THIS PROGRAMME CONTAINS
SOME STRONG LANGUAGE
rooms across the British Isles,
a strange alien creature was
beamed onto our television screens.
With bright red hair
and a multi-coloured space-suit,
his unearthly appearance
shocked the nation.
But for many teenagers
who experienced this
tele-visual visitation,
it would change their lives forever.
# Star man waiting in the sky
# He'd like to come and meet us
# But he thinks he'll blow our
minds... #
This messianic Martian was with us
only for a year but his impact would
be felt for generations to come.
# Cos he knows it's all worth
while... #
Music on Planet Earth
would never be the same again.
# All the children boogie... #
# Oh... #
Armed with laser-guided melodies
and lyrics from another dimension,
Ziggy Stardust heralded
a new era of rock music.
# I'm an alligator
# I'm a mama-papa coming for you... #
A time of outlandish fashion...
# People stare at the make-up
on his face... #
..outrageous sexuality...
# Wham bam, thank you, ma'am
# Suffragette city... #
..and good
old-fashioned, rock 'n' roll music.
# Jean Genie lives on his back
# Jean Genie loves
chimney stacks... #
So, what made this mysterious
extra-terrestrial
one of the most influential
cultural icons of the 20th Century?
# Now Ziggy played guitar. #
This is
how Ziggy Stardust blew our minds.
# Well, Annie's pretty neat
# She always eats her meat
# Joe is awful strong
# Bet your life he's putting us on
# Oh Lordy, oh Lordy
# You know I need some loving... #
Ziggy Stardust set David Bowie
on course
to becoming one of the world's most
famous pop stars.
As the Queen Of The Glam Scene,
he always seemed a step
ahead of everyone else.
Where Ziggy walked, others followed,
whether that was his army
of screaming fans
or copycat artists
struggling to keep up.
David took it to another level. He
just wiped the floor with everybody.
It was game-changing.
When we first saw Bowie
as Ziggy Stardust,
he looked so complete and
so fully-formed.
It almost was as though he appeared
from a different planet.
It was extraordinary.
And at that time you didn't realise
that he'd been trying to be
successful for ten years.
'I'm just, by nature,
a very flighty person.
'I get turned on and off things,
all the time, very quickly.'
Born in 1947, David Robert Jones
spent his teenage years
trying to make it as a musician.
# Well, I got girl
that she's good to me... #
He went through a series of bands
playing R'n'B and Rock'n'Roll
before becoming a mod.
# London boy, oh, London boy... #
The belief was, that if you want to
do something bad enough,
and you put your mind to it,
you can. The trouble is,
he didn't just take one thing.
He took loads of things.
He wanted to be everything.
Aged 20, he changed his name from
Jones to Bowie
and released his first solo
album on Deram Records.
# Who's that hiding
# In the apple tree... #
It was a strange mix of music hall
and whimsical pop.
He even tried his hand
at a children's novelty record.
# Ha ha ha
# Hee hee hee
# I'm a laughing gnome
and you can't catch me
# Said the laughing gnome
I think he was trying on what can
I do, and what do people want,
and going through
the trial and error period.
And there was a lot of error,
you know, with the laughing gnome,
it's like, OK.
# And gave him a fag
# Have you got a light, boy?... #
The laughing gnome
is not a great record,
but it is indicative
of what he was doing at the time
because he was obsessed
with Anthony Newley.
# What kind of fool am I?... #
Anthony Newley was
a giant of British popular culture.
As adept as a singer,
dancer and entertainer
as he was at creating surreal comedy
that paved the way for Monty Python.
I think she fancies me.
He was more than meets the eye,
Anthony Newley, He wasn't just,
"What kind of fool am I?"
Yeah, he wrote that,
but there was many other sides to
Anthony Newley.
Films, the Gurney Slade TV thing,
which was ground-breaking
when it happened.
So, I think that's
what interested David.
It begs the question,
if David Bowie had found success
with his Anthony Newley phase, would
he have become a light entertainer?
But as both the Laughing Gnome
and the Deram album
were the latest in a line
of commercial failures,
we'll never know.
But Newley's quirky versatility
would certainly later inform
the theatrical DNA of Ziggy Stardust
'I would try and get involved
'in anything that I felt was a useful
tool for a narcissistic medium.
'I was trying to be
a one-man revolution, you know.'
Around the same time the Deram
album was released,
Bowie met Lindsay Kemp,
a British dancer who specialised
in mime and avant-garde theatre.
I was endeavouring
to teach him to astonish,
to astonish a public.
I helped him find himself
through his movements.
So he could express himself, so he
had the right kind of control.
Being my student, he was so keen.
He was like a sponge.
He would absorb anything
that took his interest.
Those classes included some mime
but mostly dance.
I taught him to dance.
Within a few weeks of meeting,
Kemp and Bowie
had created a stage-play
called Pierrot In Turquoise,
which they toured together
around the UK to critical acclaim.
Offstage, they embarked on an affair
the choreographer introducing the
young singer
to London's gay intelligentsia.
He had an enormous sexual appetite,
which came across on the stage.
I mean, it's a useful thing to have,
if one has an outlet.
But the dance troupe didn't
pay the bills.
And nor did his next
musical direction,
a folk trio called Feathers.
Bowie turned to acting
to help finance his music,
taking small film roles
and even starring
in an ice-cream ad.
And then, seemingly from nowhere,
he hit upon a formula to finally
launch his music career.
Put out to coincide with
the 1969 lunar landings,
the single rocketed
to number five in the UK charts.
# This is ground control
# To Major Tom
# You've really made the grade
# And the papers want to know whose
shirts you wear... #
Space Oddity, that was a game
changing record,
was the record that inspired me to
make the Elton John record.
I said I just want the sound
that's on that record,
cos it was so extraordinary.
# This is Major Tom
to ground control... #
Although essentially
another novelty record,
it was also a masterful
piece of songwriting.
