by the summer of seventy one he was crashing at his ex manager's New York apartment. He was there, sprawled out on the couch in and opiate Hayes when he got the call to come down the Maxes and meet this visiting englishman who had spoken so highly of him in the British press. Iggy had no idea who Bowie was, besides, he was too engrossed in the old black and white

Jimmy Stewart movie on the TV. But after the third phone call, he begrudgingly legged it down the max Is just before closing time. The meeting changed his life and David's too. They connected on two levels. They're self created, larger than life performance personas and the quiet, intelligent music nerds they masked by dawn, they were firm friends. Over a long breakfast at the Warwick. The next morning, David convinced Iggy, who was going on his third night without sleep,

to come to London and signed with Tony Defrees. David returned to England, inspired by his new friends and the bridled creativity of the New York underground. He hold up in his own version of Warhol's factory, Hadden Hall, to begin assembling his own custom made superstar, Sinky Stardust. In the annals of rock and roll history, the band Arnold

Corns seldom gets a mention. This is hardly surprising. They released just two singles between ninety one and two, both of which are mediocre at best, and both of which sank like stones on the chart. But despite their total lack of commercial success and a truly horrendous name, Arnold Corns deserves recognition. Why Because the band was the prototype for Siggy Stardust. It all started in the spring of nineteen seventy one, just after David returned from his very

first promotional trip to the US. Borrowing a page from Andy Warhol's playbook, David endeavored to create his own superstar from scratch. The band would be his human canvas. David would write the songs, choose the clothes, even picked their new names. It was an inspired move with no risk to his own career. David could experiment to his heart's content, discarding ideas that didn't work and cherry picking the ones

that did. For himself. For a frontman, David recruited the handsome and charismatic Freddie Barretti, a nineteen year old budding clothing designer he knew from London's gay club scene. David rechristened him Rudy Valentino and steered him into the studio with a ragtag group of musicians he dubbed Arnold Corn's, allegedly inspired by David's favorite Pink Floyd song Arnold Lane.

Freddie Barretti may have looked like Adonis in hot pants, but it quickly became apparent that he couldn't sing a note, and David ultimately handled most of the lead vocals himself. They tackled two of his new songs moon Age, day Dream and Hang Onto Yourself. Both tunes were destined for greatness as standout tracks on the rise and fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars, but these early versions were hampered by sluggish tempos and meek vocals. To

be blunt, the songs needed a little star dust. Arnold Corens was a commercial flop, but it was by no means a failure. It allowed David to toy with alter egos and high concept pop. David first began talking about Ziggy Stardust during that same initial trip to the States in the Winner of Fittingly, it was in Hollywood, that land of make believe in movie stars, where anything seemed possible. The idea took shape on hotel stationary and cocktail napkins.

It was initially conceived There's a Broadway style production with the score serving as a new album for Bowie. Rock and roll had become disgustingly dull. It embraced showmanship, but not true theatricality. Despite all the supposed rock operas out there, elements like clothes, set design, lights, dance, and acting, if they were attended to, it all retreated as secondary to the music, David wanted to do them all and better

than anyone. He had recently caught a performance by Alice Cooper, the latest gender bending shock rocker on the scene, and he was less than impressed. In fact, he was embarrassed for Alice and all that business with an electric chair, straight jacket and even a boa constrictor. It all seems so obvious. I think he's trying to be outrageous, David Crowd. You can see him, poor dear, with his red eyes sticking out in his temple, straining. He tries so hard.

