June 1, 2026 • 52 mins
Ziggy Stardust didn’t just land - he detonated. We rewind to David Bowie’s 1972 Top of the Pops breakthrough and unpack the paradox at its core: a “meaningless” persona that transformed culture. Was Ziggy a liberation engine, a postmodern performance, or just a bored kid’s rebellion dressed in glitter? This Pride Month, we revisit the gender-bending, rule-breaking persona that helped a generation imagine new ways to be.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
So here's the thing about Big Lives. The whole premise
here is that everyone, all of us, think they know
the story of some of these folks, but there's more
to it. So when you tell a friend about this show,
don't just say it's podcasts about icons. Say I heard
something about David Bowie or Jane Fonda that genuinely mess
with my head a little bit. And while you're at it,
(00:39):
leave us a review. Emmanuel and I would really really
appreciate it. From BBC's studios and Pushkin Industries, this is
Big Lives. I'm Kai Wriight, and on this show, we
take a single cultural icon, we break down their life,
their impact using the BBC archives at emmanual. Today, I
(01:01):
kind of want to change things up a bit because, yeah, see,
I want to talk to you about a fictional Big Life,
a fictional character, okay, one who was introduced on the
BBC in what has to be one of the most
iconic moments in pop culture history. Uh, do you know
(01:22):
Ziggy Stardust?
Speaker 1 (01:24):
I do know.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Very quickly. The one sentence of whose Biggie Startist is.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
My understanding is that Diggy start Us is this alternate
person kind of like its persona that David Bowie created
as a performer. My only real association with Ziggy Startus
is as a kid, there was this sort of rebroadcasting
program on the BBC called Top of the Pops two,
and I remember, like it felt like once a month
(01:53):
they would play the same David Iconic David Bowie sets
and they were always talking about visit Viggy and let's
let's let me.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Tell you about because this is exactly at that moment
that they replayed over and over and over and over. Yeah,
this is the birth of Ziggy's start Ust. This is
really the moment that David Bowie becomes a superstar, Like
that piece of tape is the moment David Bowie goes
from just being a guy who sayings that people know
to a global superstar. It happens on the BBC in
(02:24):
July nineteen seventy two. So let me just let me
set the stage here for folks who did not grow
up in the UK and did not see this, I
mean nineteen seventy two, BBC one airs an episode of
the show Top of the Pops For folks who don't
know this show. This aired on the BBC for decades
from the sixties until the early aughts. It's what it
(02:46):
sounds like, live performance of people who are at the
top of the pop charts, big, big, important show in
the history of culture. And that night in nineteen seventy two,
they air a performance from this promising young artist who
is calling himself Ziggy Stardust with a band that is
called the Spiders from Mars. So Siggy start Us Fighters
(03:09):
from Bars and they perform their song Starman, which is
itself this kind of narrative tale of an alien from
outer space who has arrived to deliver a message of
hope and freedom to the youth of earthy.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Stuff.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
But honestly, the whole But why this moment is iconic.
It is less about the song than it is the
visuals that have stuck out in your mind all these
generations later. It opens with this tight shot of ze
start Us playing his blue, this electric blue guitar, and
it's worth noting, I mean BBC one has only been
in color for like three or four years by this point,
(03:58):
you know, So it's like this riot of color. As
it zooms out, you see the band, these guys, they're
decked out in tight glittering body suits, one in pink
and one is in gold, ones in like a dark blue.
And then there's ziggy David Bowie, right, this twiggy little
man who is resplendent in a multi colored body suit
(04:24):
that is scaly. So it's like reptilian, like an alien.
You know.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
I think as a kid, I was kind of scared
by it. I didn't absorb any information like this.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Is that wild? I mean the fact that you were
scared by it tracks with what happened in real time
for some people. Right, Like, so then there's these geometric shapes,
like these triangles zigzagging around his body in these primary colors.
He's got the hair right, which looks like a wig
but is actually David Bowie's hair, you know. I mean
it's like totally garishly red, you know, like carrot red,
(04:57):
carrot top red. That's exactly right. It's carrot top red
down his back, piled high on his head. There's a
moment people talk about a lot where he drapes his
arm around the guitarist shoulder kind of casually, and his
fingers dangle over the guy's chest and you see he's
wearing white fingernail polish and he's got on a makeup.
(05:18):
You mentioned the makeup, but I should point out, like,
this is not garish makeup. This is makeup intended to
make him look pretty, yeah, like foundation and eyeshadow. So
all of this is as obviously as far from masculine
as you can imagine in nineteen seventy two, the whole
seat of it, right, But the moment, the real moment
that makes this like iconic, is about halfway through David
(05:41):
Bowie turns ziggy start us sorry, turns and looks at
the camera across the stage actually and points his let
that long skinny arm out and points at the viewer
like he's pointing right at you, oh like into the camera,
into the camera. He's staring at you and pointing at
you right as he sings this lyric, I had to
(06:02):
phone someone, so I picked on you.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Hey, that's far wow.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Eddy wiggles his finger in this little sexy kind of
come hither way. That is like flirting with the entire
of UK in this moment, Like he's like looking through that.
We're flirting with everybody. And I'll be honest, if you
go to YouTube and you look at this now from
the vantage point of today, like it just doesn't seem
(06:31):
like that big a deal. But I'm here to tell you,
Emmanuel that people who were young and viewing this at
the time describe it as a religious experience. Like that
actual phrase comes up a lot like that it was
a religious experience.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Just because it was just such an immersive experience. They're
just like, what am I watching?
Speaker 2 (06:51):
I think that has to be part of it. But
also there are no more rules. If this guy can
get away with this on the BBC, if he can
like be in makeup, in a tight suit and fondling
his bandmates and being this on the BBS, say what
(07:12):
can I do? Who can I be? It just blew
the minds of certainly young white kids in the suburbs
of the time. I see this on television, so it's
a huge deal. And I feel like just to say,
you know, if you know one thing about David Bowie,
it's probably that he's a legendary chameleon.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Right.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
He took on all these different looks and sounds throughout
his career, this huge catalog of hits right that spanned
from Space Odyssey in nineteen sixty nine through to the
Young Americans in nineteen seventy five. You know, we are
the young Americans all the way through the poppy stuff.
Let's Dance in nineteen eighty three, and on and on
and on. Right, he's one of these artists. Was just
(07:54):
a massive catalog, all very different. But for me, until
like I went back and looked at this Top of
the Pops broadcast and started thinking about Ziggy Startus, I
didn't fully appreciate how much and how explicitly Bowie understood
himself to be creating characters as much as he was
(08:15):
making music.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
I guess this is thing. I feel like, I know
this on some level, that he had other alter egos
and characters, but Ziggy start Us the only one I've known.
But he made a bunch more.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
And he would not call them alter egos. He would
call them characters. He was an actor who was using
these characters to perform. He was performing roles, is the
way he describes it. Here he is, this is in
nineteen seventy one, before Ziggy start Us, but he's already
(08:46):
making music and drawing some mcclaim. Here's what he says
about being a singer.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
I don't sing very well. It's a bleating kind of
goat voice, you know, but it pleases me and if
anybody else likes and he probably pleases them, they can
get to my goat singing. Some of the others that
I remember from around about that time were things like
Little Bombardier.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Rubber Band.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Yeah, they were trials in short story writing. It's when
I first I found myself as a short story writer
in music that a majority of my material has always
been in story for I tell a story from beginning
to end.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
So you know, he thinks of himself not as a singer,
certainly not as a rock star, but primarily as a
storyteller and a lead actor in the stories he's telling.
He's an actor playing the role of a rock star
who is in turn, performing new characters each time, like
Zay start us every time. It's really it's the mind
(09:47):
bending stuff. And I just say, because it's so hard
to wrap your head around, I just want to play
you another clip of the way he thinks about this stuff. Okay, Yeah,
this is an example of him trying to describe what
he's doing when he goes on stage with these characters.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
It's absolutely fall us all the way. And that's what
I like about it. I don't like the art. I
can't standy the premise of going on in jeans and
being real. That's impossible. There's not one man they can
actually believe that he's giving them life going up there
(10:23):
and with a pair of jeans on a guitar and
looking as real as he can be in front of
eighteen thousand people. I mean, it's not normal.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Normal, It's not I've never heard someone talk about wearing
jeans that way. Like, he's not he's performing.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
He is performing the role of a rock star who
is performing the role of filling the blank character. And
in this case, Diggy Start Us. It is self consciously stylistic,
this movement that came about in the early seventies, right
as David Bowie is creating Ziggy Stardust, and it rejects big,
clear statements and simple messages right like it's you know,
(11:07):
contradictions and messiness and Chao style as the endpoint. Like
all of that, and Bowie does talk about himself as
a constructed postmodern rock star. So all of that is
the background to the fact that what I really want
to talk about, which is Ziggy Stardust, I'm not actually
here to talk about David Bowie I'm here to talk
about Ziggy Startus, who this character who he creates, because
(11:31):
when I think of it that way, there's a paradox
with Ziggy Stardust because he's on that stage in Top
of the Pops, it set July seventy two. He points
out the world through the camera and he lights a
whole generation of people on fire. They take enormous meaning
from this act. It launches what is a new cultural
(11:51):
movement right certainly at least in white culture. It is
a new cultural movement from these young people. But if
you listen to David Bowie as you go through this
archive and listen to how he thinks about it, he
never intended anything of the such like he was trying
to launch a movement of any sort. He was just
(12:14):
striking a pose, just like striking opposes.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
A character striking opposes, And like literally he was just
like I just felt like looking that way that day,
like that a.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Little bit, a little bit, he almost like the style
was the point. He almost cause it. He even uses
the word poser at one point and talking about it,
and I.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Just so you taking me. He had no conception that
what he might be doing might be different like that different.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Yes, different, Okay, he wanted to be disruptive, but he
was not trying to start any kind of cultural movement.