But the songs on
the self-titled album,
released to cash in
on the single's success,
sounded nothing like Space Oddity.
# Spy, spy, pretty girl
# I see you see me
through your window. #
The record buying public
couldn't understand
what David Bowie was all about.
It was a strange record,
because at the time,
he was writing folk songs.
His latest thing was having long
hair, going on stage,
crossing his legs, and playing an
acoustic guitar.
And, so, consequently,
he didn't really click again,
with the public,
because his image
was quite confused.
Bowie had shown the world a glimpse
of his extraordinary talent,
but it would be three years
until he could recapture
Space Oddity's success
with Ziggy Stardust.
And as those years rolled by,
Bowie became increasingly worried
he was damned to be
a one-hit-wonder.
In 1970 he was
fundamentally depressed.
He had no idea where he was going, he
didn't know how he was going to fit.
A serious change of direction
was needed.
And that, in part, came from Bowie's
bride-to-be, Angie Barnett.
Angela was really a driving force
behind David.
She was very influential
with the costumes.
She made him brave.
She would have her hair cut first,
if she didn't think he'd like it.
She made him brave.
She was encouraging and always
on his side and always positive.
She would always encourage
dressing him and help the image,
and I always found her as
a very positive force.
Bowie formed a new band
called the Hype
and in February 1970,
he unleashed a radical new image.
Was going to do a gig,
and Angie said,
we're going to dress you all up.
We did the Round House.
I was supposedly Cowboy man
cos I had a cowboy hat on, and a
frilly shirt with some tassels on.
We were just thrown together,
but David's was like, he had
the big knee-high leather boots.
And we just did this gig dressed up,
you know. Theatre.
The London audience wasn't ready
for superheroes playing heavy rock
and The Hype bombed.
With hindsight, it seems
Bowie was just ahead of his time.
Especially when you consider
the Hype's makeup and costumes
pre-date Marc Bolan's
first glam-rock TV appearance
by over a year.
Bowie's plan to create
his famous alter-ego
was beginning to take shape.
The proto-glam band
the Hype are most notable
because it's the first time
David Bowie worked with Mick Ronson,
the guitarist who would become
part of the sound of Ziggy Stardust.
Their first studio collaboration
was on Bowie's next album,
the heavy, guitar-based
The Man Who Sold The World.
But what shocked people the most,
wasn't the new hard rock sound,
but the image on the sleeve.
He sells it by positioning himself
on the front cover in the very long,
flowing, pre-Raphaelite dress,
which was the least macho,
least hard rock image imaginable.
And it's hard to think now
how shocking that actually was.
It wasn't until David and Angela
walked down Beckenham High Street,
David in a dress and Angela
looking remarkably boy-like
that we all started
taking notice of him.
I mean, people would recoil.
Literally, the old girls
would kind of go, "My God!"
Shocking was what he wanted to be,
and shocking was what he was.
The rock scene in 1970 was
very much the colour of blue jeans.
Everybody wore denim,
everybody had long hair
and the music very much reflected
that sort of monotoned culture.
I'm sure that's why the album
wasn't a hit in this country
was because anybody who was
interested in the music
picked up the cover and said, "No way
I'm getting involved in that."
This was not an era when men
flirted with camp imagery at all.
Three albums in and Bowie was
still failing to find his audience.
He desperately needed someone
who could turn his undeniable
talent into record sales.
Somebody did come along and grab me
by the empty wallet and said,
"I'm Tony De Fries and
I'm going to make you a star."
I said, "Oh, yeah?"
David was great, yes he was,
but he hadn't gotten very far
until he'd met Tony.
He was struggling. Tony had a master
plan and things started to happen.
"Yeah, you want to be
Elvis Presley? I can do that.
"It can be done, David.
It can be done."
He financed it, that was
the most important thing.
Everything that Bowie did,
there was Tony De Fries
with the money to pay for it.
Without Tony De Fries,
we would never have had David Bowie,
Pop Star, Rock Star at all.
MUSIC: "Venus In Furs"
by the Velvet Underground
Tony's main objective
was to make Bowie a superstar.
And that meant cracking America.
So at the beginning of 1971,
the 24-year-old singer was sent
there on a short promotional tour.
Within a few months
he returned, signing a deal
with RCA Records in New York,
the company who would later
fund the Ziggy Stardust project.
It was during this period
that Bowie was introduced
to the subversive world of Andy
Warhol and the Velvet Underground.
He felt immediately at home
surrounded by New York's
counter-culture.
We were all working
in underground theatre,
which involved a whole
lot of outrageousness.
The rock 'n' roll world
at the same time in New York
was becoming very underground.
There were men dressed in
women's clothes but not in drag,
they were just wearing
women's blouses and things
and a lot of make-up and things.
And everything was
getting very bizarre.
Back in London, Bowie continued his
fascination with the avant-garde.
He hung out in gay nightclubs
with a fashion designer
called Freddie Burretti.
And when an Andy Warhol play
called Pork arrived in town,
Bowie and his new wife Angie
befriended the American cast.
We invited Angie and David
to come see the play,
and they came with Tony De Fries,
and we all started
to hang out together.
We met David's incredible, loud,
crazy wife Angie, and she was,
"Oh, we have to go do this,
"we have to go do that,
we have to outrage the populace."
And we were fine for that.
I was, you know, psychedelic,
acid-head, hippie chick.
In those days, we were still pretty
outrageous sexually, I have to say.
You know, we had sex in the
loos at the Hard Rock Cafe,
even with the owners.
This was, like, every night
and a lot of people doing it.
Inspired by the
outrageous characters
he'd met in London and New York,
the very beginnings
of Ziggy Stardust
began to materialise
in Bowie's mind.
Taking his lead from
the star-maker Andy Warhol,
he invented his own
rock 'n' roll star, Arnold Corns.