I find him very demeaning. It's very premeditated. Same with David's friend of me, Mark Boland, who had recently traded Tolkien inspired folk pop for down and dirty, leather clad rock. He'd logged a remarkable ten weeks at number one with his back to back hits Hot Love and Get It On, a fact that piste David off to no end. Bowland's a feminine public persona and outlandish retro tinge stage get

up seemed awfully familiar to him. David borrowed ideas liberally, but he didn't have appreciate when ideas were borrowed from him back When Ziggy started, us was barely a glimmer. David was already boasting about his plans to the press. Our news stage act will be quite outrageous, but very theatrical, he said. It's going to be costumed and choreographed, quite different to anything anyone else has tried to do before. This is going to be quite new. No one has

ever seen anything like this before. It was a notion derived in part from Andy Warhol, who used his painting career to springboard into film and music. Warhol incorporated both into large scale happenings, creating some of the first full scale multimedia events. David wanted to go even further. His performance would become concept art. He wouldn't just exhibit a fantasy, he would inhabit that fantasy. Getting out there and just

singing songs was, in a word, boring. People don't want to recital, they want to show, and David promised to deliver the full package. I'm the last person to pretend that I'm a radio, he said. I'd rather go out and be a color television set. The problem was he just wrapped an album that didn't lend itself to such an ambitious premise. Whatsoever. Hunky Dory was a masterclass of song craft, a tuneful, masterful blend of folk, blues and

beatlesque pop, idiosyncratic yet accessible. It was destined to be a classic, but the majority of the songs didn't translate to a live setting. Even Bowie's band felt the tracks lack a certain heft, a gravitas to get the fans on their feet. Simply put, it didn't exactly rock so far. The standout live numbers seemed to be the one about

life on Mars m hmm. The problem was eventually solved by record label Avarice our Cia were eager to cash in on their latest investment, even though Hunky Dorry was more than a month away from release. They wanted more product from Bowie, so he returned to the studio to tackle a new stock pile of songs bearing the influence of his new friends from the Stooges In the Velvet Underground. David issued a word of caution the producer Ken Scott, who had overseen the piano center Hunky Dory. I don't

think you'll like this next album, he told Ken. It's much more rock and roll. Sessions began at London's Trident Studios in November and continued for the next two weeks. David moved fast and got bored easily. Willam bam, thank you ma'am. Indeed, the boys in the band had only two or three takes to learn a new song before Bowie would declare, no, it's not working and move on.

Mick Ronson, playing his usual role of orchestrator, had a habit of finishing his instrumental arrangements in the toilet stall ten minutes before recordings due to begin. The results were lively, fresh and unforgettable. Though it's touted as one of the greatest concept albums of all time, the Rise and Fall of Ziggy, Stardust and the Spiders from Mars was never conceived as such. The records working title was Round and Round, named after a Chuck Berry cover included on an early

track listing. So was a cover of Jacques Brel's Port of Amsterdam, as well as Bowie's own Velvet gold Mine and Holy Holy all great tracks, but they don't have much to do with Ziggy and the Spiders from Mars. It Ain't Easy, which did make it on the album was actually a leftover from the Hunky Dory dates. According to Ken's Scott and members of the band, David never talked about any sort of storyline while they were in

the studio. David himself would admit as much, saying he broke up the album with songs that didn't have anything to do with the story of Ziggy, rather than any specific narrative. Ziggy was first and foremost a collection of songs that felt cohesive, just like any other good album, unified by theme more than anything else. But gradually, with some creative sequencing, a loose plot started to emerge. Aliens

were one of David's enduring passions. It stretched back the childhood when he'd sneaked downstairs after bedtime to watch episodes of the BBC's Quatermass Experience Ament on TV. The pioneering sci fi show became one of David's very favorites and sent his imagination into overdrive. As a boy, he was

sure that aliens were watching him, studying his habits. He began to wonder if he too might be one of the Light People, an alien bred race of super people who supposedly include luminaries like Galileo Churchill and Isaac Newton. By the late sixties, David was contributing to a London UFO newsletter. He occasionally won spacecraft spotting on his roof, pointing a wire coat hanger at the sky for long stretches.

