- 2 weeks ago
Copyright Disclaimer under Section 107 of the copyright act 1976, allowance is made for fair use for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favour of fair use
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:06First on BBC4, an alien with a difference, crazy claws and make-up, a musical genius,
00:14with some strong language, David Bowie and the story of Ziggy Stardust.
00:2340 years ago, in millions of living rooms across the British Isles, a strange alien creature
00:29was beamed onto our television screens. With bright red hair and multi-coloured space suit,
00:35his unearthly appearance shocked the nation, but for many teenagers who experienced this
00:40televisual visitation, it would change their lives forever.
00:52This messianic Martian was with us only for a year, but his impact would be felt for generations to come.
01:03Music on planet Earth would never be the same again.
01:17Armed with laser-guided melodies and lyrics from another dimension, Ziggy Stardust heralded a new era of rock music.
01:32A time of outlandish fashion,
01:41Outrageous sexuality,
01:48And good old-fashioned rock-and-roll music.
02:01So, what made this mysterious extraterrestrial one of the most influential cultural icons, whether that was his army of screaming
02:09fans, or copycat artists struggling to keep up?
02:12We just haven't got a clue what to do!
02:16David took it to another level. He just, you know, wiped the floor with everybody. It was game-changing.
02:22When we first saw Bowie as Ziggy Stardust, he looked so complete and so fully formed. It almost was as
02:29though he just sort of appeared from a different planet. It was extraordinary. And of course, at that time, you
02:33didn't realise that he'd been trying to be successful for ten years.
02:38I'm just, by nature, a very flighty person. I get turned on and off things all the time, very quickly.
02:46Born in 1947, David Robert Jones spent his teenage years trying to make it as a musician.
02:58He went through a series of bands playing R&B and rock-and-roll before becoming a mod.
03:07His belief was that if you want to do something bad enough, and you put your mind to it, you
03:12can.
03:12The trouble is, he didn't just take one thing, he took loads of things, he wanted to be everything.
03:16At age 20, he changed his name from Jones to Bowie and released his first solo album on DRAM Records.
03:23Who's that hiding in the apple tree?
03:26It was a strange mix of musical and whimsical pop. He even tried his hand at a children's novelty record.
03:43I think he was trying on, what can I do, and what do people want, and going through the trial
03:49and error period.
03:50And there was a lot of error. You know, with the laughing gnome, it's like, OK.
04:00The laughing gnome is not a great record, but it is very indicative of what he was doing at the
04:04time,
04:05because he was obsessed with Anthony Newley.
04:07What kind of fool am I?
04:11Anthony Newley was a giant of British popular culture, as adept as a singer, dancer and entertainer
04:16as he was at creating surreal comedy that paved the way for Monty Python and the like.
04:22I think she fancies me.
04:23He was more than meets the eye at Anthony Newley. He wasn't just, what kind of fool am I?
04:28Yeah, he wrote that, but there was many other sides to Anthony Newley.
04:32Films, the Go Any Slate TV thing, which was groundbreaking when it happened.
04:37So I think that's what interested David.
04:40It begs the question, if David Bowie had found success with his Anthony Newley face,
04:44would he have become a light entertainer?
04:47But as both the Laughing Gnome and the DRAM album were the latest in a line of commercial failures, we'll
04:52never know.
04:53But Newley's quirky versatility would certainly later inform the theatrical DNA of Ziggy Stardust.
05:02I would try and get involved in anything that I felt was a useful tool for an artistic medium.
05:08I was trying to be a one-man revolution.
05:14Around the same time the DRAM album was released, Bowie met Lindsay Kemp, a British dancer who specialised in mime
05:21and avant-garde theatre.
05:23I was endeavouring to teach him to astonish, to astonish a public.
05:30I helped him find himself through his movement, so he could express himself so that he had the right kind
05:37of control.
05:42Being my student, he was so keen. He was like a sponge. I mean, he'd absorb anything that took his
05:49interest.
05:50Those classes included some mime, but mostly dance. I taught him to dance.
05:58Within a few weeks of meeting, Kemp and Bowie had created a stage play called Piero in Turquoise, which they
06:04toured together around the UK to critical acclaim.
06:08Off stage, they embarked on an affair, the choreographer introducing the young singer to London's gay intelligentsia.
06:14He had an enormous sexual appetite, which came across on the stage. I mean, it's a useful thing to have
06:23if one has an outlet.
06:26But the dance troupe didn't pay the bills, and nor did his next musical direction, a folk trio called Feathers.
06:33Bowie turned to acting to help finance his music, taking small film roles, and even starring in an ice cream
06:39ad.
06:43And then, seemingly from nowhere, he hit upon a formula to finally launch his music career.
06:50It was also a masterful piece of songwriting, but the songs on the self-titled album, released to cash in
06:56on the single's success, sounded nothing like Space Oddity.
07:06The record-buying public couldn't understand what Davey Bowie was all about.
07:11It was a strange record, because at the time, he was writing folk songs.
07:15His latest thing was having long hair, going on stage, crossing his legs and playing an acoustic guitar.
07:20So, consequently, he didn't really click again with the public, because his image was quite confused.
07:29Bowie had shown the world a glimpse of his extraordinary talent, but it would be three years until he could
07:34recapture Space Oddity's success with Ziggy Stardust.
07:37And as those years rolled by, Bowie became increasingly worried he was damned to be a one-hit wonder.
07:44In 1970, he was fundamentally depressed. He had no idea where he was going. He didn't know how he was
07:49going to fit.
07:52A serious change of direction was needed, and that, in part, came from Bowie's bride-to-be, Angie Barnett.
07:59Angela was really a driving force behind David. She was very influential with the costumes.
08:05She made him brave. She would have a haircut first if she didn't think he would like it. She made
08:10him brave.
08:11She was encouraging and always on his side and always positive. She would always encourage dressing him and help the
08:18image, and I always found her as a very positive force.