What he hasn't yet done is
manage to get together the balls
to be that rock star himself,
and so he chooses somebody who,
effectively in musical terms,
is a blank canvas.
The idea was to take
Freddie Burretti,
this beautiful boy that
he'd met in the Sombrero Club
and to hand him the songs
and dress him up
and get him to be Ziggy, even though
he would be miming to David's voice.
Bowie decides that he's going to
create a band called Arnold Corns.
Now unfortunately, the music
that he's selling is terrible.
It's very early versions
of some of the songs from Ziggy,
and they sound really rudimentary,
very boring and raw demos.
But that is really
the seed of Ziggy Stardust.
# Make me know you really care... #
Although Arnold Corns failed,
Bowie was convinced
the idea of a fictional
rock star would work.
In the meantime, financial necessity
meant Bowie had to submit his songs
to a publisher to sell on
to other artists.
# Oh, you pretty things... #
One such song scored
a number 12 hit
for the pop-star
Peter Noone in July 1971.
Its strange lyrics were inspired
by the German philosopher
Frederick Nietzsche.
Does make you wonder,
did Peter Noone have any idea
what he was singing about?
# Let me make it plain
# You gotta make way
for the Homo Superior. #
MUSIC: "Oh! You Pretty Things"
by David Bowie
Bowie's own version,
recorded a few months later,
revealed the song's
compositional brilliance.
His songwriting
had shifted up a gear,
and Oh! You Pretty Things
was to be just one classic track
on a genius pop album, Hunky Dory.
# Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Turn and face the strain
# Ch-ch-changes... #
Listening to the demos
over at the house one evening,
the lightbulb went on
at the top of my head.
This guy could actually be someone.
The talent was coming through.
It was so very different from what
he'd done in the past and just,
"This guy's good."
Bowie brought back
two of the musicians
from The Man Who Sold The World
to play on Hunky Dory.
Guitarist Mick Ronson
and drummer Woody Woodmansey.
When Bowie was left short of a
bass player for a radio session,
Mick and Woody suggested their
mate from Hull, Trevor Bolder.
Herbie Flowers was
supposed to be on it,
and Herbie didn't turn up,
so I was dragged into learning
something like 12 songs or something
in an afternoon, then straight
after that we did Hunky Dory.
MUSIC: "Life On Mars?"
by David Bowie
Bowie didn't know it yet, but the
Spiders from Mars had just formed.
He now had in place the musicians
who could help him realise
his future Ziggy Stardust dream.
Hunky Dory also provided the
perfect platform for Mick Ronson
to really show off his
extraordinary musical abilities.
Mick was a very talented musician
apart from being
a dynamic guitar player.
He was instrumental in arrangements.
He'd been classically trained.
# Is there life on Mars? #
He was one of the great rock
musicians in history ever,
as an arranger, piano player as well.
It must have been like
having Stravinsky in your band.
On its release in November 1971,
Hunky Dory was widely
praised by the music press,
in both the UK and America.
But with little publicity,
it failed to chart.
Bowie's manager
was actually very keen
that Hunky Dory
should not be a success
because if Hunky Dory was a huge
album then it would not be possible
for Bowie to transform
himself into Ziggy Stardust.
We only had a two-week break between
Hunky Dory and starting Ziggy.
It was all kind of written
and ready to roll,
and we just had a break
and went straight into Ziggy.
I said, "You've got to be crazy."
and he says, "Management company
want me to do another album,"
and he said, "You're not going
to like this one." I said, "Why?"
He said, "Cos it's rock 'n' roll.
It's more like..."
I can't remember if he said
Iggy Pop and the Stooges
or Velvet Underground.
It wouldn't have mattered
because I didn't know of either
of those acts at that point anyway.
The Velvet Underground influence
can clearly be heard on Queen Bitch,
the one track on Hunky Dory that
links the album to Ziggy Stardust.
When Bowie performed on the
BBC's Old Grey Whistle Test
in February 1972, he might
have played songs from Hunky Dory
but the transformation into his
alien alter-ego had already started.
# Well, I'm up on the 11th floor
And I'm watching the cruisers below
# You know my heart's in a basement
My weekend's at an all-time low... #
By the time Hunky Dory
was completed,
Bowie had his Ziggy Stardust
album already written.
He had drawn on nearly
a decade of experience
to create the record that
would finally make him famous.
And this time he got it spot on.
Ziggy turned Bowie into stardust.
Ziggy Stardust was the thing that
really catapulted him into the universe.
It's an extraordinary record
and it still sounds amazing.
He revolutionised the music
business.
It is the greatest record of
the 1970s for me.
It is one of my favourite LPs still.
It lit the blue touch paper of imagination
and creativity for a lot of people.
# I can make it all worthwhile
as a rock 'n' roll star...
The Rise & Fall of Ziggy Stardust & the Spiders
from Mars was David Bowie's first hit album.
The record that made him
a superstar.
It tells the story of a doomed alien
who takes human form as a rock star.
It inspired me.
It was an album that had a beginning and an
end and told a story. It was like a rock opera.
This superstar is killed by his own
fans. Rock 'n' roll suicide.
He's eaten alive by their energy that he's
fed them with. It was a brilliant idea.
It was an idea that suited
the dystopia of the period.
There had been economic chaos in the
late 60s and so the Conservatives came in
with the idea of battening down the hatches.
The short, sharp shock for everybody.
London was extremely poor and, in many ways, it
was still in the shadow of the Second World War.
In 1972, there were bombs sites still
everywhere. There was a recession.
There was the Cold War as well
and I think what David and Ziggy were offering
was a creature of fantasy come to save us.
He sang, "There's only five years
left of the Earth,"
and actually in 1972, you did believe
there was probably only five years.
# We've got five years
stuck on my eyes
# Five years
# What a surprise
# We've got five years
# My brain hurts a lot
# (Five years)
# That's all we've got...
The album was made at London's
Trident Studios,
previously home to recording sessions
by The Beatles and Elton John.