And I don't know if I believe that. It's just
a weird thing, and I want to talk to you
about it.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Yeah, let's get interesting. I'm curious because it the way
you describe that performance, it seems intentional.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
It seems every single choice is intentional. And that's the
the enigma of Ziggy Stardust. Every choice is intentional without meeting.
So to try to understand that, I'm going to walk
you through the rise and fall of Ziggy Start Us,
which is the name of the album, by the way,
(13:22):
and see what you think about the choices that we're made.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
All right, let's get into it.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Welcome back to Big Lives. We're talking about Ziggy's Stardusts,
which means David Bowie, but not really Bowie, because he
says Ziggy is a whole different person from himself.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
The story about the guy who's really a guy. Yes,
so that's what we're talking about.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Let's try to understand it. The first thing to understand
is that David Bowie, and this is important, grew up
in the suburbs of Bromley board out of his mind. Now,
I don't actually know where Bromley is or what can
you help me with this? I mean, I your what
is born?
Speaker 1 (14:10):
No, I mean I was gonna say Bromley sounds accurate
that he was born with I don't know. I've only
been there once in my life and I can't remember
anything about it. I literally cannot tell you like much
about it at all. It is a completely nonscript place
in my brain.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
That certainly seems to be David Bowie's take on things.
You know. There was a BBC documentary in twenty nineteen
called Finding Fame Okay, and in that documentary, one of
Bowie's early bandmates and kind of girlfriend, Okay, tells a
story that sums up the place in his thoughts about it.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
At one point, David said, do you want to come
home and meet my parents? I said, yes, why not?
That meant taking the train to Bromley.
Speaker 5 (14:56):
You find yourself in the middle of two worlds. There's
the extreme values of people who grow up on the
countryside and the very urban field of the city and suburbia.
You're given the impression that nothing countrally belongs to you,
that you are sort of in this wasteland.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
When I was in his parents' house, they're facing a
television and the parents were sitting there quite quiet. They
offered me some tuna fish sandwiches, but then there was
silence and I'm somebody that I mean, I can talk
to anybody. And it was hard going. It was soulless.
(15:35):
Once they've gone out, she said, whatever it takes, I
want to get out of here. I do not want
to live like this.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
I mean, it's brutal.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Listen, people of Bromley, which just to say, you know,
is like a little suburb like southeast of London. Listen,
I hope you are listening to this and saying loudly
to yourselves where I live is affordable, okay, and the
schools are good.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
I don't have This is not my take on round me.
I don't know anything about bro I'm just telling you
how David Bowie felt about Browick. That it's important to
understand for the choices he makes in his life. So
he does find music early while he's in the suburbs.
His brother introduces him to jazz. He is a big
Little Richard fan. When he's we talked about Little Richard
(16:24):
in a previous episode.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Yeah they're all influenced by Little Richard.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
But yeah, they're all influenced by Little Richard. His parents
are listening to Elvis, who is stealing from Little Richard
at the time Bowie is watching Little Richard and kind
of subsequently stealing from Little Richard. But we don't need
to get into all that. You can go listen to
our previous episode on Little Richard. You should do that
and I'll tell you give you all the context you need.
But on Bowie, by the time he's a teenager, he's
actively looking to break the old rules with just provocations
(16:50):
of style like those that Little Richard started. And we've
found the very first tape of this young man appearing
on the BBC, and it is a perfect illustration. It's
a black and white evening current affairs program that aired
in nineteen sixty four, okay, and it's a studio to
discussion about men who have long hair. I cannot tell
(17:14):
how serious our tongue in cheek it is in retrospects
because it's out of context, but it seems to be
as a national crisis. And the visuals there's a bunch
of skinny, young white guys standing in a group across
from this old white guy who is interviewing them. And
at the center of that group of skinny, young white
guys is a seventeen year old kid named Davy Jones,
(17:38):
which is David Bowie's birth name.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Okay, he later changed his.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Name to Bowie because Davy Jones sounded like, you know,
from the Monkeys, Davy Jones.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Oh, I mean, I don't know who that guy is now, so.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
There you could have stayed. But at the time monkeys
were a big day. Yeah, but so young Davy Jones,
seventeen years old is here leading this group, and I
just think the best thing to do again is just
a play. Just let me just for you, starting with
(18:13):
this host intro and the fabulous the music with us.
Speaker 6 (18:23):
It's all got to stop. They've had enough. The worms
are turning. The rebellion of the long Hairs is getting underway.
They're tired of persecution, They're tired of taumps, They're tired
of losing their jobs. They're tired of being sent home
from college. They're tired of being sent home from school.
They're tired even of being refused a doe. So with
the nucleus of some of his friends. A seventeen year
(18:47):
old Davy Jones has just founded the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Long Haired Men. Well here we
are now exactly who's being cruel to you?
Speaker 3 (18:58):
Well? I think we're all fairly tolerant, but for the
last two years we've had comments like darling and can
I carry a handbag? Thrown at this? I think it's
just had to stop now.
Speaker 6 (19:09):
To surprise you. But you'll get this kind of comment
because you haven't got really rather long hair, haven't you?
Speaker 1 (19:15):
We have?
Speaker 3 (19:15):
Yes, yeah, it's not too bad. Really no, I like it,
and I think we all like long hair and we
don't see why other people should persecute us because of this.
Speaker 6 (19:25):
I mean, did you did you get this off the
Rolling Stones?
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Oh?
Speaker 6 (19:28):
No, no, But did any of you have your hair
growing along more than two years ago? Did you all
the Rolling Stones? Ever?
Speaker 3 (19:36):
Did it takes a long time to get this link?
Speaker 6 (19:38):
Don't you go and have it shampooly set?
Speaker 2 (19:40):
No?
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Very good at it?
Speaker 2 (19:46):
It's ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
That's actually, that's actually a very fun TV. But if
I can't tell who is serious and who is not serious.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
It's the whole thing, like, is it a skit. Is
it a bit, you know, like the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to log haired bit.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
It has to be a bit for David. For David exactly,
it has to be a bit for him.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
I mean it is just to say in this visual,
their hair is not that long.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Really, it's like literally how like it well up to
He's like ears up, like.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Like a little below the ear, you know, like and
some of them have just kind of curly hair, you know,
like the the broccoli thing that the kids do these days.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
That's not even not bad. I feel like classic school
uniform rules your hair can't touch your collar. Yeah, it
even goes to that.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
They're not even But this is a while back. This
is sixty four, you know, and certainly seventeen year old
Davy Jones means this as a performance. We now know, right,
surely this is the beginning of his getting in public
and being like, I'm gonna strike a pose and see
what happens.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
How did he end up on that TV ship show?
Is he making music with you? Just literally just a
youth out here trying to be famous.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Out here trying to be famous. He was the founder
of this this group. He founded this group as a
provocation to get on the BBC. I presume, right, let
me play you another piece of tape from him, because
all of it again, remember this kid in Bromley who's
like this, this is a soulless place that I got
to get out of here right right, and just in general,
(21:18):
what he's thinking about as he tries to build his
heart listen to this.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
What sort of kick do you get out of this
kind of publicity which stops me getting bored? And I'm
sure it stops a lot of other people getting bored.
And I hate grosses in supermarkets. It's my own particular
form of rebellion. I don't like being like anybody because
I'm so much like everybody else, and that's such a
down at times, because one likes to ascertain one's individuality.
(21:46):
And I don't want to be a yippie. I don't
want to be straight. I just want to be anybody.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
In a way. You're still a rebel, but without a cause.