08:22Bowie formed a new band called The High, and in February 1970, he unleashed a radical new image.
08:29I was going to do a gig, and Angie said, we're going to dress you all up, and we did
08:34the roundhouse.
08:34I was supposedly a cowboy man, because I had a cowboy hat on, and a frilly shirt with some tassels
08:39on.
08:40We were just thrown together, but David's was like, he had the big knee-high leather boots.
08:46And we just did this gig, dressed up, you know, theatre.
08:52The London audience wasn't ready for superheroes playing heavy rock, and the hype bombed.
08:57With hindsight, it seems Bowie was just ahead of his time, especially when you consider the hype's make-up and
09:03costumes predate Mark Boland's first glam rock TV appearance by over a year.
09:09Bowie's plan to create his famous alter ego was beginning to take shape.
09:14The proto-glam band The Hype are most notable, because it's the first time David Bowie worked with Mick Ronson,
09:21the guitarist who had become part of the sound of Ziggy Stardust.
09:24Their first studio collaboration was on Bowie's next album, the heavy guitar-based The Man Who Sold the World.
09:31But what shocked people the most wasn't the new hard rock sound, but the image on the sleeve.
09:36He sells it by positioning himself on the front cover in a very long, flowing, pre-Raphaelite dress, which was
09:43the least macho, least hard rock image imaginable.
09:46And it's hard to think now how shocking that actually was.
09:53It wasn't until David and Angela walked down Beckenham High Street, David in a dress, and Angela looking remarkably boy
10:00-like, that we all started taking notice of him.
10:02I mean, people would recoil. I mean, literally, the old girls would literally kind of go, oh, my God, you
10:08know.
10:08Shocking was what he wanted to be, and shocking was what he was.
10:13The rock scene in 1970 was very much the colour of blue jeans. Everybody wore denim, everybody had long hair,
10:20and the music very much reflected that sort of mono-toned culture.
10:25And I'm sure that's why the album wasn't a hit in this country, was because anybody who was interested in
10:29the music picked up the cover and said, no way I'm getting involved in that.
10:32This was not an era for when men flirted with camp imagery at all.
10:38Three albums in, and Bowie was still failing to find his audience.
10:41He desperately needed someone who could turn his undeniable talent into record sales.
10:48Somebody did come along and grabbed me by the empty wallet and said, I'm Tony De Vries and I'm going
10:53to make you a star.
10:54I said, oh, yeah.
10:59David was great, yes, he was, but he hadn't gotten very far until he'd met Tony. He was struggling.
11:04Tony had a master plan, and things started to happen.
11:08Yeah, you want to be Elvis Presley? I can do that. You know, it can be done, David, it can
11:12be done.
11:15He financed it. That was the most important thing. Everything that Bowie did, there was Tony De Vries with the
11:20money to pay for it. Without Tony De Vries, we would never have had David Bowie pop star, rock star
11:25at all.
11:32Tony's main objective was to make Bowie a superstar. And that meant cracking America. So at the beginning of 1971,
11:39the 24 year old singer was sent there on a short promotional tour. Within a few months, he returned, signing
11:44a deal with RCA Records in New York, the company who would later fund the Ziggy Stardust project.
11:50It was during this period that Bowie was introduced to the subversive world of Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground.
11:57He felt immediately at home, surrounded by New York's counterculture.
12:01We were all working in underground theater, which involved a whole lot of outrageousness. The rock and roll world at
12:09the same time in New York was becoming very underground. They were men dressed in women's clothes, but not in
12:16drag. They were just wearing women's blouses and things and a lot of makeup and things. And everything was getting
12:22very bizarre.
12:26Back in London, Bowie continued his fascination with the avant-garde. He hung out in gay nightclubs with a fashion
12:32designer called Freddy Barretti. And when an Andy Warhol play called Pork arrived in town, Bowie and his new wife
12:39Angie befriended the American cast.
12:43We invited Angie and David to come see the play when they came with Tony de Vries. And we all
12:51started to hang out together.
12:53We met David's incredible, loud, crazy wife Angie. And she was, oh, we have to go do this. We have
13:01to go do that. We have to outrage the populace. And we were fine for that.
13:05I was, you know, psychedelic acid head hippie chick. In those days, we were still pretty outrageous sexually, I have
13:17to say.
13:18You know, we had sex in the loos at the Hard Rock Cafe, even with the owners. This was like
13:25every night and a lot of people doing it.
13:29Inspired by the outrageous characters he'd met in London and New York, the very beginnings of Ziggy Stardust began to
13:35materialise in Bowie's mind. Taking his lead from the star maker Andy Warhol, he invented his own rock and roll
13:42star, Arnold Corns.
13:44What he hasn't yet done is to manage to get together the balls to be that rock star himself. And
13:50so he chooses somebody who effectively, in musical terms, is a blank canvas.
13:54The idea was to take Freddy Barretti, this beautiful boy that he'd met in the Sombrero Club, and to hand
14:01him the songs and dress him up and get him to be Ziggy, even though he would be miming to
14:04David's voice.
14:06Come on, stronger!
14:09Bowie decides that he's going to create a band called Arnold Corns, and unfortunately, the music that he's selling is
14:14terrible. It's very early versions of some of the songs from Ziggy, and they sound like really rudimentary, very boring
14:20and raw demos, but that is really the seed of Ziggy Stardust.
14:24Make me know you really care!
14:28Although Arnold Corns failed, Bowie was convinced the idea of a fictional rock star would work.
14:34In the meantime, financial necessity meant Bowie had to submit his songs to a publisher to sell on to other
14:41artists.
14:45One such song scored a number 12 hit for the pop star Peter Noon in July 1971.
14:51Its strange lyrics were inspired by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.
14:56Doesn't make you wonder, did Peter Noon have any idea what he was singing about?