It was the job of the Spiders from Mars
to turn Bowie's demos into rock 'n' roll.
What he used to do for us was play a song on
acoustic guitar and we'd quickly go through the chords
and then we'd play the song.
Trevor and I would be going, is
there a chorus next? What comes after?
Does it end on chorus, what?
You know.
So you've only just got the bare bones of it in
your head and then he's going, OK, let's go for it!
You were on the edge
and you knew from experience
that he didn't like going
more than three takes.
You only had three shots
and then, wooh!
Then, what shall I say?
The atmosphere might change.
# Come on, come on
# If you think we're going to make
it, you better hang on to yourself. #
As a performer,
I haven't come across anyone better.
him was one take from beginning to end.
It was amazing.
# Well, the bitter comes out
better on a stolen guitar
# You're the blessed
# We're the Spiders from Mars...
It sounds quite first takey,
quite lively and almost improvised.
It sounds like a group who's excited to be there.
It's not ponderous. It's very light on its feet.
# You better hang onto yourself... #
Bowie based the Ziggy character on an
eclectic group of his favourite singers
from the early rock 'n' roll of Little Richard
to the theatrical chansons of Jacques Brel.
The album was influenced by The Velvet Underground,
it was influenced by a lot of early rock 'n' roll.
Gene Vincent, Vince Tailor.
Vince Taylor, who was the fatal English
rocker who famously took too much LSD
and declared he was Jesus Christ.
I think David took all this and created
this character with an amalgamation
of all the bands we've seen.
When you think about Screaming Lord Such, he
did a great show, when he came out of a coffin.
And there was Johnny Kidd and the Pirates and
all these great bands that were theatrical.
You know, great theatre as well as rock
'n' roll. That's what David wanted to do.
He wanted to mix it all up.
Another singer who had taken rock 'n' roll
theatre to a deranged new level was Iggy Pop,
who Bowie had met in New York a few
months prior to recording the album.
Iggy was a big influence and, of course, Iggy
became Ziggy but no-one had gone that extra bit
and made their performance
a piece of concept art.
Part of that concept was
the creation of a new image,
so essential to
the success of Ziggy Stardust.
Bowie began by making the Spiders
from Mars look like a gang.
He took us to see Clockwork Orange and that's basically
where he got a lot of his ideas for the clothes.
We were the droogs.
Freddie Buretti, within a week, had
designed the clothes for Ziggy Stardust.
The sort of mock boiler
suits from clockwork Orange.
I always thought they were great because
they used curtain fabric from Liberty's
and it was very inventive, those little
velvet suits and those great space boots.
They were great. I really liked them.
He called us into his kind of lounge.
He had some drawings that he'd done.
He said, these are the ideas for what we're
going to wear. And, er, we were kind of...
Woody said, I'm not fucking wearing
that. That was Woody's initial thing.
It took him a while to
convince us.
Especially Mick.
He said to Andrea, you won't get me wearing
that, you know what I mean? I'm a musician.
I've got friends that are going to
watch me!
Also to change was Bowie's long,
Pre-Raphaelite hairstyle.
I said, I think you should cut your hair
off because everyone's has got long hair.
You should do it a different style.
That started...
looking through the magazines.
Me, Angela and David
eventually decided on a combination
of three hairstyles.
That was the original Ziggy cut.
The next day I died it bright red. For
me, that was the day Ziggy was born.
The first single from the Ziggy Stardust album
was Starman, released on 28th April, 1972.
At first it didn't sell, but two months
later he appeared on Top of the Pops.
And that changed everything.
# There's a Starman
waiting in the sky
# He'd like to come and meet us
but he thinks he'd blow our minds
# There's a Starman
waiting in the sky
# He told us not to blow it
# Because he knows
it's all worthwhile
# So, let the children lose it
# Let the children use it
# Let all the children boogie... #
Starman was the Eureka
moment in rock 'n' roll.
This creature appears on Top of the Pops and he
was so shocking, so androgynous, so otherwordly.
It was so different. It was like, wow! No-one
had ever seen anything like that before.
# I had to phone someone
so I picked on you-oo-oo #
Let's not forget David's
magic as well.
There's a line in it where he sings, "I
had to phone someone, so I picked on you",
and he looks straight down the barrel of
the lens and I was sure he'd picked on me.
He arrived at a time when there was
a sort of vacuum in popular music.
He had a generation of people who were too
young for the 60s because they were kids
and we were ripe for exploitation.
Then suddenly there was David Bowie.
And we all said, that's what we want.
# There's a Starman waiting in
the sky... #
For any of the older generation who were
watching, it probably hadn't escaped their notice
that the singer in the multi-coloured
jumpsuit might not be entirely heterosexual.
Looking at it now, it looks so tame
but at the time it was a real gesture.
When he put his arm around the
guitarist, it was a very sexual thing.
The arm-draping gesture was even more sexually
provocative to readers of the Melody Maker,
because Bowie had declared he was gay in
the music paper several months earlier.
To go that extra mile and say,
I'm gay, was so outrageous.
Of course, gay men at that time
weren't characters on soap operas on TV.
They weren't outed comedians.
It still was very subversive.
Angela said to him,
the shit's hit the fan.
It was the kind of thing a popular
singer didn't say
whether it was true or whether it
wasn't, in those days.
Angela also said to him, look, you
might at least have said, I'm bisexual.
# People stare at the make-up
on his face
No-one had paid any attention when Bowie hung around
the gay scene with Lindsay Kemp several years earlier.
But after the Top of the Pops
performance had made him a household name,
his sexual orientation became
a national talking point.
Bowie probably did make
homosexuality fashionable.
It's not somebody naff saying, I'm gay and
nobody cares. It's somebody who's super-hip.
At the time, people were feeling so repressed
and it was dangerous. They were getting beat up.
So he liberated a lot of people. I
thought he was doing a really good thing.