Oh absolutely, My course.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
My course is bored.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
My cause is bored. He just wants just like that's
his north star is I'm not going to be bored,
and I don't want anybody else to be bored.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
It's so it's funny because yeah, you can really hear
he has like a very informed sense of derision, like
the thing about the supermarkets. I'm like, well do you
have against Sainsbury's or Croker?
Speaker 2 (22:19):
It's such a great phrase.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Also, I get what he's saying. I get it. I understand.
I too, grew up partly in the suburbs outside of Toledo. Yeah,
you are just sort of like, right, life goes a
certain way here. It's by design, that's the whole point.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
And the tedium by design I love right, Right, I
want to applaud you for that phrase. How did you
put it? Is great? Now, I can't informed derision, its
informed derisions. That's that's that's brilliant. So the next time
that but he shows up on the BBC in the archives,
(23:00):
he has moved on from advocacy on behalf of Long
Haired Men Uh to in fact focus on music and
just to say, you know, it's well documented how many
efforts Bowie made to become famous as a music maker.
I mean, this guy was a relentless hustler. He was
in nine bands over eleven years before he finally landed
on a hit one of those bands was called David
(23:24):
Bowie in the lower third and you know, little hustler.
David Bowie lands an audition for that band on the
BBC in nineteen sixty five, and the audition itself does
not survive, but there is a written record of what
talent Scout thought about the performance and this, I mean,
(23:46):
it's brutal. And I'm just going to read you a
couple of the quotes. Says quote, I don't think the
group will get better with more rehearsal. What we heard
will always be the product. Oh wow, yeah, quote there
is no entertainment in anything they do. It's just a group,
(24:07):
and a very ordinary one too, backing a singer devoid
of personality.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Wow, that is so damning.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
I haven't heard the audition, but I mean they do.
Amongst the songs they sing is one from Mary Poppins
like Jim Chimmrie is what. I don't get it, but
that is one of the songs. So I don't know,
you know, I mean, but the point is David Bowie
has launched a campaign against boredom. It is failing wildly.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Right, I mean about like a leasing and devoid of personality.
You're like because everything you've played before. You can hear
it like you can hear this, you know, kind of
sly sounding, fancastic, gum chewing teenager. That's so interesting that
he had yet to translate that into his musical persona.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
I mean so much so that he is boring the
old white men of the BBC to death, right like
you have done something right.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Yeah, that is something.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
So but he does find his way forward eventually. Of course,
as we all know. I won't belabor the story because
it's well trod, but his first big hit is Space
Oddity in nineteen sixty nine. This is the song in
which he creates major tom as like one of his characters.
That's a character he will return to throughout his career
that runs throughout the history of rock. Some say Elton
(25:31):
John was riffing on him with the song Rocketman, big
important character in the history of rock. But as I said,
I'm not really here to talk about David Bowie. I'm
here to talk about Ziggy Stardust. So with all of
that as background, he creates Ziggy Stardust in nineteen seventy two,
and one of the first things he does right before
(25:53):
this album comes out is he gives an interview in
January nineteen seventy two to a publication called Melody Makers,
which is an important music magazine at the time. Are
not a magazine, it's like a newspaper when it's where
the critics really kind of set the stage. It's a
rolling stone kind of place, right, And this is about
(26:14):
six months before he goes on Top of the Pops
with Ziggy Startist, and in the interview, Bowie says, quote,
I'm gay and always have been. And this is obviously
important context for how Ziggy Startist will be perceived when
he comes out right. The critics talk about it as
a gay rock star, which in nineteen seventy two is
(26:36):
quite a new concept, right, And of course there's all
the expected hub up around that. But what's striking to
me is David Bowie claims he does not know what
all the fuss is about.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Like you think, I don't get why people are asking
me questions about this.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
About this because again he did not see Ziggy as
some kind of queer statement. It was just an out
there character and so just listen to this. This is
how he describes it in an interview later in the seventies.
I forget the exact date, but this is a little
later in this seventies when they're they're they're looking back.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
You know, for the first couple of years, I had
a heavy battle because it was hard to tell people
that if if that whole bisexuality thing was part of me,
it wasn't necessarily part of the work I did, and
that because I wore funny clothes on stage didn't mean
that I was into drag. That it wasn't they weren't
drag clothes. That Americans don't appreciate the subtleties of dress
(27:33):
as they do in Europe. I mean Europe, if you
wear some funny clothes and then it's seen as being
part of the character you're playing. But in America, if you,
especially at that time, if you wore anything that wasn't genes,
it was drag. Which was That was the hardest problem
I had in the stakes, because trying to convince people
that because I was bisexual, that it didn't mean that
(27:55):
everything everything I wrote about or did meant that it
was all gay.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
But you know that.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
That bisexual thing was part of my private life, none
of their business. And you know that the songs and
the albums and the stage performances were when I was
all about and.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
I don't know, So first off, I have to say,
you know, I should have said that there was an
interview for the US radio station, and he's trying to
explain this thing. I don't know whether I love it
or hate it, you know, because this is one of
the many times in the archives where he is just
generally perplexed than anyone's trying to like assign motives or
(28:31):
messages or anything to the characters he creates. Right, but
this man clearly intentionally went in that newspaper, the Melty
Baker said he was gay in that interview, like that
is obviously anal choice.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
You know. It's interesting because I do hear what he's
saying about. Just because I'm said I'm gay or bisex,
just because I've talked about my sexuality doesn't mean every
choice I make is a product of that. And yeah,
at the same time, he's no dummy, Like he's self
aware enough to know how people are going to react
(29:05):
to what he's doing. And I don't know, bus sort
of like a way in his voice even just hearing it,
where you can just see a guy just sort of
leaning back from the conversation in a kind of sanguine way,
and just watching these little things he's throwing out just
kind of explode and being like, yeah, I don't know.
(29:27):
Did I mean to do that? I don't.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Maybe I'm just provoking, you know, like, oh, I'm supposed,
Oh you mean this gender bending, sexualized space alien you
thought it was queer? What do you mean the way?
I know what you're talking about. He just does this
over and over again in the archive, and it's.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Which in himself I should say, I mean, we don't know,
but it sounds a little like a performance to be.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
It sounds well because again, remember David Bowie is also
a creation of Davy Jones, you know, like, so that's
David Bowie speaking, not as Davy Jones. Here's just another
really quick exact of what he says about this.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
I'm always dressed in what I considered clothes to prevent
me becoming hand drums, so that I would receive reaction
from people which would encourage me to write.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
He just wants a reaction that's going to fuel his
next creative thought. And like I said, on some level,
I'm like, that's kind of badass. Good for you, you
know little Davy Jones, and on some level I'm like,
you're insufferable.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
It's it's interesting because I feel like you can have
two reactions to sort of a humdrum of suburbia, particularly
like Bromley is so close to London in a way
where it's like nine miles or something away from you.
There is like a community full of people who are
defined by a place, and particularly in the UK, defined
by an accent or even a neighborhood in a way
(30:53):
where you really feel like you are from a place, right,
And sometimes that can be constrictive in its own ways, right,
and people want to break out of that, but to
not be defined by a base or to come from
a place. But it's really no real definition other than
like it's just an ordinary whatever. Everything that he's doing
makes sense and so I have compassion for it, But
the same time, it just sort of like you are
(31:15):
still a person. There is one of the desires and feelings. Yeah,
if you think, yeah, I don't know, struggle to hear
them struggle. Yeah, there's not a bunch of gap between
him as a teenager where you was sort of like yeah,
okay and him what we just heard there in that
(31:35):
kind of way.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Well, I will say this Ziggy start us very much
gets a reaction, whether his creator had been thinking it
or not. And it certainly provokes because Ziggy was launched
as a rock star, right, Like that's the character Bowie
could kind of come out as a pre existing celebrity.
(31:58):
Like it's a little there's something kind of puck about
that too. I like the band Spiders from Mars. Those
guys were not on board at first. They had been
playing with him already, but they were hesitant to put
on body suits and makeup. These are all very heterosexual,
very straight guys. Yeah, and he convinced them that the
(32:20):
girls would love it. So that's he says why they
started doing it, because he convinced that they were going
to get laid, and so one suspects that was true.
There is a this news piece that came out. It's
in nineteen seventy three, so this is the year after
the Top of the Pops performance. It's on a program
(32:41):
called Nationwide. And I think when I saw this, I
got a sense of just how big a reaction all
of this got because the reporter, I mean, he does
sound like he's literally stumbled upon an alien who's leading
some kind of youth cult and he's just like, doesn't
get it. Listen to this.
Speaker 7 (32:58):
Bowie is a skinny land with a pasty complexion and
oka died her in a teddyboy style of twenty years ago.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Yet with a.
Speaker 7 (33:06):
Dash of makeup, he's transforming himself into an object that
is worshiped by millions of girls. Outside the winter gardens
of Bournemouth. Some of those fans are arriving to pay
homage to a man who's become the high priest of pop.