15:01Let me make it plain, you gotta make pay for the home of Siberia
15:08Oh You Pretty Things
15:11Bowie's own version, recorded a few months later, revealed the song's compositional brilliance.
15:16His songwriting had shifted up a gear, and Oh You Pretty Things was to be just one classic track on
15:22a genius pop album.
15:23Honky Dory.
15:24Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
15:27Turn and face the strange
15:29Ch-ch-ch-changes
15:31Listening to the demos over at the house one evening, the light bulb went on at the top of my
15:35head.
15:36This guy could actually be someone.
15:39The talent was coming through, it was so very different from what he'd done in the past, and just, this
15:45guy's good.
15:50Bowie brought back two of the musicians for the man who sold the world to play on Hunky Dory.
15:54Guitarist Mick Ronson, and drummer Woody Woodmansey.
15:58When Bowie was left short of a bass player for a radio session, Mick and Woody suggested their mate from
16:03home, Trevor Boulder.
16:06Heavy Flowers was supposed to be on it, and Heavy didn't turn up.
16:11So I was dragged into learning something like 12 songs or something in an afternoon, and straight after that we
16:17did Hunky Dory.
16:22Bowie didn't know it yet, but the spiders from Mars had just formed.
16:25He now had in place the musicians who could help him realise his future Ziggy Stardust dream.
16:30Hunky Dory also provided the perfect platform for Mick Ronson to really show off his extraordinary musical abilities.
16:38Mick was a very talented musician, apart from being a dynamic guitar player.
16:42He was instrumental in arrangements, he'd been classically trained.
16:54He was one of the great rock musicians in history, ever, as an arranger, a piano player as well.
17:01I mean, it must have been like having Stravinsky in your band.
17:08On its release in November 1971, Hunky Dory was widely praised by the music press in both the UK and
17:14America.
17:15But with little publicity, it failed to chart.
17:19Bowie's manager was actually very keen that Hunky Dory should not be a success,
17:22because if Hunky Dory was a huge album, then it would not be possible for Bowie to transform himself into
17:29Ziggy Stardust.
17:30We only had a two-week break between Hunky Dory and starring Ziggy.
17:35It was all kind of written and ready to roll.
17:37And we just had a break and then went straight into Ziggy.
17:40I said, you've got to be crazy.
17:42And he says, management company want me to do another album.
17:45And he said, you're not going to like this one.
17:47I said, why? And he said, because it's more rock and roll.
17:49It's going to be more like, I can't remember if he said Iggy Pop and the Stooges or Velvet Underground.
17:53It wouldn't have mattered because I didn't know of either of those acts at that point anyway.
17:59Sorry.
18:02The Velvet Underground influence can clearly be heard on Queen Bitch,
18:05the one track on Hunky Dory that links the album to Ziggy Stardust.
18:09When Bowie performed on BBC's Old Grey Whistle Test in February 1972,
18:14he might have played songs from Hunky Dory,
18:16but the transformation into his alien alter ego had already started.
18:21Well, I'm off on the 11th floor and I'm watching the cruises below.
18:27You know, my heart's in the basement, my weekend's at an all-time low.
18:33By the time Hunky Dory was completed, Bowie had his Ziggy Stardust album already written.
18:38He'd drawn on nearly a decade of experience to create the record that would finally make him famous,
18:44and this time he got it spot on.
18:46Ziggy turned Bowie into Stardust.
18:53Ziggy Stardust was the thing that really catapulted him into the universe.
18:57It's an extraordinary record and it still sounds amazing.
18:59He revolutionised the music business.
19:01It is the greatest record of the 1970s for me.
19:05He's one of my favourite albums, still.
19:07It lit the blue touch paper of imagination and creativity for a lot of people.
19:15I could make it all worthwhile
19:17As a rock and roll star
19:20The rise and fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
19:24was David Bowie's first hit album.
19:27The record that made him a superstar.
19:29It tells the story of a doomed alien who takes human form as a rock star.
19:36It really always inspired me that it was an album that had a beginning and an end and told a
19:40story.
19:41It was like a rock opera.
19:42This superstar is killed by his own fans.
19:46Rock and roll suicide.
19:47He's eaten alive by their energy that he's fed them with.
19:50It was a brilliant idea.
19:51It was an idea that suited the dystopia of the period.
19:54There'd been economic chaos in the late 60s.
19:58And so the Conservatives came in with the idea of sort of battening down the hatches
20:02in a short, sharp shock for everybody.
20:04London was extremely poor and in many ways it was still in the shadow of the Second World War.
20:09In 1972, there were bombsites still everywhere.
20:14There was a recession.
20:16There was the Cold War as well.
20:17And I think what David and Ziggy were offering was a creature of fantasy, come to save us.
20:23I mean, he sang, there's only five years left of the earth.
20:26And actually in 1972, you did believe there was probably only five years.
20:30We've got five years stuck on my eyes.
20:36Five years, what a surprise.
20:40We've got five years.
20:43My brain hurts a lot.
20:45Five years.
20:47That's all we got!
20:50The album was made at London's Trident Studios,
20:54previously home to recording sessions by The Beatles and Elton John.
20:57It was the job of the Spiders from Mars to turn Bowie's demos into rock and roll.
21:02What he used to do for us was play a song on an acoustic guitar
21:06and we'd quickly go through the chords and then we'd play the song, you know.
21:10Trevor and I would be going, is there a chorus next? What comes after that?
21:13Does it end on chorus? What? You know.
21:15So you've only just got the bare bones of it in your head.
21:19And then he's going, OK, let's go for it.
21:26You were on the edge.
21:27And you knew from experience that he didn't like going more than three takes.
21:33You only had three shots.
21:35And then, woo, you know.
21:37Then the...
21:39What shall I say? The atmosphere might change.
21:50As a performer, I haven't come across anyone better.
21:5495% of every vocal I recorded with him was one take from beginning to end.