Whether he was gay or bisexual, at this
point in time Bowie was married with a son
and so the ambiguity gained him
a huge amount of press attention.
It also seemed to make him
even more attractive to women.
David Bowie is hot!
He's gorgeous. Yes, androgynous.
Gorgeous. Physically striking.
I just wanted to have sex with him,
I didn't want him to be gay.
Performing on Top of the Pops gave
Bowie the power to unleash Ziggy Stardust
to 15 million people
in just three minutes.
The single was soon on its way to
number ten in the charts,
Bowie's first hit since Space
Oddity, three years earlier.
Bowie mania happened immediately.
You'd go to school and in, I would say,
in three days people had the haircut.
When you see big, fat, hairy truckers with
short, Ziggy haircuts is, it's quite a revelation!
My goodness me!
To go out to the shop,
you had to go out the back garden
and climb over a wall
and sort of disguise yourself and then walk down
an alleyway because the street was covered in kids.
There was kids everywhere.
We went out shopping and we came
back with all our shopping
and we hadn't spent a penny.
Bowie's was even worse. There were at least 100
kids out there all the time waiting to see him.
When the album smashed into
the top five,
Bowie knew the ghost of the one hit
wonder had finally been laid to rest.
After a decade of attempts,
he'd finally cracked it.
The success of Ziggy Stardust coincided
with the emerging Glam Rock scene
but Bowie was more interested in
creating his own, super-hip clique.
The first part of this plan was to donate a song
to the much-loved, but struggling Mott the Hoople.
It became an even bigger hit
than Starman.
# All the young dudes
# Heh! Dudes! (Carry the news)
# Where are you?
# Stand up!
# (Carry the news)... #
You grew to hate him, Bowie. Not
only was he writing all his own and...
he's revived Mott the Hoople's
career from a funeral pyre.
Pegasus here! He wrote this great,
great song that will live for ever.
Next, he turned his attention to two of the artists
who had been a huge influence on his music for Ziggy.
The first was
the Velvet Underground's Lou Reed.
The brilliant thing about his
friendship with Lou Reed
is that Lou Read was successful
before he came along.
I mean, the Velvet Underground -
the most influential
group of all time -
yet, "Come here. I'll take you
under my wing.
"I'm going to turn you, Lou Reed, into
a pop star in the UK." Really clever.
# Hey, babe, take a walk on the wild
side... #
In the summer of 1972,
alongside Mick Ronson,
Bowie produced Lou Reed's Transformer album.
Still Lou's most successful album to date.
A few months later, Bowie was at the mixing
desk for Iggy Pop & the Stooges' Raw Power.
Today, it's considered as a massive
inspiration for the Punk rock movement.
We'd never heard of Iggy pop,
we'd never heard of Lou Read.
Bowie revealed those to us. They'd become part
of his coterie so we wanted to listen to them.
I can't stand the premise of going on
in jeans and being real.
It's not normal!
The first Ziggy Stardust tour had started
back in February with little commotion
but after Top of the Pops,
the dates began to sell out.
Bowie's chemistry with guitarist
Mick Ronson
was evolving into one
of rock's great partnerships.
If you really want to know what sound Ziggy
Stardust is, apart from David Bowie's voice,
it's Mick Ronson's guitar.
It just felt like an animal begging
to be released whenever he played.
He was a brilliant guitar player.
He wasn't one of these technically fast
players but he played beautiful guitar.
His melody work was just so good.
You listen to the end of Moonage Daydream and the
solo on the end of that, it's simple but genius.
For me, he was the best guitarist
around in those days.
He was the guitarist to have.
He contributed so much. He looked
great too. They made a great couple.
If you'd seen those two onstage,
it was exciting.
David going down on Mick's
guitar. Revelation!
When my mother so that paper,
she threw it on the table and said,
"Is this who you're working for?"
I said, they're just pretending, mum.
For some reason,
he just did things like that.
Of course, somebody took a picture
and the next thing, it's in the press
and its bows to be sexual and
God knows what else, you know.
The final dates of the UK tour in
August were at London's Rainbow Theatre.
Bowie would perform in front of some
of the biggest names in pop
and was keen to show he'd come
a long way since Space Oddity.
Helping change the show from a
rock gig into a theatrical spectacle
was his old dance tutor,
Lindsay Kemp.
David was fascinated by what I had
to teach him,
what I had to tell him
about the Kabuki.
Kabuki is that wonderful Japanese
theatre where men played the female roles
and, of course, they move in a
very stylised way.
Music is a very important part
of the spectacle and spectacle it is.
# Don't fake it, baby
# Oh, lay the real thing on
me... #
It was the first time a pop star had
combined rock music with exotic costumes,
theatrical lighting,
choreography and mime.
It certainly had the desired effect.
When he came out as Ziggy Stardust, it was
like an art installation. It was like, wow!
His stage presence is quite extraordinary. David
was so glamorous and so beautiful and androgynous.
And sexual.
David as Ziggy commanded the stage. You
just wanted to be him. You adored him.
Quite honestly, I'd never seen anything
like it in my life. It was so exciting.
For manager Tony De Fries, breaking
Ziggy in Britain was the easy part.
Cracking America would be a whole
different ball game.
Even though he'd signed to RCA
the previous year,
the record label hadn't raised
Bowie's US profile at all.
Tony's plan was to open
an office in New York
and use RCA's money to pretend David
was already huge in America.
Just as Bowie had pretended
with Ziggy.
Some old Warhol friends
were drafted in to help.
He had two bodyguards and he dressed
them bodyguards in karate costumes.
They flanked him wherever he went.
Everyone assumed that he was just as big as Mick
Jagger and Elton John and, of course, he wasn't.
We were having to create this myth.
We all had 24-hour limos,
first-class tickets on aeroplanes,
everything paid for around the
world. It was madness.
Tony was good at telling them, I need that
much money and we're going to do it like this.
