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Side One: Five Years / Soul Love / Moonage Daydream / Starman / It Ain't Easy
Side Two: Lady Stardust / Star / Hang On To Yourself / Ziggy Stardust / Suffragette City / Rock n Roll Suicide

Albums:  The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars (1972), Stage (1978), Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture (1983), Santa Monica '72 (1994), BBC Sessions 1969-1972 Sampler (1996)

Singles: Ziggy Stardust

Time: 3:13

Background

Pivotal song on THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS (1972) which tells the central story of Ziggy Stardust's rise and fall. 

".... My records were selling and I was being a man in demand.  I thought of Vince [Taylor] and wrote "Ziggy Stardust"....... - Bowie (Part of a never completed or fully published autobiography titled THE RETURN OF THE THIN WHITE DUKE - this excerpt featured in Rolling Stone Magazine January 1976)

It was recorded in November 1971 at London's Trident Studios and a bonus for Bowie fans in the 1990s was the release of the acoustic demo of this song on the Ryko 1990 re-issue, featuring Bowie on vocals, piano and guitar.

Prior to the re-issue series, the existence of this demo was unknown and reportedly it was not played to either The Spiders nor producer Ken Scott before the recording of the Ziggy Stardust album.  Instead Bowie would introduce each song to the band members on his acoustic guitar and the structure was then worked on in the studio from this basic blueprint.

Special recordings of this song were broadcast on the Sounds of the Seventies (Broadcast: 28 January 1972) and Sounds of the Seventies (Broadcast: 7 February 1972) and on Top Gear (Broadcast: 23 May 1972).

Ziggy Stardust was performed at all Ziggy Stardust concert tours in 1972 and 1973. It was also performed for the 1978 Stage tour, the 1990 Sound + Vision Tour and on 2000 concert dates.

Is this song really about Jimi Hendrix?

David Bowie himself has never stated that the song is in anyway about Jimi Hendrix and has reported instead that the direct inspiration for Ziggy Stardust was the eccentric sixties rocker Vince Taylor.  But rather than being about one person, the song is most likely a composite of Bowie's ideas and imagery about his ultimate rock God, hinting not only at Hendrix ("screwed down hairdo" and "He played it left hand, but made it too far") but also other fallen rock icons: Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin and contemporaries Marc Bolan, Iggy Pop, and Lou Reed. The song (copyrighted to 1971) also accurately describes David Bowie (and not Hendrix) at the time ("screwed up eyes") and what he would become during the next two years ("snow-white tan") - a reference to stage make-up and "like a cat from Japan" (Bowie's Kabuki theatre-inspired Aladdin Sane costumes).  

Who are Weird & Gilly?

The names "Weird and Gilly" specifically refer to Trevor Bolder (bass) and Woody Woodmansey (drums) of the Spiders from Mars.

One of the most famous covers of this song is by Bauhaus which reached #15 in October 1982.   They also contributed "Bela Lugosi's Dead" for the opening titles of Bowie's Goth vampire movie "The Hunger" but were reported to be "too scared" to do "Ziggy Stardust".  Other notable covers include versions by Nina Hagen, Def Leppard and Hootie & the Blowfish.

Recording notes

* @ 0:06 seconds into the introduction there is a 'bad edit' just before the drums kick in.  This sounds like a low frequency thump and happens when an engineer uses a blade (which has built up a magnetic charge) and the charge is transferred back onto the tape, when he slices it.  However, this sound which is present on the original LP and the 1984 RCA and 1990 Rykodisc/EMI CDs has now been repaired and is absent on the latest EMI/Virgin 1999 Ziggy Stardust CD.

---This page last modified: 05 Feb 2007---