22:00It was amazing.
22:07It sounds quite first takey. It sounds quite lively and almost improvised.
22:13It sounds like a group who's excited to be there. It's not ponderous. It's very light on its feet.
22:21Bowie based the Ziggy character on an eclectic group of his favourite singers,
22:26from the early rock and roll of Little Richard to the theatrical chanson of Jacques Brel.
22:30The album was influenced by the Velvet Underground.
22:34It was influenced by a lot of early rock and roll, Gene Vincent, Vince Taylor.
22:38Hey, mama, don't you treat me wrong!
22:40Vince Taylor, who was the fatal English rocker,
22:43who famously took too much LSD and declared he was Jesus Christ.
22:48I think David took all this in and created this character
22:51with an amalgamation of all the bands we've seen.
22:54You know, when you think about Scream, Lord Such,
22:56he did a great show.
22:58He'd come out of a coffin and there was Johnny Kid and the Pirates
23:00and all these great bands that were theatrical.
23:04You know, did a great theatre as well as the rock and roll.
23:06And that's what David wanted to do. He wanted to mix it all up, you know.
23:11Another singer who had taken rock and roll theatre to an arranged new level
23:15was Iggy Pop, who Bowie had met in New York a few months prior to recording the album.
23:20Iggy was a big influence and, of course, Iggy became Ziggy.
23:23But no-one had gone that extra bit and made their performance a piece of concept art.
23:32Part of that concept was the creation of a new image so essential to the success of Ziggy Stardust.
23:38Bowie began by making the spiders from Mars look like a gang.
23:42He took us to see Clockwork Orange and that's basically where he got a lot of his ideas for the
23:47clothes.
23:47You know, we were the drooms.
23:49Freddie Barretti, within a week, had designed the clothes for Ziggy Stardust.
23:53The sort of, the mock boiler suits from Clockwork Orange.
23:57I always thought they were great because they used curtain fabric from Liberties.
24:01And it was very inventive, those little velvet suits and those great space boots.
24:05I mean, they were great. I really liked them.
24:07He called us into his kind of lounge. He had some drawings that he'd done.
24:12He said, these are the ideas for what we're going to wear and we would kind of...
24:17He said, I'm not fucking wearing that. It was Woody's initial thing.
24:22It took him a while to convince us. Especially Mick.
24:25And he'd said to Angie, you won't get me wearing that. Do you know what I mean? I'm a musician.
24:31I've got friends that are going to watch me, you know?
24:35Also to change was Bowie's long pre-Raphaelite hairstyle.
24:39I said, I think you should cut your hair off because everyone's got long hair. You should do it a
24:44different style.
24:45Well, that started looking through the magazines as me and Angela David searching through.
24:50And we eventually decided on a combination of three different hairstyles.
24:52And that was the original Ziggy cut. And the next day I died at Bright Road.
24:57And for me, that was the day Ziggy was born.
25:00The first single from the Ziggy Stardust album was Starman. Released on the 28th of April 1972.
25:07First it didn't sell. But two months later, he appeared on Top of the Pops. And that changed everything.
25:13There's a star man waiting in the sky. He'd like to come and meet us.
25:21But he thinks he'd grow our minds. And there's a star man waiting in the sky.
25:28He told us not to blow it. Cause he knows it's all worth while it's over.
25:33Let the children lose it. Let the children lose it. Let all the children lose it.
25:40Starman was the Eureka moment in Rock and Roll. This creature appears on Top of the Pops.
25:46And he was so shocking. So androgynous. So otherworldly.
25:50It was so different. It was like, wow. And no one had ever seen anything like that before.
25:55I had to phone someone, so I picked on you.
26:00Let's not forget David's magic as well. There's a line in it where he sings,
26:04I had to phone someone, so I picked on you. And he looked straight down the barrel of the lens.
26:08And I was sure he'd picked on me.
26:11He arrived at a time where there was a sort of vacuum in popular music.
26:16You had a generation of people who were too young for the sixties, cause they were kids.
26:22And we were ripe for exploitation. And suddenly there was David Bowie.
26:26And we all said, that's what we want.
26:33For any of the older generation who were watching, it probably hadn't escaped their notice
26:37that the singer in the multicolored jumpsuit might not be entirely heterosexual.
26:42Looking at it now, it looks so tame.
26:45But at the time, it was a real gesture when he put his arm around the guitarist.
26:49It was a very sexual thing.
26:51The arm-draping gesture was even more sexually provocative to readers of The Melody Maker,
26:56because Bowie had declared he was gay in the music paper several months earlier.
27:00To go that extra mile and say, I'm gay, was so outrageous.
27:03And, of course, gay men at that time weren't characters on soap operas on TV.
27:08They weren't outed comedians.
27:11It was still seen as being very subversive.
27:13Angela said to him, the shits hit the fan.
27:17And it was the kind of thing a popular singer didn't say,
27:20whether it was true or whether it wasn't in those days.
27:23Angela also said to him, well, look, you know, you might at least have said I'm bisexual.
27:35No one had paid any attention when Bowie hung around the gay scene with Lindsay Kemp several years earlier.
27:40But after the Top of the Pops performance had made him a household name,
27:44his sexual orientation became a national talking point.
27:48Bowie probably did make homosexuality fashionable.
27:51Don't forget, it's not somebody who's a bit naff, saying, I'm gay, nobody cares.
27:54It's somebody who's super hip.
27:56At that time, people were feeling so repressed and it was dangerous and they were getting beat up.
28:01So he liberated a lot of people.
28:03I thought he was doing a really good thing.
28:07Whether he was gay or bisexual, at this point in time, Bowie was married with a son
28:11and so the ambiguity gained him a huge amount of press attention.
28:15It also seemed to make him even more attractive to women.
28:19David Bowie is hot.
28:22He's gorgeous. Yes, androgynous. Gorgeous.