He put a stop to this when a neighbor shouted up jokingly asking if he got good television reception, but the subject continued to fascinate him and it showed up frequently in his new songs. R c A Execs heard an early ascetate version of the record and asked the age old question, where's the single. The album was all well and good, but to their ears, it lacked something

catchy enough to scale the all important hip parade. Never won the shirt from a challenge, David went off and wrote a song to order, perhaps to tease the suits. It Coyleie references his one and only hit, Space Oddity, but Starman would surpass it in sales and reputation. It remains a perfect pop song, fusing elements of t Rex's Hot Love singalong breakdown with the Morse Code guitar figure

from The Supremes You Keep Me Hanging On. It showcases David's inimitable gift for melody and delivery, plus Mick Ronson's rhapsodic score. Starman is also reminiscent of Judy Garland's Over the Rainbow, especially the euphoric octave leap on the chorus that sends the song into orbit like Rainbow for Garland, Starman would ultimately become David Bowie's signature tune. With the arrival of Starman, the previously nebulous narrative fell into place.

The story centered around a visionary poet named Ziggy who attempts to save Earth headed towards destruction, only to be deified and ultimately just stroyed by ego and rock and roll excess. The rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars was David's monument to the outsider,

but it didn't totally come from nowhere. The Beatles had pioneered the meta idea of an act portraying a fictitious group on Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band The Who had made their rock opera Tommy about a young Messiah, but neither had told their tale with the same level of style and total commitment as David Bowie. The Ziggy Stardust LP was an insightful comment on the rock album as an art form, while simultaneously perfecting the art form.

It tackled a dazzling array of compelling themes, from the nature of fame to the apocalypse, the notion of extraterrestrial life, and organized religion. The plot line suited the uncertainty of the age by two. The hippie optimism of the sixties that evaporated in his place was violent social unrest coupled with economic and ecological uncertainty. England was avage by a recession,

leading to record breaking unemployment and near constant strikes. The nation's cities were still littered with bomb sites left over from the Second World War too many. The world seemed dark and cold, a modern dystopia not far off from the world of Ziggy. Perhaps Bowie really did believe we only had five years left. I'm really just a photostat machine, he said in nineteen. I pour out what has already been fed in. I merely reflect what's going on around me.

But Bowie also looked inward to create his fantasy, drawing on a lifetime of passions, from Little Richard and Lou Reed to T. S. Eliott and Jacques Brel. A clockwork, Orange and Pork and the Quatermass experiment blended into one humanoid form. David had crafted the perfect anti hero for the seventies. But the record was just the start, a mere audio document of a much bigger premise. David was determined to make Ziggy start Us the living, breathing entity.

For the next eighteen months, he would be Ziggy, more or less, constantly sacrificing himself to give his creation life. David once claimed that the character came to him in a dream, but Ziggy's origins were a little more terrestrial than that. When composing the story of a starman who fell to Earth, David was inspired by real life fallen stars, grandiose yet tragic figures who traveled too far down the

road of excess and lost their way. The most obvious of these is Ziggy Pop, who had become something of an obsession to Bowie. Over the prior year. He had obtained footage of Iggy performing, which he watched repeatedly on a real or real projector at Hadden Hall. The images inspired him and also haunted him. On film, Iggy looked like a feral god, shirtless and held aloft by a crowd of fans. Now he could barely summon the strength

to leave the couch that had become his home. The Egg character Jim Awsenburg had created had gone haywire and nearly killed him, a real rock and roll suicide. To a lesser extent, David was also inspired by Lou Reed, the godfather of trashy Urban Slee's, now living with his parents out on Long Island in a state of self imposed exile from music. Both Lou and Iggy had become victims of the industry and their own idolatry. This is

becoming alarmingly common. By ninety one. In just three years, rocks ranks have been decimated by the deaths of Brian Jones, Jimmy Hendrix, Janice Joplin, and Jim Morrison, not to mention the abdication of Pink Floyd founder Sid Barrett Fleetwood, Max Peter Green, and the Beach Boys Brian Wilson. David had seen the hazards of rock and roll at close range.