You're going to do that,
that and that and... Pff!
They were afraid of us.
We were all in make up. They
can't tell the men from the women.
All they wanted to do, when we were sitting
in them offices making outrageous demands,
they just wanted us to get out of their
offices. So they would just say yes to anything.
"The house lights are about to go down
for the appearance of David Bowie."
CHEERING
A 28-date US tour was booked, kicking off in
September. One of the standout gigs was at Santa Monica.
A bootleg recording of the concert immortalized
the raw power of the Spiders from Mars.
All of a sudden, the strobe lights are going and
everything was bright and just blew people's minds.
# Hey, man, get off the phone... #
Everybody is on the phone saying,
you've got to see this new show.
David Bowie. He's something else.
People couldn't believe it
because it was so different.
I remember David saying he thought the
audience weren't responding very much.
I said, David, you've got to remember
there staring at you with their mouths open.
They haven't quite worked out where you're
from, you know. Another planet or something!
The tour featured one addition to the
Spiders who would be instrumental in changing
the sound of future David Bowie
records, Mike Garson.
The keyboardist came from a completely
different musical background.
It was a big shock coming from
jazz, very loose kind of playing
but I realised they had a vibe that
was very, very cool.
I just found a way to lock into it
and they were very accepting.
While Bowie had impressed auditorium
audiences nearer the East & West coasts,
when the tour progressed through the more conservative
states of America, the reception wasn't quite so warm.
Nobody wants to see this guy who says
he's gay and is playing these strange
songs and wears make-up.
They want to boogie, you know.
They want people in denim
who look like them.
So, he's playing arenas across America and some
nights he's getting 200 or 300 people along.
Despite some poor attendances,
the management continued to circulate
the idea that Bowie was a huge celebrity.
But their luxury living was
on borrowed money.
By the time we got to Hollywood,
they've put us in the Chateaux Marmont
which you don't get any better than
Chateaux Marmont really in Hollywood.
But, no. I'm on the phone and I said, this won't
do we have to stay in the Beverly Hills hotel.
Room service, for one room,
was about 12,000 or was it more
than that? I don't know.
Perhaps that was just me!
Everything we wanted we just signed for. I think we
spent something like 40,000 or something like that.
I don't know what we spent it on!
But it went!
And we stayed there for six weeks.
Not only the whole band,
but all the roadies,
all the... everybody. Iggy was there.
All on RCA's money and, by this time, RCA was
so far in debt that they couldn't get out of it.
It sounds really, you know,
hippy dippy
but it just worked beautifully
it really did.
This fantasy lifestyle gave
the Spiders the impression
they were going to be very rich.
A chance conversation
between drummer Woody
and new boy Mike Garson
put an end to that theory.
I was sitting
on an airplane with him
and I was reading a magazine.
And there was a Lamborghini in it
and I went, "Oh, that's nice."
And he went,
"Why don't you buy one?"
And I went, "Yeah, I wish."
And he went, "Well,
you must be able to afford one."
And I went, "Well, actually no."
I was getting a salary
and it seemed fair,
and I just assume that
the other guys were getting more
cos they were there several years.
I went, "What do you think I get?"
You know.
And he went,
"Well, I know what I get."
And I went, "What do you get?"
He told me and it was like
three times what I got.
We went to Bowie and said,
"Look, you know,
"unless things change and you give us
some money, we're going home."
Kind of the final straw was really
De Fries saying to us,
"I would rather pay
the road crew more than you."
Right? And I just went,
"There's no game here."
The Spiders eventually
renegotiated their contracts,
but the whole saga tainted
their relationship with Bowie.
As the tour continued
around America,
the news coming out of Britain
was Glam Rock had exploded.
# Oh, yeah, yeah! #
The previous year, Marc Bolan
was the leader of the scene,
having chalked up
four number one singles.
By 1973,
the balance of power was shifting.
Bolan opened the door
for the whole Glam Rock thing
and Bowie just took it
completely somewhere else
and turned it
into kind of like an art form.
And Roxy Music, of course,
were part of that as well.
They, again, were very original,
with a sci-fi and '50s glam mix.
I think the whole three of those
together were the real kind of core
of what Glam Rock was about.
Everything else was just something
that came in on the bandwagon.
# We just haven't got
a clue what to do. #
When you saw bands like The Sweet,
who kind of had that great '70s,
lorry drivers, dressed in drag,
kind of feeling.
# Be my baby. #
There was a couple of quite good
records, as pure records.
But they were not that interesting.
My brain was full up
with Baudelaire, Byron and Shelley
and all these, you know,
lunatic poets, artists.
And Gary Glitter and Slade,
you know,
I couldn't see any link there.
Whereas with David,
you could see a clear link
in the sophistication
of what they were doing.
In January 1973,
Bowie returned to Britain
as Glam Rock's leading light,
performing a brand new song
on Top of the Pops.
# The jean genie lives on his back
#The jean genie loves chimney stacks
# He's outrageous
He screams and he bawls
# Jean Genie, let yourself go. #
Something about that rock attitude
and that blurring of sexuality
is very, very alluring
to young people,
especially teenagers
with the confusion of growing up.
I think there was a very sort of
urban, working-class male-dominated
love of the Ziggy look
because who's going to argue
with a bloke who looked like
that who was pretty tough?
You are taking your life in your
hands to wear mascara to school
in Liverpool in 1973.
Or dying your hair bright red,
you know. My parents were horrified.
You know, "What have I done
"to deserve this walking freak show
for a son?" You know?
Aladdin was more in the area
of Ziggy Goes To America.
Here was this alternative world
that I had been talking about,
and it had all the violence
and all the strangeness
and it was really happening.
It wasn't just in my songs.
# Let me put my arms around your head
# Gee, it's hot, let's go to bed
Don't forget... #
Ziggy And The Spiders
next TV appearance was
on the Russell Harty Show,
performing another new track.