28:27Physically striking.
28:28I just wanted to have sex with him. I didn't want him to be gay.
28:33Performing on Top of the Pops gave Bowie the power to unleash Ziggy Stardust to 15 million people in just
28:39three minutes.
28:40The single was soon on its way to number 10 in the charts.
28:43Bowie's first hit since Space Oddity three years earlier.
28:48Bowie mania happened immediately.
28:50You'd go to school and in, I would say, three days, people had the haircut.
28:54When you see big, fat, hairy truckers with short, Ziggy haircuts, it's quite a revelation.
28:59Oh, my goodness me, you know?
29:01To go out to the shop, you had to go out to the back garden and climb over a wall
29:05and sort of disguise yourself and then walk down an alleyway.
29:11Because the street was just covered in kids. There was kids everywhere.
29:13Daddy!
29:15We went out shopping and we came back with all our shopping and we hadn't spent a penny.
29:20And Bowie's is even worse, I don't know. There would be at least 100 kids out there all the time
29:26waiting to see him.
29:28When the album smashed into the top five, Bowie knew the ghost of the one-hit wonder had finally been
29:34laid to rest. After a decade of attempts, he'd finally cracked it.
29:42The success of Ziggy Stardust coincided with the emerging glam rock scene. But Bowie was more interested in creating his
29:49own super-hit clique.
29:52The first part of this plan was to donate a song to the much-loved but struggling Mott the Hoople.
29:57It became an even bigger hit than Starman.
30:15He grew to hate him, Bowie. Not only was he writing all his own and making all these, he's revived
30:20Mott the Hoople's career from a funeral pyre, you know, Pegasus here.
30:24And he wrote this great, great song that will live forever.
30:29Next, he turned his attention to two of the artists who had been a huge influence on his music for
30:34Ziggy. The first was Velvet Underground's Lou Reed.
30:38The brilliant thing about his friendship with Lou Reed is that Lou Reed was successful before he came along.
30:45I mean, the Velvet Underground, the most influential group of all time.
30:49Yet, come here, I'll take you under my wing. I'm going to turn you, Lou Reed, into a pop star
30:55in the UK. Really clever.
30:58Take a walk on the wild side.
31:01In the summer of 1972, alongside Mick Ronson, Bowie produced Lou Reed's Transformer album.
31:07It's still Lou's most successful album to date.
31:10A few months later, Bowie was at the mixing desk for Iggy Pop and the Stooges' Raw Power.
31:18Today, it's considered as a massive inspiration for the punk rock movement.
31:22We'd never heard of Iggy Pop. We'd never heard of Lou Reed. Bowie revealed those to us.
31:27They become part of Bowie's coterie, so we wanted to listen to them.
31:36I can't stand the premise of going on in jeans and being real. I mean, it's not normal.
31:47The first Ziggy Stardust tour had started back in February with little commotion, but after Top of the Pops, the
31:53dates began to sell out.
31:55Bowie's chemistry with guitarist Mick Ronson was evolving into one of rock's great partnerships.
32:01If you really want to know what the sound of Ziggy Stardust is, apart from David Bowie's voice, it's Mick
32:06Ronson's guitar.
32:07It just felt like an animal begging to be released whenever he played.
32:19He was a brilliant guitar player. It wasn't one of these technically fast players, but he played beautiful guitar.
32:25His melody work was just so good. I mean, Monet's Daydream, you listen to the end of Monet's Daydream.
32:30The solo on the end of that. He's simple but genius.
32:36For me, he was the best guitarist around in those days. I mean, he was the guitarist to have.
32:40And he contributed so much, cos he looked great to her. They made a great couple.
32:45You see those two on stage? It was exciting. David going down on Mick's guitar.
32:52Revelation. When my mother saw that paper, she came home and she threw it on the table and she said,
32:57Is this what you're working for? I feel they're just pretending, Mum.
33:03For some reason, he just did things like that, you know.
33:05And, of course, somebody took a picture of it and the next thing it's in the press and it's supposed
33:09to be sexual and God knows what else, you know.
33:13The final dates of the UK tour in August were at London's Rainbow Theatre.
33:18Bowie would be performing in front of some of the biggest names in pop and was keen to show he'd
33:22come on a long way since Space Oddity.
33:24Helping Bowie change the show from a rock gig into a theatrical spectacle was his old dance tutor, Lindsay Kemp.
33:31David was fascinated by what I had to teach him, what I had to tell him about the kabuki.
33:41Kabuki is that wonderful Japanese theatre where men played the female roles and, of course, they move in a very
33:49stylised way.
33:51The music is a very important part of the spectacle, and spectacle it is.
34:03It was the first time a pop star had combined rock music with exotic costumes, theatrical lighting, choreography and mine.
34:12It certainly had the desired effect.
34:16When he came out of Ziggy Stardust, it was like an art installation. It was like, wow.
34:21His stage present is quite extraordinary. David was so glamorous and so beautiful and androgynous and sexual.
34:29David as Ziggy commanded the stage. You just wanted to be him. You adored him.
34:34Quite honestly, I'd never seen anything like it in my life. It was so exciting.
34:41For manager Tony DeFreeze, breaking Ziggy in Britain was the easy part.
34:47Cracking America would be a whole different ball game.
34:50Even though he'd signed to RCA the previous year, the record label hadn't raised Bowie's US profile at all.
34:57Tony's plan was to open an office in New York and use RCA's money to pretend David was already huge
35:03in America, just as Bowie had pretended with Ziggy.
35:07Some old Warhol friends were drafted in to help.
35:10He had two bodyguards and he dressed the bodyguards up in karate costumes and they flanked him wherever he went.
35:18Everyone assumed then that he was just as big as Mick Jagger and Elton John.
35:24And, of course, he wasn't. We were having to create this myth.
35:27We all had 24-hour limos, you know, first-class tickets and airplanes, everything paid for around the world. It
35:35was just madness.