During his trip to Los Angeles that February. He'd had the chance to jam with Jean Vincent, whose nineteen fifties hit b Bopolula was part of the bedrock of rock. Though he was only thirty five, he looked old and sickly, his body left mangled from years of heart living. By October, just a few weeks before David entered the studio to

begin work on Ziggy, he was dead. The unlikely link between down and out musicians and spiritual aliens can be found in the story of an early British rocker named Vince Taylor, best known today for recording the original version

of The Clashes brand new Cadillac. He'd been hailed for a brief moment as the new Elvis in Europe, but by the mid sixties he'd begun suffering a series of distressing mid concert breakdowns, culminating one night when he appeared on stage in white robes and informed the crowd that he was, in fact Jesus Christ. Vince's career was pretty much over after that. With little else to do, he wandered the Soho coffee shop scene, ranting a anyone who would listen. It was there that he met a pre

fame David, then deep into his mad phase. They got to know each other a little. David would recall Vince spreading a crumpled map on the sidewalk outside of a crowded subway station pointing out UFO landing sites across Europe. The guy was, to use Bowie's words, out of his war totally flipped, not playing with a full deck at all, But he remained in David's mind as an example of what can happen in rock and roll, midway between an

idol and a cautionary tale. Madness was always compelling. Given the streak of mental illness that ran throughout David's family, particularly his half brother Terry, and his haunting schizophrenic visions. Vince Taylor forced David to confront both his greatest dreams of rock stardom and his deepest fears of insanity. More than any one person, it was he who inspired David ziggy alter ego. But what to call this new character. Many would assume that Ziggy was merely Iggy with a Z,

but David would deny it. He claimed that he took the name from a tailor's shop. He'd say, I thought, well, this whole thing is going to be about clothes, so it was my own little joke. Whatever the case, The Astral surname was a little more straightforward. It was a nod to an offbeat American singer known as the legendary Stardust Cowboy, who had released that charmingly bizarre country sci fi single called I Took a Trip on a Gemini Spaceship. The song came out the same year as Space Oddity,

and even on the same label. David was handed a copy by his American host during his first trip to the States. Play this, he was instructed, and You'll never be the same again. He did, and he wasn't, and Ziggy got his last name. It was the perfect fusion of old and new. Start us devoked glamour and elegance like the old jazz standard by Jogi Carmichael, but also in the literal sense, it was dust from stars space matter.

Astronomer Carl Sagan had recently popularized the notion that we're all star dust, atoms that have existed for millions of years, that have been recycled through acts of cosmic creation, forming ourselves something totally singular and unique. Ziggy Stardust is much the same and amalgama familiar yet disparate elements coming together tore. It's something completely new and rare, a grand kitch painting. David would declare, but the line between inspiration and appropriation

was indeed a thin one. There were some in his circle who were less charitable about his pensiant for artistic borrowing. A few members of the Warhol clan started to grow slightly weary. They noticed a few too many of their pet expressions showing up in David's lyrics or mannerisms cropping up in his stage act. Ziggy start Us was what critic Paul Trenka would call a tribute to artifice, a play on identity on alter ego placed on alter ego. David had turned himself from David Jones to David Bowie,

who in turn became Ziggy. It all made one wonder what's real and what's artificial. It was a question that had been in David's mind since he gushed over a guy he thought was lou Reid. A Star was whatever people thought you were. Ziggy was fake, a phony, plastic mass produced war Holly and Star. David was building a brand before it was common or cool. Everyone knows is the clothes that make the man, or in this case star man. For fashion help, David turned to one time

Arnold Corrin's frontman, Freddie Barretti. Together, they'd stay up late into the night, fueled by Barley Wine, sketching out fabulous futuristic designs in the living room at Hadden Hall. David's imagination had been charged by Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, which approved just as influential to him as Kubrick's last film two thousand one of Space Odyssey three years before. He'd say, both of these films provoke one major theme. There's no linear line in the lives that we leave.