Drive-in Saturday was taken
from Bowie's next album,
Aladdin Sane,
which had been almost entirely
written and recorded in the USA.
It's the perfect example of how
Bowie's American experience
influenced his songwriting.
You could feel him absorbing it.
Many times I was in the limo
with him and he'd be working
on the music, working on the lyrics,
listening to great American music.
But I never expected the album
to come out so soon.
And it just shows his prolificness.
I think that is the genius of David,
he could write and play
and travel all at the same time.
It did feel still like Ziggy,
but it was a much more exotic album.
I always think of Aladdin Sane
as Ziggy Stardust on tour
and these are my postcards home.
This is what I've seen
when out there -
the madness,
the wild excesses of America.
He can see the glamour, but he can
see the horror underneath as well.
# He laughed at accidental sirens
That broke the evening gloom
# The police had warned
of repercussions
# They followed none too soon. #
Bowie took ideas from everywhere,
something he's done
throughout his career.
He called me in to listen
to some songs.
I said,
"That's a Jayne County lyric."
And he said,
"Oh, yes, isn't it nice?
And I said, "David, you know,
it's not yours, it's Jayne's."
And he said, "Well, no, everything
I get is from someone else.
"What I do is I know
which things to steal."
He is an incredible magpie,
and a lot of people think that is
a huge negative,
because he cherry picks.
He cherry picks ideas,
people, clothes, everything.
But I think it is
extraordinarily clever.
Bowie had seen something he could
cherry pick from Mike Garson.
The session musician had been
brought in to play keyboards
on the first American tour and
Bowie thought his jazz background
would be perfect for Aladdin Sane.
For me, Mike Garson's piano was
what lifted that above anything
anyone else was doing at that time,
made it exotic, made it decadent.
Musicians like Garson
were playing jazz stuff
that isn't written
on the chord sheet for the song.
Garson's playing is eccentric
and wild and beautiful
at the same time.
They showed me songs like,
for example, Time.
You know,
David was looking for something that
was from the 1920s, but twisted,
like he does with his songs.
So I go...
You know, something like that.
Or Lady Grinning Soul.
He wanted this more romantic thing,
so...
By February 1973,
Aladdin Sane was completed
and Bowie was straight back
into another American tour.
In the space of just 18 months,
he'd released three
of his greatest albums,
played two extensive tours
and was about to embark
on a new live schedule
that involved nearly 100 gigs.
# She'll come, she'll go
# She'll lay belief on you. #
It was exhausting
cos we were doing two shows a night
and he constantly did...David
had to do all the interviews,
had to do all the press,
had to do everything else,
and then go out and perform
and do that. That must've been
really hard for him.
I don't think he was healthy
by the end of that tour, you know.
His entourage were getting very
concerned about his physical health
because he wasn't eating properly,
he wasn't sleeping.
Bowie said of that period,
he couldn't stand the noise
of the band ringing in his ears,
whether he was on stage or not.
I wasn't getting rid of him
at all, in fact,
I was joining forces with him.
The doppelganger and myself
were starting to become one
and the same person.
And then you start
on this trial of chaotic
psychological distraction, you know,
and you become what is called
a drug casualty at the end of it all.
#..star. #
When it really hit big
and people wanted interviews,
they didn't want to talk
to David Bowie,
they wanted to talk
to Ziggy Stardust,
and you could see the struggle.
Bowie was giving interviews saying,
"I seem to have created this monster
"and it is taking me over and I
don't really know who I am anymore."
It was always Ziggy.
Even when you're in the car,
you kind of had Ziggy with you.
After two months in America,
the tour moved to Japan.
There was already a big buzz
surrounding Ziggy's arrival
because of his use
of Kabuki make-up and clothes.
Bowie also wore outfits created
by the country's leading fashion
designer, Kansai Yamamoto.
When the tour came to Tokyo,
Kansai presented Bowie
with a whole load of specially
designed Ziggy regalia.
In the BBC documentary Cracked
Actor, filmed a year later in 1974,
Bowie explained their significance.
Aladdin Sane was a schizophrenic,
that has accounted for lots of the...
why there are
so many costume changes,
because he had so many personalities
that, as far as I was concerned,
each costume change was a different
facet of his personality.
# Oh, yeah! #
Released in April 1973,
Aladdin Sane went straight
to the top of the UK charts.
It was Bowie's first
number one record
and it wasn't long before
all his previous albums charted too.
The next month, the momentous tour
rolled into Britain
for its final stretch.
I had said all I could say
about Ziggy and I thought, "Well,
"I am very tempted to go further with
this Ziggy thing only because it's
"so popular, but actually it's
not what I really want to do."
I mean,
I've created this bloody thing,
how to do I sort of get out of it?
The extensive UK tour
drew in hordes of teenage Ziggys,
many desperate to see
their idol in the flesh.
and every ticket sold.
# So, come on
So, come on
# You've really got
a good thing going
# Well, come on
Well, come on
# If you think
you're going to make it
# You better hang on to yourself! #
The audiences were screaming,
people jumping off the rafters.
You saw people getting knocked down
coming on stage by the bodyguards.
The level of enthusiasm and the joy
of the audience was
more honest and deeper than the US.
# Watch that man
# Oh, honey, watch that man. #
Being there in the front,
I just remember being lost
in the whole kind of emotion
of the whole thing, you know.
It was incredibly powerful and I'd
never seen a band like that before.
You really wanted to be a part of it
and it was part of belonging
to something, as well as being
part of a culture, part of a gang.
I used to run David up, get him
in the car, get the band in the car.
Within a couple of months, it was
a mob scene. It was the same...
It was like the Beatles!
You know, there we were,
and people were climbing on the car.
It wasn't just the fans that were
struggling to catch a glimpse
of Britain's biggest star.
In fact, the last tour
we ever did with him,
we'd only see him on stage.