35:37Tony was good at telling them, I need that much money and we're gonna do it like this, you're gonna
35:42do that, this, that and that.
35:44They were afraid of us. We're all in makeup, they can't tell the men from the women.
35:50All they wanted to do was when we would be sitting in their offices making outrageous demands, they just wanted
35:57to get us out of their offices.
35:59And so they'd just say yes to anything.
36:02The house lights were about to go down for the appearance of David Bowie.
36:06A 28-day US tour was booked, kicking off in September. One of the standout gigs was at Santa Monica.
36:13A bootleg recording of the concert immortalized the raw power of the Spiders from Mars.
36:20All of a sudden, strobe lights were going and everything was bright and just blew people's minds.
36:25Hey man, Henry, don't be okay. Hey man, Henry, get on the phone.
36:31Everybody's on the phone saying, you gotta see this new show that David Bowie, you know, he's something else, you
36:38know, and people couldn't believe it. It was just so different.
36:40And I remember David saying, he thought the audience weren't responding very much. And I said, David, you gotta remember,
36:46they're staring at you with their mouth open.
36:49They haven't quite worked out where you're from, you know, another planet or something, you know.
36:56The tour featured one addition to the Spiders, who would be instrumental in changing the sound of future David Bowie
37:02records, Mike Garson.
37:04The keyboardist came from a completely different musical background.
37:07It was a big shock coming from jazz, very loose kind of playing, but I realized they had a vibe
37:14that was very, very cool.
37:15So I just found a way to lock into it and they were very accepting.
37:21While Bowie had impressed auditorium audiences near the east and west coasts, when the tour progressed through the more conservative
37:28states of America, the reception wasn't quite so warm.
37:32Nobody wants to go and see this guy who says he's gay and is playing these strange songs and is
37:36wearing makeup.
37:37They want a boogie, you know, they want people in denim with long hair who look like them.
37:41And so he's playing arenas across America and some nights he's getting two or three hundred people along.
37:49Despite some poor attendances, the management continued to circulate the idea that Bowie was a huge celebrity, but their luxury
37:57living was on borrowed money.
37:59By the time we got to Hollywood, they put us in the Chateau Marmont, which you don't get any better
38:04than Chateau Marmont really in Hollywood.
38:06Like, no, I'm on the phone and I said, no, this won't do. We have to stay in the Beverly
38:12Hills Hotel.
38:13Room service for one week was about $12,000. Was it more than that? It might have been more. I
38:18don't know. That was mine. That was just me.
38:21Everything we wanted, we just signed for. I think we spent $40,000 or something like that.
38:26And I don't know what we spent it on, but it went.
38:30And we stayed there for six weeks. Not only the whole band, but all the roadies, all the everybody.
38:39Iggy was there, Sarinda Fox was there, all on RCA's money, and by this time RCA was so far in
38:45debt that they couldn't get out of it.
38:47It sounds really, you know, hippy-dippy, but it just worked beautifully. It really did.
38:58This fantasy lifestyle gave the Spiders the impression they were going to be very rich.
39:02A chance conversation between drummer Woody and new boy Mike Garson put an end to that theory.
39:08I was sitting on an aeroplane with him, and I was reading a magazine, and there was a Lamborghini in
39:13it.
39:14And I went, ooh, that's nice. And he went, why don't you buy one? And I went, yeah, I wish.
39:19And he went, well, you must be able to afford one. And I went, well, actually, no.
39:24I was getting a salary, and it seemed fair, and I just assumed the other guys were getting more, because
39:31they were there several years.
39:32I went, what do you think I get, you know? And he went, well, I know what I get.
39:38And I went, so what do you get? And he told me, and it was like three times what I
39:42got.
39:43We went to Bowie and said, look, you know, unless things change and you give us the money, we're going
39:50home.
39:51Kind of the final straw was really De Vries saying to us, I would rather pay the road crew more
39:58than you.
40:00Right? And I just went, there's no game here.
40:04The Spiders eventually renegotiated their contracts, but the whole saga tainted their relationship with Bowie.
40:10As the tour continued around America, the news coming out of Britain was that glam rock had exploded.
40:19In the previous year, Mark Bolan had been the leader of the scene, having chalked up four number one singles.
40:25By 1973, the balance of power was shifting.
40:30Bowie opened the door for the whole glam rock thing and Bowie just took it completely somewhere else and turned
40:36it into kind of like an art form.
40:38And Roxy music, of course, were part of that as well. They again were very original in this sci-fi
40:43and fifties glam mix.
40:46I think the whole three of those together were the real kind of core of what glam rock was about.
40:51Everything else was just something that came in on the bandwagon.
40:55We just haven't got a clue what to do.
40:57When you saw bands like The Suite, who kind of had that great kind of 70s lorry drivers, dressed in
41:03drag kind of feeling.
41:07There was a couple of quite good records as pure records, but they were not that interesting.
41:12My brain was full up with Baudelaire and Byron and Shelley and all these, you know, lunatic poets, artists and,
41:22you know, I couldn't see any link there.
41:24Whereas with David, you could see a clear link in the sophistication of what they were doing.
41:33In January 1973, Bowie returned to Britain as glam rock's leading light, performing a brand new song on top of
41:40the Fox.
41:58It's something about that rock attitude and that blurring of sexuality that is very, very alluring to young people, especially
42:09teenagers.
42:10With the confusion of growing up.
42:12I think there was a very sort of urban working class, male dominated love of the Ziggy look because who
42:22was going to argue with a bloke who looked like that, who was pretty tough.
42:26You were taking your life in your hands to wear mascara to school in Liverpool in 1973 and or dyeing
42:33your hair bright red, you know. My parents were horrified.
42:39You know, what have I done to deserve this walking freak show for a son, you know.