We're not evolving, merely surviving. Moreover, the clothes were fab David loved the look of the drugs, the androgynous teenage thugs, whose crisp white outfits underscored their ruthless brutality. David wanted to take the violence of those outfits and soften them up using lurd fabrics. Under his instruction, Freddie assembled outlandish jumpsuits from cloth of tanned at London's Liberties Department store

and vintage furniture fabric. It was a cross between agin Ski and Woolworths, something cobbled together from whatever was lying around. David would admit the look was finished off with a pair of knee length wrestling boots done up in fire engine red. David debut the look at US twenty fifth birthday party on January two, fitting start to the year. The hair came last, and it came through the unlikeliest

of sources. David's mother Peggy. Every Friday, she had her hair done by a local hair addresser named Susie Fusey, who would later become mcronson's wife. David's mom passed along Susie's name to Angie, who came in one day for a spiky new dude died an admissible red, white and blue. Angie was thrilled with Susie's work and suggested she'd come back to Hadden Hall to see what could be done with david shaggy locks, which she deemed too rod stewart ish.

Unlike the rest of him, David's hair hadn't really evolved much since his days as a folk hippie. Susie suggested that David get the chop too. David was open to the idea and began scouring magazines to find the perfect look. The end result was a blend of a few different fashion spreads, a little bit of model Christine Walton in the August issue of Vogue and a Dasha Kansai Yamamoto's shooting Harper's which used a red kabuki lions wig too

great effect. Susie got out of razor and began slicing an elaborate feathered style, puffy in places and spiky and others like a sci fi space peacock, and with that the last thread to his sixties self was snipped. Now David was a fully modern man. It would be a few weeks before he famously die his locks red hot red, but the rest of the ziggy look was in place.

On January two, it was the day David arrived at photographer Brian Wards to shoot the cover for the Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. They did a few studio shots with the band before Brian suggested David accompany him outside to the street. It was a cold and rainy winter night and David was suffering from the flu, but he wanted a Brooklyn Alley scene. Grabbing a nearby guitar, they walked a few doors down to twenty three Headon Street, where David stopped and rested

his foot on the stoop. They worked quickly. Even sick, David was a pro. All it took was four snaps to capture one of the most iconic images in rock history. Now it was time to take the show on the road. The first Ziggy show is at the Friars Aylesbury, not far from where Kruber could film the infamous subway attack scene and a clockwork orange. But David had some trouble with his own gang of drugs. David may have been enthusiastic about dressing up as a flamboyant, androgynous alien, but

his bands not so much. When they first got to look at their new Freddie Baretti designed outfits, their initial reaction were variants of I'm not wearing that, I'm a musician. McK ronson moaned, I've got friends that are gonna watch me. Ronald was so horrified that he actually packed his bags headed to the local train station, intent on quitting the

band for good. Woody Woodmancy spent an hour on the platform coaxing him back to the fold, But after the rapturous response from the audience, particularly from the female audience, they quickly warmed to the idea David would say. When they realized how many girls they could pull when they look so outlandish. They took to it like a fish to water. They never had so many women in their lives,

so they got tardier and tardier. After their warm up gig at the Friars Aylesbury, the Ziggy Start Us tour officially kicked off on February tenth two at the Toby Jug Pub in London. It was a humble start, considering the stadiums to come. Sixty people milled about in front of the two foot high stage. Usually it was small time cabaret acts that performed at the Toby Jug. This was very, very different. Ziggy Started Us and the Spiders

from Mars turned the suburban pub into an arena. When it was over, the crowd was left with ringing ears and an unforgettable sense of excitement over what they just witnessed. Ziggy was a case of small beginnings. David would recall, I remember when we had no more than twenty or thirty fans at most. They'd be down at the front and the rest of the audience wasn't different. It feels so special you and the audience kid yourself that you're in on this big secret. You feel kind of cool.

It all gets so dissipated when you get bigger. The Toby Jug Show was the last pub gig Ziggy would ever play. The band spent the next few months criss crossing England and cramped cars and vans, playing mostly empty small clubs and college venues. It wasn't very glamorous. They hauled their own gear and pete and pub kitchen sinks. Once a venue lost power and David was forced to amuse the crowd by giving an impromptu rundown of his outfit.