Every seat was sold months ago. Some fans were even
(33:27):
blessed with a glimpse of the master as he scurried
into the theater. This is the face the public wants.
An ex art student from Brixton whose dad worked for
doctor Barnardo's homes has turned himself into a bizarre, self
constructed freak. It is a sign of our times that
a man with a painted face and curfully adjusted lipstick
(33:49):
should inspire adoration from an audience of girls aged between
fourteen and twenty six months ago, Bowie was unknown to
the general public. Today, this twenty six year old man
earns about half a million pounds a year.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
I mean this bizarre, self constructed freak. The face that
the reporter used to describe, which I think.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Bowie would have so funny because it was very straight,
like that moment where what I really think of him though.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
Freak with these girls going crazy over this freak, where
what's going on? You know? And I think it's striking
too that the reporter this thing. I'm gonna play a
little more of this where the reporter is just kind
of flabbergasted that any of this is a serious undertaking.
Listen to that how he describes this.
Speaker 7 (34:44):
It is said that Bowie will soon be the world's
number one beat singer. If he achieved such eminence, he'll
be the first superstar of pop to wear shorty dresses
on stage. Behind the freakish image, the Bowie Circus, right
down to the flashy car, is a well oil show
business machine. On the surface, the circus seems bizarre, yeh.
(35:06):
His bucking group of professional musicians, the Yorkshire lab with
down to earth actions whose appearance merely seems to be
molded to fit into the Bowie image. The coach carries
a team of thirty electricians, road managers, sound engineers, stage
(35:26):
hands who put up fifteen thousand pounds worth of equipment
to project the superstar on stage. Behind the scenes, his
costumes are professionally cleaned and pressed. During the act, he
slips into something new three or four times at.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Least, I mean musician into the freakish in the description.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
This freak has musicians and sound engineers and he changes customs.
Can you believe it like a concert is actually put on?
It's just it has clearly blown the minds of.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Also just like the little Yorkshire reference there, like the
equivalent in America, basically saying he has Midwestern band members
to make him appeal to America.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
He's queered these straight guys.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
You know.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
True, it is what he has done. He has taken
these straight guys and dressed them up. Is queer. Though
again he insists none of this has meaning. Here the
last clip from this nationwide bet because here is what
Bowie says to this reporter.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
I'm very much a character when I go on the stage,
I feel, I mean, I like an actor.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
Yeah, I believe in.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
My part all the way down the line, right the
way down. But I do play it for all it's worth.
Because that's the way I do my station. And that's
that's part of what BO is supposedly all about.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
I'm a I'm an actor, so yeah, you know, he's
an actor who happens to be bisexual. Ziggy is a character,
an alien rocker who happens to look kind of gay.
He's cast this band, you know, who happened to be
straight guys that happened to be dressed up kind of gay,
and it all is just happenstance and style, and he just,
(37:09):
over and over and over again tries to explain this.
And I think the one where I hear him most,
where I can most understand where he's coming from, is
it comes in nineteen seventy six, so this is long
after Ziggy start as and landed on Earth. And he
tries one more to just explain his whole relationship to
rock and roll. Actually listen to this.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
That's where the thing about poser comes from. In English
rock and roll is that it's the artist's stance. In America,
they really are rock and rollers, they come straight out
of factories and play guitars. But in England it's sort
of it's you just tamper around with rock and roll
and you use it for something. And I guess I
was one of the first to really sort of come
(37:52):
out and say I'm using rock and roll, that it's
not my life like it is to an American rock
and roll and rock and roll is quite fun and everything,
but it's not it's money using it as a medium.
And I think that was that sort of really just
a typical attitude of the English rock and roller. But
I actually voiced him. I don't think it had been
really voiced before him.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Huh. That's really interesting because it's like, I know, when
he's talking about American rock and rollers, he's not talking
necessarily about black people by this point in time, Like
he's talking about write people write rock and rollers. But
I don't know he just like I feel like every
British rock I've heard from for McCartney on down, they're
(38:36):
they're open about taking stuff from other people across the
season all the rest of it, but you don't get
a sense that they're not as open of just like listen,
I'm I'm using this as a vehicle, like I'm using
this sort of persona and this sort of thing to
get to where I want to go, even if that's
just musically. But like he's just being very naked about it.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
He's very, very naked about the fact that I because
he sees himself as an actor and a storyteller, right,
because he is not actually invested in being a rock star,
you know, despite the fact that he is one of
history's most famous rock stars at this point, he's not
invested in that. He's invested in being a postmodern artist
(39:20):
who strikes poses in public, gets a reaction that feeds
him to strike another pose in public, to get a
reaction that feeds him to strike another pose in public.
It's weird when you think about that from the perspective
of Ziggy Start Us, because again, whatever all that was true,
the Ziggy Start Ust, the kids who took this in
(39:40):
had enormous meaning. I do not have to follow these
old rules anymore. I can be anything I want. I
can be a gender bending queer space alien if I
so please. And this meaningless pose changed the culture in
that way, you know. And then having blown up the
(40:01):
culture in this way, whether on purpose or not, David
Bowie turns around and blows up Ziggy's stardust in the
most provocative way I can imagine. Okay, and I'm going
to tell you about that after the break welcome back.
(40:23):
It's Big Lives. We're talking about the rock star alien
Ziggy Stardust with jam merged from the board mind of
David Jones who became David Bowie. So Ziggy lands on
Earth with this message of hope for the youth, which
they translate to mean I can be whatever the hell
I want to be. That message Ricochet's around the Planet
helps create the idea of glam rock, this thing that
(40:47):
would go on to be a huge part of the
seventies and early eighties. David Bowie becomes a superstar, all
this incredible stuff happens. Yeah, and then David Bowie just
pulls the plug on it.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Like yeah, I was gonna say, because I know he
has other personas, I was like, how does the position
for one through another?
Speaker 2 (41:06):
On July third, nineteen seventy three, about almost exactly a
year to date after that Top of the Pops performance, right,
he is playing the final show of the album's tour
for the Ziggy Startas album at London's Hammersmith Odeon and
they're about to perform the final song, which is called
(41:28):
rock and Roll Suicide. It's also the final song on
the album itself, and Ziggy start Us. David Bowie actually,
but Ziggy start Us announces to the crowd not only
is this the last show of the tour, but it
is the last show we will ever do. And oh
the crowd is shocked. But they are not the only ones,
(41:51):
because this is the first moment that the entire band
here's this news.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
Oh no, yes, like.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
The bassis Trevor Boulder is like, reportedly he's mouthing to
the drummer, He's like, what the he's fucking sacked us?
As they are all realizing live on stage that they
have been fired.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
Wow, and not yet they were of that character of.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
That This is the moment that they realized they were
also performing a character that is now being killed off.
And it turns out, you know, it's all part of
this planned show. Rock and Roll Suicide was a song
about Ziggy Stardust all along because that song is kind
of about this washed up rock and roller and Bowie
(42:39):
is casting him off as a washed up figure. Why
does he do this?
Speaker 6 (42:48):
You know?
Speaker 2 (42:48):
Like urban legends abound. Honestly, there's some back and forth
about mental health in his family. So his half brother
was diagnosis schizophrenic, and there's some conversation about Bowie feeling
like scared that he was becoming.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
Too close because of these characters. He's like sort of warriors.
If I stay in it too long, am I.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
It'll become me. But he did a bunch of other characters,
So I don't know why this one. You know that
the mask felt too sticky. But I think at one
point he talks about this in nineteen seventy six and
this is this is what I'm going to play you
is for me. I think what makes the most sense
about like Ziggy Startus being really just that this was
(43:35):
his He was making an artist statement about rock and roll,
and he admite.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
It very quick too for me to own up to
Ziggy stard as was my statement. But I've always thought
that in rock that you can only say one thing
in rock and roll, really, and everything else is just
an expansion of that original statement. It certainly seemed like
that with the stuff that I've done, some of it
does qualify the original statement. Now, and it's the whole period.
This was my rock and roll period. Rather than dividing
(44:02):
the rock period up into bits, it's just looking at
the whole rock period. So that was my rock period
and it dealt with this particular attitude. Rock and roll
is the decision of being establishment or non establishment. That's
the problem that rock and roll sort of poses to
be or not to be a rebel, you know, is
what it's really what it says and always has said.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
So he's just I mean, it's a little rambling, but
he's just like rock and roll is an anti establishment pose,
and I came up with the most anti establishment pose.
I can imagine this queer space alien and I did it,
and that's done, and I'm moving on to other things.