42:48Aladdin was more in the area of Ziggy goes to America. Here was this alternative world that I'd been talking
42:54about. And it had all the violence and all the strangeness and it was really happening. It wasn't just in
43:00my songs.
43:03Let me put my arms around your head. Gee, it's hot. Let's go to bed.
43:12Ziggy and the Spider's next TV appearance was on the Russell Hardy show, performing another new track.
43:17Driving Saturday was taken from Bowie's next album, Aladdin Sane, which had been almost entirely written and recorded in the
43:24USA. It's the perfect example of how Bowie's American experience influenced his songwriting.
43:31You could feel him absorbing it. Many times I was in the limo with him and he'd be working on
43:38the music and working on lyrics, listening to great American music, but I never expected the album to come out
43:45so soon. It just shows his prolificness.
43:48I think that's the genius of David. He could write and play and travel all at the same time. It
43:54did feel still like Ziggy, but it was a much more exotic album.
43:58I always think of Aladdin Sane as Ziggy Stylist on tour. And these are my postcards home. And this is
44:04what I've seen when I've been out there. The madness, the wild excesses of America. He can see the glamour,
44:11but he can see the horror underneath as well.
44:24Bowie took ideas from everywhere, something he's done throughout his career.
44:29He called me in to listen to some songs. I said, that's a Jane County lyric. You know, and he
44:36said, oh, yes, isn't it nice? And I said, well, David, it's not yours, it's Jane's. And he said, well,
44:45no, he said, everything I get is from someone else. What I do is I know which things to steal.
44:52He's an incredible magpie. And a lot of people think that's a huge negative because he cherry picks. He cherry
44:59picks ideas, people, clothes, everything. But I think it's extraordinarily clever.
45:11Bowie had seen something he could cherry pick from Mike Garson. The session musician had been brought in to play
45:17keyboards on the first American tour. And Bowie thought his jazz background would be perfect for Aladdin Sane.
45:23For me, Mike Garson's piano was what lifted that above anything anyone else was doing at that time, made it
45:30exotic, made it decadent.
45:34Musicians like Garson will play jazz stuff that isn't written on the chord sheet for the song. Garson's playing is
45:40eccentric and wild and beautiful at the same time.
45:44They showed me songs like, for example, Time. You know, David was looking for something that was from the 1920s,
45:52but twisted like he does with his songs. So I go.
46:08You know, something like that. Or Lady Grinning's song. He wanted this more romantic thing.
46:22By February 1973, Aladdin Sane was completed and Bowie was straight back into another American tour. In the space of
46:29just 18 months, he'd released three of his greatest albums, played two extensive tours and was about to embark on
46:36a new live schedule that involved nearly 100 gigs.
46:48It was a tough tour because we were doing two shows a night and he considered that David had to
46:53do all the interviews, had to do all the press, had to do everything else and then go out and
46:57perform and do that.
46:59That must have been really hard for him. I don't think he was particularly healthy by the end of that
47:03tour, you know.
47:04His entourage were getting very concerned about his physical health because he wasn't eating properly, he wasn't sleeping.
47:10Bowie said of that period he couldn't stand the noise of the band ringing in his ears, you know, whether
47:15he was on stage or not.
47:17I wasn't getting rid of him at all. In fact, I was joining forces with him. The doppelganger and myself
47:22were starting to become one and the same person and then you start on this trail of chaotic psychological destruction,
47:31you know, and you become what's called a drug casualty at the end of it all.
47:39When it really hit big and people wanted interviews, they didn't want to talk to David Bowie and they wanted
47:46to talk to Ziggy Stardust and you could see the struggle.
47:50Bowie was giving interviews saying, I seem to have created this monster and it's taking me over and I don't
47:55really know who I am anymore.
47:56It was always Ziggy, so even when you were in the car, you kind of had Ziggy with you.
48:05After two months in America, the tour moved to Japan. There was already a big buzz surrounding Ziggy's arrival because
48:12of his use of kabuki makeup and clothes.
48:15Bowie also wore outfits created by the country's leading fashion designer, Kansai Yamamoto.
48:21When the tour came to Tokyo, Kansai presented Bowie with a whole load of specially designed Ziggy regalia.
48:28In the BBC documentary Cracked Actor, filmed a year later in 1974, Bowie explained their significance.
48:36Aladdin's same was a schizophrenia that's accounted for lots of the, why there were so many costume changes.
48:42We could see there were so many personalities that each, as far as I was concerned, each costume change was
48:47a different facet of personality.
48:51Released in April 1973, Aladdin's same went straight to the top of the UK charts.
48:56It was Bowie's first number one record and it wasn't long before all his previous albums charted too.
49:02The next month, the momentous tour rolled into Britain for its final stretch.
49:08I'd said all I could say about Ziggy and I thought, well, I'm very tempted to go further with this
49:12Ziggy thing only because it's so popular, but actually it's not what I really want to do.
49:17I mean, I've created this bloody thing. How do I sort of get out of it?
49:24The extensive UK tour drew in hordes of teenage Ziggy's, many desperate to see their idol in the flesh.
49:3160 performances in 53 days and every ticket sold.
49:48The audiences were screaming, people jumping off the rafters and you saw people getting knocked down coming on stage by
49:57the bodyguards.
49:58The level of enthusiasm and the joy of the audience was more honest and deeper than the US.
50:13Being there at the front, I just remember being lost in the whole kind of emotion of the whole thing,
50:18you know.
50:18It was incredibly powerful and I'd never seen a band like that before.
50:24You really kind of wanted to be a part of it.
50:26It was part of belonging to something as well, wanting to be part of a culture, part of a gang.
50:33We used to run David off and get him in the car, get the band in the car.
50:39Within a couple of months, it was a mob scene.
50:42It was the same, it was like the Beatles, you know, there we were and people were climbing on the
50:46car.
50:49It wasn't just the fans that were struggling to catch a glimpse of Britain's biggest star.