Another time, he tried the crowd surf as he'd seen Iggy Pop do, and he fell flat on his face. But slowly words started to build, the audience slowly started to swell. Then that July there was one performance that would change everything. The Rise and Fall of Ziggy, Stardust and the Spiders from Mars was released on June six. It was a slow burn at first, selling eight thousand copies in its first week, respectable but hardly earth shattering.

It was an appearance on the British television program Top of the Pops that would truly herald Ziggy's arrival. The show was the everest for every music act in the UK. Once you've been on top of the pops, you were officially a star. Everyone watched it in a pre digital age. This was one of the few opportunities to actually see your favorite artists. Bowie have been trying to talk his way onto the show for ages, but to no avail. It was only after producers caught one of his concerts

that they offered him the gig. They've never seen anything like him, neither at staff at the BBC Studios, who assumed Bowie in the band, clad in their flamboyant attire, full makeup in white varnished nails were extras from the sci fi show Doctor Who. They weren't prepared for this new kind of alien. Few people were. At seven thirty on the night of July six, some fifteen million people got their first look at Ziggy, Stardust and the Spiders

from Mars. For such a star making performance, it was only fitting that Bowie performed star Man, his latest single. The Spiders mined their parts, a common practice at the time, but David's singing was absolutely live. The first thing viewers saw was an electric blue guitar and a delicate hands strumming strange, discordant chords. Then a face appeared thin and angular, framed with a choppy mane of crimson hair. It hardly registered as human, what with the multicolored eyes and a

naturally pale pallor. A quilted rainbow jumpsuit clung to his bony body, which gyrated in time to the music, man, woman or alien. This being was undeniably and disconcertingly sexy. Parents and those of a more conservative band were not amused by the strange apparition on the tube, but the kids and anyone who ever felt a little different at times got it right away. This wasn't just a pop act. This was personal. I had to phone someone, so I

picked on you. David sang, pointing directly into the camera lens two millions of new fans Bowie seemed to transcend their television sets and point directly at them. They had been chosen. If the Beatles had the Ed Sullivan Show, Bowie had Top of the Pops. Everything about it was right,

the right time, the right song, the right style. The next day, classrooms and playgrounds were a buzz with talk of the alien who hijacked the BBC airwaves for three and a half precious minutes Not only did the show launched David's career in the UK, but it also jumped started an untold number of others. Future members of You Two, the Smith's Joy Division, and so many more all tuned in that night. For them, it was as meaningful as Bowie dropping the needle on a little Richard forty five

for the first time. To say he changed lives with that performance is not an understatement. He offered an escape, a promise of redemption through transformation. With Bowie's confident, flamboyance, it issued a challenge, if you want my talent, accept all of me, makeup and all he was good enough that people did. His triumph was a triumph for everyone who ever felt like an outcast, and it made him

the patron saint of the weird. Though it's strange to think now, the thing that raised the most eyebrows during the broadcast wasn't the alien closed or a feat makeup. It was a moment that occurred as the band launched into the chorus of Starman, David casually draped his arm around Mick Ronson, pulling him close so they could sing together. Viewers today wouldn't think twice about seeing such an act, But in early seventies England, such physical contact between men,

especially men who looked like that, was positively shocking. Could these men in drag adjacent outfits be a couple? David's sexuality was already a matter of national debate, a fact that amused him greatly. Months earlier, in February, he made headlines with an interview given to the English music outlet Melody Maker. Reporter Michael Watts described David as quote rock swishiest outrage a gorgeously effeminate boy who's a camp as a row of tents, but the standout quote belongs to Bowie.