(44:45):
And I think where I'm left, and I want to
hear left. Where I'm left is like, despite the libraries
of stuff trying to make sense of David Bowie and
postmodernism and all of that, it's just in the end,
he was a bored kid in Bromley and he has
made a life where he refuses to be bored, even
(45:06):
in his own provocations. And if he stayed in Ziggie
too long, he got bored.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
Right, right, I mean, that's it sounds like it sounds
like he's just like, yeah, I was last week.
Speaker 2 (45:16):
Yeah, And it's just so hard to wrap your head
around this thing that was such a massive change in culture.
You know, and many other rock and rollers we talk about,
going all the way back to Little Richard, you know,
are changing culture and trying to disrupt culture. But no question,
certainly for white culture, Ziggy start Us is this enormously
(45:40):
disruptive before and after moment. And it's just so hard
to imagine that. For the guy who did it, it
was like, yeah, that was last week's post.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
After this, did he change? Like how abruptly he would
like he must have recognized, Okay, there was a big
reaction to this.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
Yeah. I mean he goes through a period that he
calls marking time, you know, Okay, that is this creative
transition he does. The immediate next thing he does is
like an all covers tribute album called pent Ups, and
then he does this dystopian thing. He goes dystopian the
next year. And I mean he's making so I should say,
(46:19):
we're talking nineteen seventy three, seventy four.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
Right, he's moving, he's still moving in Yeah. Then eventually
people become used to, well, this is what he does.
Speaker 2 (46:28):
What he does.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
But even with all of those characters, I mean, it's
telling to me like and I again, I should say
I am not like a David Bowie devotee. I like
Nova hits right, but I feel like like Ziggy Starts
seems like the character of his that has stuck the
most with people like it. That's the when I pictured
David Bowie, that is who I'm picturing.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
Yeah, I mean, as he says in that cut when
he's talking about rock and roll, he does say, that
was my base statement, my original statement, and everything else
is derivative of it, you know, see, I mean that's
what he thought in nineteen seventy six at least, you
know so, I think on some ways he probably agrees
that's the one that's stuck, but none of them are him.
(47:13):
There are two orders of removal from Davy Jones.
Speaker 1 (47:16):
Right, because Davy Jones was classified as being not absolutely
nothing special.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
Nothing special, just a white guy in the suburbs. But
you know, also, I have to say, Emmanuel, the thing is,
I when I think about all of this, there's all
the meaning that people took from Ziggy's stardust, and so
there has to be meaning that you also take from
the killing off of Ziggy startus, right, And there's a
(47:44):
way in which his ability to try on an identity
set it down and try on another identity and set
it down. Is also this massive demonstration of liberation, right
that that because and this is one of the he
(48:05):
calls himself a postmodern rock star, And this is one
of the big ideas of postmodern is pluralism. That the
world is vast and multifaceted and messy and chaotic and
full of change and full of different kinds of people.
It's kind of a really brainy way to say diversity, right,
you know, and that you as a person, as an
(48:27):
individual human being, can contain multitudes. You know that I
can be a black gay man from the Midwest who's
progressive but getting old and getting conservative and like all
of these things can be true of me at one time, right,
(48:48):
And that there's something in the message of David Bowie
and the rise and ultimately killing of Ziggy startus to
say you can be all of the things. No one
can tell you what you can't be at any time.
You can just keep changing.
Speaker 1 (49:03):
I mean, I feel like, based on what you just said,
there's a conversation you and I need to have the
call coming from inside the house. But but no, with
David Bowie, No, that makes sense. That makes sense. It's
funny because I was just thinking to myself like, oh,
there is It's such a flex to be able to
(49:25):
just be like, you know what, this is not who
I choose to be right now? That is done. That
was an expression of this. But you've convinced me that.
I think I was looking at David Bowie, who a
kind of graduated version of that same teenager we heard
at the beginning, right, which is just this guy who's
just trying stuff and doing stuff and seeing what happens
(49:46):
and then if it blows up bigger, just being like
did I do that? It does seem more considered than that,
you know what I mean? It feels like he is
he's doing it to keep for him. He's not doing
it for society. He's doing it for his own artistic.
Speaker 2 (50:02):
Like right, fun If you underword it that way, he's
doing it for his own art, then it's a liberation,
right who you got from me? Next week?
Speaker 1 (50:12):
Okay, Well, so this one's going to be an interesting one.
I really don't know how much you know about this person,
or how much a lot of Americas know about this person.
To be honest, let's just play for first clip here.
Speaker 8 (50:24):
I mean, I was eight or nine, and I just
thowt all kids streamed of being a pop star or
being a singer. My brother was interested in photography and filming,
and we would muck around and make little films. But
I don't think any of us were good enough for
any other family mean to say, get up and do
a song for them.
Speaker 2 (50:42):
I would say, that's a voice I've never heard before.
Speaker 1 (50:45):
Wow. Okay, okay, okay, okay, I'll pay one more for you.
Speaker 8 (50:50):
Astralia is a funny place when it comes to being successful.
Speaker 1 (50:53):
Have they cut you down to size?
Speaker 2 (50:54):
Yeah?
Speaker 8 (50:54):
They I've already been through the mill. It's like a
vicious circle. They love you, then they hate you, then
they feel sorry for you, said I love you again.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
Sounds like life Australian, not Troy Sevon, which is about
the only thing I could tell you about Australia.
Speaker 1 (51:12):
So wow, that's the thing. That's the thing you can
tell me about. Okay, okay, okay, I'll play.
Speaker 8 (51:20):
I Should Be So Lucky is a really sad song.
He's disguised as the Bouncy's pop song, but lyrically it's
it's quite doom and gloom.
Speaker 2 (51:29):
Actually, well, so, I don't know who this is I'm
excited to hear about a Bounty pop song that's quite
dub and gloom. That's that sounds up by Alley.
Speaker 1 (51:38):
Okay, okay, well that we will do next time on
Big Lives.
Speaker 2 (51:44):
Big Lives is a production of BBC Studios in Pushkin Industries.
It's hosted by me Kai Wright and Emmanuel Jochi from
BBC Studios. Our producer is Emma Weatherill. Our Archi producer
is Samira Chowdry. Our executive producer is James Robinson. The
sound designer is Melvin Rickaby, production coordinator is Galen Davis Connelly,
(52:06):
and production manager is Mabel Finnegan Wright. Our apprentice is
Amy Woods from Pushkin Industries. Our executive producer is Constanza Guyato,
producer Daphne Chen, legal advisor Jank Flanagan, and marketing by
Morgan Ratner and Jordan McMillen.
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
So here's the thing about Big Lives. The whole premise
here is that everyone, all of us, think they know
the story of some of these folks, but there's more
to it. So when you tell a friend about this show,
don't just say it's podcasts about icons. Say I heard
something about David Bowie or Jane Fonda that genuinely mess
with my head a little bit. And while you're at it,
(00:39):
leave us a review. Emmanuel and I would really really
appreciate it. From BBC's studios and Pushkin Industries, this is
Big Lives. I'm Kai Wriight, and on this show, we
take a single cultural icon, we break down their life,
their impact using the BBC archives at emmanual. Today, I
(01:01):
kind of want to change things up a bit because, yeah, see,
I want to talk to you about a fictional Big Life,
a fictional character, okay, one who was introduced on the
BBC in what has to be one of the most
iconic moments in pop culture history. Uh, do you know
(01:22):
Ziggy Stardust?
Speaker 1 (01:24):
I do know.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Very quickly. The one sentence of whose Biggie Startist is.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
My understanding is that Diggy start Us is this alternate
person kind of like its persona that David Bowie created
as a performer. My only real association with Ziggy Startus
is as a kid, there was this sort of rebroadcasting
program on the BBC called Top of the Pops two,
and I remember, like it felt like once a month
(01:53):
they would play the same David Iconic David Bowie sets
and they were always talking about visit Viggy and let's
let's let me.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Tell you about because this is exactly at that moment
that they replayed over and over and over and over. Yeah,
this is the birth of Ziggy's start Ust. This is
really the moment that David Bowie becomes a superstar, Like
that piece of tape is the moment David Bowie goes
from just being a guy who sayings that people know
to a global superstar. It happens on the BBC in
(02:24):
July nineteen seventy two. So let me just let me
set the stage here for folks who did not grow
up in the UK and did not see this, I
mean nineteen seventy two, BBC one airs an episode of
the show Top of the Pops For folks who don't
know this show. This aired on the BBC for decades
from the sixties until the early aughts. It's what it
(02:46):
sounds like, live performance of people who are at the
top of the pop charts, big, big, important show in
the history of culture. And that night in nineteen seventy two,
they air a performance from this promising young artist who
is calling himself Ziggy Stardust with a band that is
called the Spiders from Mars. So Siggy start Us Fighters
(03:09):
from Bars and they perform their song Starman, which is
itself this kind of narrative tale of an alien from
outer space who has arrived to deliver a message of
hope and freedom to the youth of earthy.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Stuff.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
But honestly, the whole But why this moment is iconic.