We'd walk on stage,
we'd play the show,
he'd get in his limousine
and clear off.
And we'd all go back to the hotel
and we would see him
the next day on the stage again.
We thought it was odd.
We had started out as a band.
Really, that's what he wanted
was a band.
And then the bigger and bigger
it got, the less we saw of him.
The tour was set for a triumphant
end at the Hammersmith Odeon.
The whole event was filmed by
documentary maker D.A. Pennebaker,
who had been commissioned
by Bowie's record label to capture
history in the making.
The BBC was there too,
filming for the Nationwide
current affairs programme.
What's it like with all these girls
loving your husband so much?
Absolutely fabulous. Wouldn't you
love to be loved by so many?
Nearly a decade after he had
started on his quest for fame,
David Bowie was the most famous
pop star in Britain.
Amongst the excited Ziggy clones
queuing outside, celebrities
arrived to catch the conquering
hero at his homecoming gig.
Can I ask you why you've come
to see David Bowie?
He's a fine performer, isn't he?
As usual, he went through his
extravagant pre-show preparations.
Everything was set
for an electric performance.
And Bowie delivered
with cool composure.
# Making love with his ego
# Ziggy sucked up into his mind
# Like a leper messiah
# When the kids had killed the man
# I had to break up the band. #
Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders
From Mars were playing
the concert of their lives.
Both the band and the audience
were high on the energy
buzzing around the venue.
Backstage was buzzing too,
with the rumour
of a special announcement.
Just before we went on stage,
David came round to me
and he said,
"Don't start Rock 'N Roll Suicide
until I give you the note."
It was decided in Japan.
Mick was sworn to secrecy.
"And if you do this for us,
you're going to be the next star,
"you're going to be doing this next
thing, but you can't tell the boys."
Just before the final song, David
Bowie approached the microphone
and with a few words,
broke the hearts of millions.
Of all the shows
on this tour, this...
this particular show
will remain with us for the longest
because not only is it
the last show of the tour,
but it's the last show
that we'll ever do.
Thank you.
We all went, "What the fuck
is he talking about?"
Um, quite shocked.
I kept looking at Woody
and Woody was playing away going,
"I don't know what's going on,"
you know.
It didn't quite connect
with what we'd been talking about
three days earlier.
So we didn't know
whether that was true or not.
Everybody knew except
for Woody and Trevor. I knew.
The sound guy knew. I think that was
horrific to have done that to them.
It was not a big deal to me,
but to the other guys, they thought,
it certainly could've gone on
for another five or ten years,
but David was done with it.
And any artist at any time is
entitled to be done with something.
Those people who are lead singers
and stand alone, they have to.
They have to change. They can't do
the same show every time.
So in other words,
could be calculated,
but it's a brilliant calculation
because not many people
would have the wit or the knowledge
or the intelligence to do that.
Nearly a year to the day after
he appeared on Top of the Pops
for the first time,
Ziggy Stardust was over.
Just as Bowie had prophesized
on Rock 'n' Roll Suicide,
the final song on the Ziggy album -
art had become life
and life had imitated art.
Thank you very much.
Bye-bye, we love you.
I said I'm going back to big,
heavy melodrama
and you don't fit
into my scheme of things.
And... But I finished it.
A cruel and cutting blow,
but it had to be done.
Sometimes you've got
to be cruel to be kind.
Less than a week after
Ziggy's dramatic retirement,
Bowie was in France recording
a new album, Pinups.
But it was more of a stock album -
no original songs,
just a collection of covers.
Drummer Woody wasn't even invited
to the studio sessions.
Soon Bowie had dropped
the Spiders completely.
# Where have
all the good times gone? #
The safe thing to do would have been
to keep being Ziggy
for the rest of his career,
but he had the courage
that very, very few pop stars
have ever had to take the thing
which is most loved and say,
"I'm not doing that anymore."
The rest of the decade saw
Bowie in a creative frenzy,
producing seven ground-breaking
albums in just as many years.
He was to the '70s what the Beatles
were to the '60s.
Despite devising more
characters over those years,
Bowie struggled to exorcise
the ghost of Ziggy Stardust.
In the immediate aftermath
of the alien's demise,
Bowie sank
into a dangerous drug addiction,
battling to leave the past behind.
I had a kind of strange,
psychosomatic death thing,
I think.
But that's because I was
so lost in Ziggy, I think. Again.
It was all that schizophrenia.
And he really grew
sort of out of proportion, I suppose.
Got much bigger than I thought
Ziggy was going to be.
I didn't ever see Ziggy as big.
Ziggy just overshadowed everything.
David Bowie's incredible career
spans over 40 years but, for many,
it's Ziggy Stardust for which
he'll be best remembered.
It's so iconic.
You can track pop culture
from that very point,
and it all leads back
to Ziggy Stardust.
We wanted to know
what he was wearing,
what he was singing about,
what his videos were like.
Because he was the leader of
the artistic side of rock 'n roll.
You look at punk and basically
they are more monochromatic,
more aggressive versions
of the Ziggy construct.
'80s music wouldn't have happened
if it hadn't been for Bowie.
When it came to be our turn in 1979,
dressing up was where it started.
Makeup was where we started.
Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders
From Mars, in a way,
where the blueprint for Frankie
Goes To Hollywood in a kind of
lock up your daughters
and your sons sense.
Anyone who challenges the norms
of today are doing a Ziggy,
in a sense.
You know, it went through
to the '90s with Suede and Pulp.
His tentacles reach out and are
still being taken on board today.
I mean, if you look at someone
like Lady Gaga, her whole act,
it's Bowie, it's Ziggy Stardust.
OK, she's put a 21st-century slant
on it,
but she's not really doing anything
that Bowie didn't do 40 years ago.
I am very happy with Ziggy.
I think he was a very
successful character
and I think I played him very well.
But I am glad I am me now.
# Wham, bam, thank you, ma'am! #