I'm gay and always have been, he proclaimed, even when I was David Jones. Anticipating the controversy to come, he denied that his announcement was strictly for shock value. I'm not outrageous, he insisted, I'm David Bowie. The article triggered a press deluge. There were a few, if any, openly game musicians in England at that time. Just five years earlier, homosexuality had been illegal and punishable by jail time. Coming out in the pages of a print publication was utterly

without precedent. Further confused in the British public was the fact that David had a wife and child, and she obviously knew all about David's sexual habits and traded partners with him at will. But even she was caught off guard by the announcement, telling him, you could have at least said you were bisexual. Because mother Peggy was even more concerned, she called David as soon as the news broke to try to get some clarity on what she

just read. What's happening, David? Are you changing your sex? She asked, don't believe a word of it, mom, he assured her. The story kicked off a widespread debate about David's sexual identity. Is he or isn't he? Even some of his personal circle couldn't tell. Was this a proud declaration of sexual independence, liberating both himself and others from the chains of outdated social morays? Or was it an easy way to garner column space. Could it be elements

of both. I did it more out of bravado, he'd later say. I wanted people to be aware of me. I didn't want to live my life behind a closed door. Michael Watts, who wrote the famous article, had his own ideas personally I think he was lying, Watts admitted in later years. I think he said it for effect as much as anything else. He's a master at misleading the press and creating headlines as a result. David was the son of a public relations man. His first job had

been in advertising. He was certainly well versed in the ways of promotion, and this announcement had all the hallmarks of a perfectly orchestrated media event. The years he spent on the sidelines of the pop world had not been for nothing. It had given him the perfect vantage point to study the spotlight when it finally shown his way. He knew how to position himself from maximum shine. He was older than the sixties stars when he first tasted fame.

The Beatles, the Stones and the Who were barely out of their teens when they first achieved success. They didn't have a clue. Bowie was now twenty five and much more sophisticated in the art of medium manipulation. David certainly wasn't adverse to playing up his sexual ambiguity when the occasion suited him. At a gig in June at the Oxford Town Hall, he had something special in mind for

his biggest crowd to date. As Mick Ronson tore through his solo to Suffragette City, David threw himself at the guitarist feet, grabbed his rear, and began to bite his strings. Five flashes from photographer Mick Rock saved the moment for posterity. David may have been trying for a bit of Hendrick style stagecraft, but the pictures look somewhat more sexual, with David's face rather near to Ronson's crotch. David and de Frieze loved the pictures so much that they ran one

as a full page advertisement in a music magazine. Though obstensibly it was a thank you to Bowie's staff and fans, it was really an advertisement for himself. But aligning oneself with a deeply oppressed group isn't the easiest way to sell more records. Ronson found it out soon after the guitar biting shot went to press. The stunt had the unintended consequence of making life difficult for his family. Paint was thrown on the front door and even on the

new car make it bought for them. A number of David's friends were certain that he torpedoed any chance of a career. With his announcement, he no doubt faced a new resistance, particularly later on in America, where some program directors refused to play him. We don't have perfets on this show, they'd say. Even Alice Cooper had made the transition from dresses and high heels to embracing full on gore and horror. In his set, blood and dead babies were acceptable, but a man in a dress no way.

In interviews with David's friends, words like opportunist, narcissist, and contrived surface a lot when discussing his sexual preference. It's no doubt that David identified as an outsider and was deeply attracted to the taboo, underground nature of gay subcultures. Books like Caro Wax on the Road and John Recci's seminal City of Night set his imagination a light in the early sixties with images of this twilight world that

existed on the fringe of polite society. This colorful realm was so totally removed from the beige and boring existence parents that provided for him in the suburban town of Bromley. David claimed to be bisexual as far back as his time in the conras As a teenager, but his description of a sexuality with vary wildly throughout his life. When David spoke to reporter Michael Watts again four years after his infamous coming out story, he denied the whole thing bisexual.