It is less about the song than it is the
visuals that have stuck out in your mind all these
generations later. It opens with this tight shot of ze
start Us playing his blue, this electric blue guitar, and
it's worth noting, I mean BBC one has only been
in color for like three or four years by this point,
(03:58):
you know, So it's like this riot of color. As
it zooms out, you see the band, these guys, they're
decked out in tight glittering body suits, one in pink
and one is in gold, ones in like a dark blue.
And then there's ziggy David Bowie, right, this twiggy little
man who is resplendent in a multi colored body suit
(04:24):
that is scaly. So it's like reptilian, like an alien.
You know.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
I think as a kid, I was kind of scared
by it. I didn't absorb any information like this.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Is that wild? I mean the fact that you were
scared by it tracks with what happened in real time
for some people. Right, Like, so then there's these geometric shapes,
like these triangles zigzagging around his body in these primary colors.
He's got the hair right, which looks like a wig
but is actually David Bowie's hair, you know. I mean
it's like totally garishly red, you know, like carrot red,
(04:57):
carrot top red. That's exactly right. It's carrot top red
down his back, piled high on his head. There's a
moment people talk about a lot where he drapes his
arm around the guitarist shoulder kind of casually, and his
fingers dangle over the guy's chest and you see he's
wearing white fingernail polish and he's got on a makeup.
(05:18):
You mentioned the makeup, but I should point out, like,
this is not garish makeup. This is makeup intended to
make him look pretty, yeah, like foundation and eyeshadow. So
all of this is as obviously as far from masculine
as you can imagine in nineteen seventy two, the whole
seat of it, right, But the moment, the real moment
that makes this like iconic, is about halfway through David
(05:41):
Bowie turns ziggy start us sorry, turns and looks at
the camera across the stage actually and points his let
that long skinny arm out and points at the viewer
like he's pointing right at you, oh like into the camera,
into the camera. He's staring at you and pointing at
you right as he sings this lyric, I had to
(06:02):
phone someone, so I picked on you.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Hey, that's far wow.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Eddy wiggles his finger in this little sexy kind of
come hither way. That is like flirting with the entire
of UK in this moment, Like he's like looking through that.
We're flirting with everybody. And I'll be honest, if you
go to YouTube and you look at this now from
the vantage point of today, like it just doesn't seem
(06:31):
like that big a deal. But I'm here to tell you,
Emmanuel that people who were young and viewing this at
the time describe it as a religious experience. Like that
actual phrase comes up a lot like that it was
a religious experience.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Just because it was just such an immersive experience. They're
just like, what am I watching?
Speaker 2 (06:51):
I think that has to be part of it. But
also there are no more rules. If this guy can
get away with this on the BBC, if he can
like be in makeup, in a tight suit and fondling
his bandmates and being this on the BBS, say what
(07:12):
can I do? Who can I be? It just blew
the minds of certainly young white kids in the suburbs
of the time. I see this on television, so it's
a huge deal. And I feel like just to say,
you know, if you know one thing about David Bowie,
it's probably that he's a legendary chameleon.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Right.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
He took on all these different looks and sounds throughout
his career, this huge catalog of hits right that spanned
from Space Odyssey in nineteen sixty nine through to the
Young Americans in nineteen seventy five. You know, we are
the young Americans all the way through the poppy stuff.
Let's Dance in nineteen eighty three, and on and on
and on. Right, he's one of these artists. Was just
(07:54):
a massive catalog, all very different. But for me, until
like I went back and looked at this Top of
the Pops broadcast and started thinking about Ziggy Startus, I
didn't fully appreciate how much and how explicitly Bowie understood
himself to be creating characters as much as he was
(08:15):
making music.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
I guess this is thing. I feel like, I know
this on some level, that he had other alter egos
and characters, but Ziggy start Us the only one I've known.
But he made a bunch more.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
And he would not call them alter egos. He would
call them characters. He was an actor who was using
these characters to perform. He was performing roles, is the
way he describes it. Here he is, this is in
nineteen seventy one, before Ziggy start Us, but he's already
(08:46):
making music and drawing some mcclaim. Here's what he says
about being a singer.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
I don't sing very well. It's a bleating kind of
goat voice, you know, but it pleases me and if
anybody else likes and he probably pleases them, they can
get to my goat singing. Some of the others that
I remember from around about that time were things like
Little Bombardier.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Rubber Band.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Yeah, they were trials in short story writing. It's when
I first I found myself as a short story writer
in music that a majority of my material has always
been in story for I tell a story from beginning
to end.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
So you know, he thinks of himself not as a singer,
certainly not as a rock star, but primarily as a
storyteller and a lead actor in the stories he's telling.
He's an actor playing the role of a rock star
who is in turn, performing new characters each time, like
Zay start us every time. It's really it's the mind
(09:47):
bending stuff. And I just say, because it's so hard
to wrap your head around, I just want to play
you another clip of the way he thinks about this stuff. Okay, Yeah,
this is an example of him trying to describe what
he's doing when he goes on stage with these characters.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
It's absolutely fall us all the way. And that's what
I like about it. I don't like the art. I
can't standy the premise of going on in jeans and
being real. That's impossible. There's not one man they can
actually believe that he's giving them life going up there
(10:23):
and with a pair of jeans on a guitar and
looking as real as he can be in front of
eighteen thousand people. I mean, it's not normal.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Normal, It's not I've never heard someone talk about wearing
jeans that way. Like, he's not he's performing.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
He is performing the role of a rock star who
is performing the role of filling the blank character. And
in this case, Diggy Start Us. It is self consciously stylistic,
this movement that came about in the early seventies, right
as David Bowie is creating Ziggy Stardust, and it rejects big,
clear statements and simple messages right like it's you know,
(11:07):
contradictions and messiness and Chao style as the endpoint. Like
all of that, and Bowie does talk about himself as
a constructed postmodern rock star. So all of that is
the background to the fact that what I really want
to talk about, which is Ziggy Stardust, I'm not actually
here to talk about David Bowie I'm here to talk
about Ziggy Startus, who this character who he creates, because
(11:31):
when I think of it that way, there's a paradox
with Ziggy Stardust because he's on that stage in Top
of the Pops, it set July seventy two. He points
out the world through the camera and he lights a
whole generation of people on fire. They take enormous meaning
from this act. It launches what is a new cultural
(11:51):
movement right certainly at least in white culture. It is
a new cultural movement from these young people. But if
you listen to David Bowie as you go through this
archive and listen to how he thinks about it, he
never intended anything of the such like he was trying
to launch a movement of any sort. He was just
(12:14):
striking a pose, just like striking opposes.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
A character striking opposes, And like literally he was just
like I just felt like looking that way that day,
like that a.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Little bit, a little bit, he almost like the style
was the point. He almost cause it. He even uses
the word poser at one point and talking about it,
and I.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Just so you taking me. He had no conception that
what he might be doing might be different like that different.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Yes, different, Okay, he wanted to be disruptive, but he
was not trying to start any kind of cultural movement.
And I don't know if I believe that. It's just
a weird thing, and I want to talk to you
about it.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Yeah, let's get interesting. I'm curious because it the way
you describe that performance, it seems intentional.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
It seems every single choice is intentional. And that's the
the enigma of Ziggy Stardust. Every choice is intentional without meeting.
So to try to understand that, I'm going to walk
you through the rise and fall of Ziggy Start Us,
which is the name of the album, by the way,
(13:22):
and see what you think about the choices that we're made.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
All right, let's get into it.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Welcome back to Big Lives. We're talking about Ziggy's Stardusts,
which means David Bowie, but not really Bowie, because he
says Ziggy is a whole different person from himself.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
The story about the guy who's really a guy. Yes,
so that's what we're talking about.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Let's try to understand it. The first thing to understand
is that David Bowie, and this is important, grew up
in the suburbs of Bromley board out of his mind. Now,
I don't actually know where Bromley is or what can
you help me with this? I mean, I your what
is born?
Speaker 1 (14:10):
No, I mean I was gonna say Bromley sounds accurate
that he was born with I don't know. I've only
been there once in my life and I can't remember
anything about it. I literally cannot tell you like much
about it at all. It is a completely nonscript place
in my brain.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
That certainly seems to be David Bowie's take on things.
You know. There was a BBC documentary in twenty nineteen
called Finding Fame Okay, and in that documentary, one of
Bowie's early bandmates and kind of girlfriend, Okay, tells a
story that sums up the place in his thoughts about it.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
At one point, David said, do you want to come
home and meet my parents? I said, yes, why not?
That meant taking the train to Bromley.
Speaker 5 (14:56):
You find yourself in the middle of two worlds. There's
the extreme values of people who grow up on the
countryside and the very urban field of the city and suburbia.