50:54In fact, the last tour we ever did with him, we'd only see him on stage.
50:58We'd walk on stage, we'd play the show, he'd get in his limousine and he'd clear off.
51:02We'd all go back to the hotel and we'd see him the next day on stage again.
51:07We thought it was odd.
51:08We'd started out as a band, really that's what he wanted, but as a band.
51:12And then the bigger and bigger it got, the less we saw.
51:14The hell, he's a fine performer, isn't he?
51:17As usual, he went through his extravagant pre-show preparations.
51:22Everything was set for an electric performance.
51:25Oh, he delish.
51:26David came round to me and he said,
51:29don't start rock and roll suicide until I give you the nod.
51:32It was decided in Japan.
51:34Mick was sworn to secrecy.
51:35And if you do this for us, you're going to be the next star.
51:38You're going to be doing this next thing.
51:40But you can't tell the boys.
51:42Just before the final song, David Bowie approached the microphone
51:46and with a few words, broke the hearts of millions.
51:49Of all the shows on this tour, this particular show will remain with us the longest
51:55because not only is it the last show of the tour,
51:58but it's the last show that we'll ever do.
52:06We all went, oh, what the fuck's he talking about?
52:09Quite shocked.
52:11And I kept looking at Woody and Woody was like playing away going,
52:14I don't know what's going on, you know.
52:17It didn't quite equate with what we'd been talking about three days earlier.
52:22So we didn't know whether that was true or not.
52:24Everybody knew except for Woody and Trevor.
52:26I knew, the sound guy knew.
52:29I think that was horrific to have done that to them.
52:33It was not a big deal to me, but to the other guys,
52:36they thought it certainly could have gone on for another five or ten years,
52:39but David was done with it.
52:42And any artist at any time is entitled to be done with something.
52:45Those people who are lead singers and stand alone,
52:48they have to, they have to change, you know,
52:50they can't do the same show every time.
52:52So in other words, it could be calculated,
52:54but it's a brilliant calculation
52:56because not many people would have the wits
52:57or the knowledge or the intelligence to do that.
53:02Nearly a year to the day,
53:03after he appeared on Top of the Pops for the first time,
53:06Ziggy Stardust was over,
53:08just as Bowie had prophesied on Rock and Roll Suicide,
53:11the final song on the Ziggy album.
53:13Art had become life, life imitated art.
53:17Thank you very much.
53:18Bye-bye, we love you.
53:25I said, I'm going back to big, heavy melodrama,
53:28and you don't fit into my scheme of things.
53:31And I finished it.
53:33A cruel and cutting blow.
53:35But it had to be done.
53:37Sometimes you've got to be cruel to be kind.
53:43Less than a week after Ziggy's dramatic retirement,
53:45Bowie was in France recording a new album, Pin Ups.
53:49But it was more of a stopgap.
53:51No original songs, just a collection of covers.
53:54Drummer Woody wasn't even invited to the studio sessions.
53:57Soon Bowie had dropped the spiders completely.
54:02The safe thing to do would have been to keep being Ziggy
54:04for the rest of his career,
54:06but he had the courage that very, very few pop stars have ever had
54:09to take the thing which is most loved and say,
54:13I'm not doing that anymore.
54:14The rest of the decade saw Bowie in a creative frenzy,
54:18producing seven groundbreaking albums in just as many years.
54:22He was to the 70s what the Beatles were to the 60s.
54:26Despite devising more characters over those years,
54:29Bowie struggled to exercise the ghost of Ziggy Stardust.
54:32In the immediate aftermath of the alien's demise,
54:35Bowie sank into a dangerous drug addiction,
54:37battling to leave the past behind.
54:39I had a kind of strange, psychosomatic death wish thing.
54:44I think.
54:46But that's because I was so lost in Ziggy, I think, again.
54:50It was all that schizophrenia.
54:53And he really grew, sort of out of proportion, I suppose.
54:57But it got much bigger than I thought Ziggy were going to be.
55:01I didn't ever see Ziggy as big.
55:04Ziggy just overshadowed everything.
55:07David Bowie's incredible career spans over 40 years.
55:11But for many, it's Ziggy Stardust for which you'll be best remembered.
55:16It's so iconic.
55:17You can track pop culture from that very point,
55:21and it all leads back to Ziggy Stardust.
55:24We all wanted to know what he was wearing,
55:26what he was singing about, what his videos were like.
55:27Because he was the leader of the artistic side of rock and roll.
55:31You look at punk, and basically,
55:33they're more monochromatic, more aggressive versions of the Ziggy construct.
55:3980s music wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been for Bowie.
55:41When it came to be our turn in 1979,
55:45dressing up was where we started.
55:47Make-up was where we started.
55:49Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars,
55:51in a way, were the blueprint for Frankie Goes to Hollywood
55:54in a kind of lock-up-your-daughters-and-your-son's sense.
55:59And anyone who challenges the Moors of today
56:03are doing a Ziggy, in a sense.
56:06You know, it went through to the 90s with suede and pulp.
56:10His tentacles reach out and are still being taken on board today.
56:14I mean, if you look at someone like Lady Gaga,
56:15her whole act, it's Bowie, it's Ziggy Stardust.
56:18Okay, she's put a 21st century slant on it,
56:20but she's not really doing anything that Bowie didn't do 40 years ago.
56:27I'm very happy with Ziggy.
56:29I think he was a very successful character.
56:31And I think I played him very well.
56:32But I'm glad I'm f***ing me now.
56:35I'm glad I'm f***ing me now.
56:39But something just in the hand.
56:42Oh, but something just in the hand.
56:46Oh, yeah.
56:52Something's in.
56:56I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad
56:58I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad
56:58I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad
56:58I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad
57:02I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad
57:04I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad
57:04I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad
57:10I'm glad I'm glad I'm glad I'm
Comments