Oh lord, no, positively not. That was just a lie. I never adopted that stance. I've never done a bisexual action in my life, on stage, on record, or anywhere else. Later that same year, he told Playboy, It's true I am bisexual, but I can't deny I have used that fact very well. I suppose it's the best thing that

ever happened to me. Then, in the eighties, he would characterize his homosexual declaration as quote the biggest mistake I ever made, and advised fans not to believe everything they read. By the nineties, he gave perhaps his most frank and honest self assessment, saying, I think I was always a closet heterosexual. Well, I was physical about it, but frankly, it wasn't enjoyable. It was almost like I was testing myself. But for me, I was more magnetized by the whole

gay scene. It was like another world that I really wanted to buy into. To some it's a moot point why label an artist as unclassifiable as David Bowie, But many in the burgeoning gay rights community regarded David as a hero. It was a title but made David uneasy. He was happy to encourage people to be themselves, but he was wary of transforming himself into a socio political cause. First and foremost, he saw himself as an artist rather

than an activist. For all the personas he didn't have it, He'd never adopt that of a radicalized street fighting man. This disappointed some of the lgbt Q world, who felt betrayed and even used as he began to walk back, as sexual declaration. But despite this complicated alliance, it's impossible to downplay the impact David had by bringing gay culture to the mainstream. Up to this point, homosexuals were in mass media as a little more than punch lines or

gross stereotypes. David projected strength, talent, youth, and success. To quote the designer Jean Paul Gualtier, he gave many the courage not to hide. That went for homosexuals or anyone who deviated from the so called norm. David himself said as much in two My Sexual Nature is irrelevant. I'm an actor. I play roles fragments of myself. By inhabiting Ziggy Stardust, the outlaw alien, he offered that same freedom to anyone. Life would never be the same for David again.

After the Top of the Pops performance, Starman entered the Top ten, becoming his first bona fide hits and space oddity. But this was different. The zig Lp started flying up the shelves, and by the end of the year, practically everything he'd ever done was charting. Fans started camping out on the lawn at Hadden Hall, including a young boy George.

Shopkeepers started giving David goods on the house. Two days after the Top of the Pops broadcast, the band performed a charity show at London's Royal Festival Hall, where David was introduced as the next biggest thing to God. Concerts were selling out across the country. At one some fans arrived in wheelchairs only to leap up at David's entrance, as if the mere presence of Ziggy had the power to heal. David had sung about a rock star messiah, now he was becoming one himself. He used his status

to resurrect the careers of some Arrant friends. Upon hearing that the band Mott the Hoople were about to break up, David offered to write them a song and even play on it. The result, All the Young Dudes was a global smash, as was the accompanying album David produced, elevating them from has Been's The glam Princes. David's intervention with Iggy pop also paid off, as the resurrected Stooges entered the studio at the end of the summer to record

Raw Power Her. When Iggy bots the mixing, David stepped in his producer to salvage the project. He pulled off an even more remarkable trick by transforming lou Reid, he of the moody gloomy Downtown denizens, into something of a pop star by producing the aptly named Transformer. The album included the top twenty hit Walk Him the wild Side, a tract that immortalized the friends and freaks at Warhol's factory.

For the Smoldering Sacks Break, Bowie hired Ronnie Ross, the London jazz player who give him saxophone lessons every Weekend's a Little Boy in Bromley. Ross didn't recognize the rather strange looking man leading the session. He had known David his twelve year old Davy Jones, but as Ronnie was packing up to go, David sidled up to him and said, thanks, ron Should I come over to your house on Saturday morning? That's when it all clicked. But David's relationship with his

past wasn't always so easy. One day, as he left the taping at the BBC TV studios, one of the hosts complimented him on the laughing no his goofy novelty song from nine oh. David replied, that's not me. Then he turned on his heels and headed to the limo waiting outside. He had places to go and new people to be Off The Record is a production of I Heart Radio. The executive producers are Noel Brown and Seawan tay Tone. The supervising producers are Taylor Skoyn and Tristan McNeil.

The show is written and hosted by me Jordan run Tug and edited, scored and sound designed by Tristan McNeil. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.