You're given the impression that nothing countrally belongs to you,
that you are sort of in this wasteland.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
When I was in his parents' house, they're facing a
television and the parents were sitting there quite quiet. They
offered me some tuna fish sandwiches, but then there was
silence and I'm somebody that I mean, I can talk
to anybody. And it was hard going. It was soulless.
(15:35):
Once they've gone out, she said, whatever it takes, I
want to get out of here. I do not want
to live like this.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
I mean, it's brutal.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Listen, people of Bromley, which just to say, you know,
is like a little suburb like southeast of London. Listen,
I hope you are listening to this and saying loudly
to yourselves where I live is affordable, okay, and the
schools are good.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
I don't have This is not my take on round me.
I don't know anything about bro I'm just telling you
how David Bowie felt about Browick. That it's important to
understand for the choices he makes in his life. So
he does find music early while he's in the suburbs.
His brother introduces him to jazz. He is a big
Little Richard fan. When he's we talked about Little Richard
(16:24):
in a previous episode.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Yeah they're all influenced by Little Richard.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
But yeah, they're all influenced by Little Richard. His parents
are listening to Elvis, who is stealing from Little Richard
at the time Bowie is watching Little Richard and kind
of subsequently stealing from Little Richard. But we don't need
to get into all that. You can go listen to
our previous episode on Little Richard. You should do that
and I'll tell you give you all the context you need.
But on Bowie, by the time he's a teenager, he's
actively looking to break the old rules with just provocations
(16:50):
of style like those that Little Richard started. And we've
found the very first tape of this young man appearing
on the BBC, and it is a perfect illustration. It's
a black and white evening current affairs program that aired
in nineteen sixty four, okay, and it's a studio to
discussion about men who have long hair. I cannot tell
(17:14):
how serious our tongue in cheek it is in retrospects
because it's out of context, but it seems to be
as a national crisis. And the visuals there's a bunch
of skinny, young white guys standing in a group across
from this old white guy who is interviewing them. And
at the center of that group of skinny, young white
guys is a seventeen year old kid named Davy Jones,
(17:38):
which is David Bowie's birth name.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Okay, he later changed his.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Name to Bowie because Davy Jones sounded like, you know,
from the Monkeys, Davy Jones.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Oh, I mean, I don't know who that guy is now, so.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
There you could have stayed. But at the time monkeys
were a big day. Yeah, but so young Davy Jones,
seventeen years old is here leading this group, and I
just think the best thing to do again is just
a play. Just let me just for you, starting with
(18:13):
this host intro and the fabulous the music with us.
Speaker 6 (18:23):
It's all got to stop. They've had enough. The worms
are turning. The rebellion of the long Hairs is getting underway.
They're tired of persecution, They're tired of taumps, They're tired
of losing their jobs. They're tired of being sent home
from college. They're tired of being sent home from school.
They're tired even of being refused a doe. So with
the nucleus of some of his friends. A seventeen year
(18:47):
old Davy Jones has just founded the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Long Haired Men. Well here we
are now exactly who's being cruel to you?
Speaker 3 (18:58):
Well? I think we're all fairly tolerant, but for the
last two years we've had comments like darling and can
I carry a handbag? Thrown at this? I think it's
just had to stop now.
Speaker 6 (19:09):
To surprise you. But you'll get this kind of comment
because you haven't got really rather long hair, haven't you?
Speaker 1 (19:15):
We have?
Speaker 3 (19:15):
Yes, yeah, it's not too bad. Really no, I like it,
and I think we all like long hair and we
don't see why other people should persecute us because of this.
Speaker 6 (19:25):
I mean, did you did you get this off the
Rolling Stones?
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Oh?
Speaker 6 (19:28):
No, no, But did any of you have your hair
growing along more than two years ago? Did you all
the Rolling Stones? Ever?
Speaker 3 (19:36):
Did it takes a long time to get this link?
Speaker 6 (19:38):
Don't you go and have it shampooly set?
Speaker 2 (19:40):
No?
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Very good at it?
Speaker 2 (19:46):
It's ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
That's actually, that's actually a very fun TV. But if
I can't tell who is serious and who is not serious.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
It's the whole thing, like, is it a skit. Is
it a bit, you know, like the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to log haired bit.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
It has to be a bit for David. For David exactly,
it has to be a bit for him.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
I mean it is just to say in this visual,
their hair is not that long.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Really, it's like literally how like it well up to
He's like ears up, like.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Like a little below the ear, you know, like and
some of them have just kind of curly hair, you know,
like the the broccoli thing that the kids do these days.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
That's not even not bad. I feel like classic school
uniform rules your hair can't touch your collar. Yeah, it
even goes to that.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
They're not even But this is a while back. This
is sixty four, you know, and certainly seventeen year old
Davy Jones means this as a performance. We now know, right,
surely this is the beginning of his getting in public
and being like, I'm gonna strike a pose and see
what happens.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
How did he end up on that TV ship show?
Is he making music with you? Just literally just a
youth out here trying to be famous.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Out here trying to be famous. He was the founder
of this this group. He founded this group as a
provocation to get on the BBC. I presume, right, let
me play you another piece of tape from him, because
all of it again, remember this kid in Bromley who's
like this, this is a soulless place that I got
to get out of here right right, and just in general,
(21:18):
what he's thinking about as he tries to build his
heart listen to this.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
What sort of kick do you get out of this
kind of publicity which stops me getting bored? And I'm
sure it stops a lot of other people getting bored.
And I hate grosses in supermarkets. It's my own particular
form of rebellion. I don't like being like anybody because
I'm so much like everybody else, and that's such a
down at times, because one likes to ascertain one's individuality.
(21:46):
And I don't want to be a yippie. I don't
want to be straight. I just want to be anybody.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
In a way. You're still a rebel, but without a cause.
Oh absolutely, My course.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
My course is bored.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
My cause is bored. He just wants just like that's
his north star is I'm not going to be bored,
and I don't want anybody else to be bored.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
It's so it's funny because yeah, you can really hear
he has like a very informed sense of derision, like
the thing about the supermarkets. I'm like, well do you
have against Sainsbury's or Croker?
Speaker 2 (22:19):
It's such a great phrase.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Also, I get what he's saying. I get it. I understand.
I too, grew up partly in the suburbs outside of Toledo. Yeah,
you are just sort of like, right, life goes a
certain way here. It's by design, that's the whole point.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
And the tedium by design I love right, Right, I
want to applaud you for that phrase. How did you
put it? Is great? Now, I can't informed derision, its
informed derisions. That's that's that's brilliant. So the next time
that but he shows up on the BBC in the archives,
(23:00):
he has moved on from advocacy on behalf of Long
Haired Men Uh to in fact focus on music and
just to say, you know, it's well documented how many
efforts Bowie made to become famous as a music maker.
I mean, this guy was a relentless hustler. He was
in nine bands over eleven years before he finally landed
on a hit one of those bands was called David
(23:24):
Bowie in the lower third and you know, little hustler.
David Bowie lands an audition for that band on the
BBC in nineteen sixty five, and the audition itself does
not survive, but there is a written record of what
talent Scout thought about the performance and this, I mean,
(23:46):
it's brutal. And I'm just going to read you a
couple of the quotes. Says quote, I don't think the
group will get better with more rehearsal. What we heard
will always be the product. Oh wow, yeah, quote there
is no entertainment in anything they do. It's just a group,
(24:07):
and a very ordinary one too, backing a singer devoid
of personality.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Wow, that is so damning.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
I haven't heard the audition, but I mean they do.
Amongst the songs they sing is one from Mary Poppins
like Jim Chimmrie is what. I don't get it, but
that is one of the songs. So I don't know,
you know, I mean, but the point is David Bowie
has launched a campaign against boredom. It is failing wildly.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Right, I mean about like a leasing and devoid of personality.
You're like because everything you've played before. You can hear
it like you can hear this, you know, kind of
sly sounding, fancastic, gum chewing teenager. That's so interesting that
he had yet to translate that into his musical persona.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
I mean so much so that he is boring the
old white men of the BBC to death, right like
you have done something right.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Yeah, that is something.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
So but he does find his way forward eventually. Of course,
as we all know. I won't belabor the story because
it's well trod, but his first big hit is Space
Oddity in nineteen sixty nine. This is the song in
which he creates major tom as like one of his characters.
That's a character he will return to throughout his career
that runs throughout the history of rock. Some say Elton
(25:31):
John was riffing on him with the song Rocketman, big
important character in the history of rock. But as I said,
I'm not really here to talk about David Bowie. I'm
here to talk about Ziggy Stardust. So with all of
that as background, he creates Ziggy Stardust in nineteen seventy two,
and one of the first things he does right before
(25:53):
this album comes out is he gives an interview in
January nineteen seventy two to a publication called Melody Makers,
which is an important music magazine at the time. Are
not a magazine, it's like a newspaper when it's where
the critics really kind of set the stage. It's a
rolling stone kind of place, right, And this is about
(26:14):
six months before he goes on Top of the Pops
with Ziggy Startist, and in the interview, Bowie says, quote,
I'm gay and always have been. And this is obviously
important context for how Ziggy Startist will be perceived when
he comes out right. The critics talk about it as
a gay rock star, which in nineteen seventy two is
(26:36):
quite a new concept, right, And of course there's all
the expected hub up around that. But what's striking to
me is David Bowie claims he does not know what
all the fuss is about.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Like you think, I don't get why people are asking
me questions about this.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
About this because again he did not see Ziggy as
some kind of queer statement. It was just an out
there character and so just listen to this. This is
how he describes it in an interview later in the seventies.
I forget the exact date, but this is a little
later in this seventies when they're they're they're looking back.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
You know, for the first couple of years, I had
a heavy battle because it was hard to tell people
that if if that whole bisexuality thing was part of me,
it wasn't necessarily part of the work I did, and
that because I wore funny clothes on stage didn't mean
that I was into drag. That it wasn't they weren't
drag clothes. That Americans don't appreciate the subtleties of dress
(27:33):
as they do in Europe. I mean Europe, if you
wear some funny clothes and then it's seen as being
part of the character you're playing. But in America, if you,
especially at that time, if you wore anything that wasn't genes,
it was drag. Which was That was the hardest problem
I had in the stakes, because trying to convince people
that because I was bisexual, that it didn't mean that
(27:55):
everything everything I wrote about or did meant that it
was all gay.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
But you know that.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
That bisexual thing was part of my private life, none
of their business. And you know that the songs and
the albums and the stage performances were when I was
all about and.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
I don't know, So first off, I have to say,
you know, I should have said that there was an
interview for the US radio station, and he's trying to
explain this thing. I don't know whether I love it
or hate it, you know, because this is one of
the many times in the archives where he is just
generally perplexed than anyone's trying to like assign motives or
(28:31):
messages or anything to the characters he creates. Right, but
this man clearly intentionally went in that newspaper, the Melty
Baker said he was gay in that interview, like that
is obviously anal choice.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
You know. It's interesting because I do hear what he's
saying about. Just because I'm said I'm gay or bisex,
just because I've talked about my sexuality doesn't mean every
choice I make is a product of that. And yeah,
at the same time, he's no dummy, Like he's self
aware enough to know how people are going to react
(29:05):
to what he's doing. And I don't know, bus sort
of like a way in his voice even just hearing it,
where you can just see a guy just sort of
leaning back from the conversation in a kind of sanguine way,
and just watching these little things he's throwing out just
kind of explode and being like, yeah, I don't know.
(29:27):
Did I mean to do that? I don't.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Maybe I'm just provoking, you know, like, oh, I'm supposed,
Oh you mean this gender bending, sexualized space alien you
thought it was queer? What do you mean the way?
I know what you're talking about. He just does this
over and over again in the archive, and it's.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Which in himself I should say, I mean, we don't know,
but it sounds a little like a performance to be.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
It sounds well because again, remember David Bowie is also
a creation of Davy Jones, you know, like, so that's
David Bowie speaking, not as Davy Jones. Here's just another
really quick exact of what he says about this.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
I'm always dressed in what I considered clothes to prevent
me becoming hand drums, so that I would receive reaction
from people which would encourage me to write.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
He just wants a reaction that's going to fuel his
next creative thought. And like I said, on some level,
I'm like, that's kind of badass. Good for you, you
know little Davy Jones, and on some level I'm like,
you're insufferable.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
It's it's interesting because I feel like you can have
two reactions to sort of a humdrum of suburbia, particularly
like Bromley is so close to London in a way
where it's like nine miles or something away from you.
There is like a community full of people who are
defined by a place, and particularly in the UK, defined
by an accent or even a neighborhood in a way
(30:53):
where you really feel like you are from a place, right,
And sometimes that can be constrictive in its own ways, right,
and people want to break out of that, but to
not be defined by a base or to come from
a place. But it's really no real definition other than
like it's just an ordinary whatever. Everything that he's doing
makes sense and so I have compassion for it, But
the same time, it just sort of like you are
(31:15):
still a person. There is one of the desires and feelings. Yeah,
if you think, yeah, I don't know, struggle to hear
them struggle. Yeah, there's not a bunch of gap between
him as a teenager where you was sort of like yeah,
okay and him what we just heard there in that
(31:35):
kind of way.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Well, I will say this Ziggy start us very much
gets a reaction, whether his creator had been thinking it
or not. And it certainly provokes because Ziggy was launched
as a rock star, right, Like that's the character Bowie
could kind of come out as a pre existing celebrity.
(31:58):
Like it's a little there's something kind of puck about
that too. I like the band Spiders from Mars. Those
guys were not on board at first. They had been
playing with him already, but they were hesitant to put
on body suits and makeup. These are all very heterosexual,
very straight guys. Yeah, and he convinced them that the
(32:20):
girls would love it. So that's he says why they
started doing it, because he convinced that they were going
to get laid, and so one suspects that was true.
There is a this news piece that came out. It's
in nineteen seventy three, so this is the year after
the Top of the Pops performance. It's on a program
(32:41):
called Nationwide. And I think when I saw this, I
got a sense of just how big a reaction all
of this got because the reporter, I mean, he does
sound like he's literally stumbled upon an alien who's leading
some kind of youth cult and he's just like, doesn't
get it. Listen to this.
Speaker 7 (32:58):
Bowie is a skinny land with a pasty complexion and
oka died her in a teddyboy style of twenty years ago.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Yet with a.
Speaker 7 (33:06):
Dash of makeup, he's transforming himself into an object that
is worshiped by millions of girls. Outside the winter gardens
of Bournemouth. Some of those fans are arriving to pay
homage to a man who's become the high priest of pop.
Every seat was sold months ago. Some fans were even
(33:27):
blessed with a glimpse of the master as he scurried
into the theater. This is the face the public wants.
An ex art student from Brixton whose dad worked for
doctor Barnardo's homes has turned himself into a bizarre, self
constructed freak. It is a sign of our times that
a man with a painted face and curfully adjusted lipstick
(33:49):
should inspire adoration from an audience of girls aged between
fourteen and twenty six months ago, Bowie was unknown to
the general public. Today, this twenty six year old man
earns about half a million pounds a year.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
I mean this bizarre, self constructed freak. The face that
the reporter used to describe, which I think.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Bowie would have so funny because it was very straight,
like that moment where what I really think of him though.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
Freak with these girls going crazy over this freak, where
what's going on? You know? And I think it's striking
too that the reporter this thing. I'm gonna play a
little more of this where the reporter is just kind
of flabbergasted that any of this is a serious undertaking.
Listen to that how he describes this.
Speaker 7 (34:44):
It is said that Bowie will soon be the world's
number one beat singer. If he achieved such eminence, he'll
be the first superstar of pop to wear shorty dresses
on stage. Behind the freakish image, the Bowie Circus, right
down to the flashy car, is a well oil show
business machine. On the surface, the circus seems bizarre, yeh.
(35:06):
His bucking group of professional musicians, the Yorkshire lab with
down to earth actions whose appearance merely seems to be
molded to fit into the Bowie image. The coach carries
a team of thirty electricians, road managers, sound engineers, stage
(35:26):
hands who put up fifteen thousand pounds worth of equipment
to project the superstar on stage. Behind the scenes, his
costumes are professionally cleaned and pressed. During the act, he
slips into something new three or four times at.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Least, I mean musician into the freakish in the description.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
This freak has musicians and sound engineers and he changes customs.
Can you believe it like a concert is actually put on?
It's just it has clearly blown the minds of.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Also just like the little Yorkshire reference there, like the
equivalent in America, basically saying he has Midwestern band members
to make him appeal to America.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
He's queered these straight guys.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
You know.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
True, it is what he has done. He has taken
these straight guys and dressed them up. Is queer. Though
again he insists none of this has meaning. Here the
last clip from this nationwide bet because here is what
Bowie says to this reporter.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
I'm very much a character when I go on the stage,
I feel, I mean, I like an actor.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
Yeah, I believe in.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
My part all the way down the line, right the
way down. But I do play it for all it's worth.
Because that's the way I do my station. And that's
that's part of what BO is supposedly all about.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
I'm a I'm an actor, so yeah, you know, he's
an actor who happens to be bisexual. Ziggy is a character,
an alien rocker who happens to look kind of gay.
He's cast this band, you know, who happened to be
straight guys that happened to be dressed up kind of gay,
and it all is just happenstance and style, and he just,
(37:09):
over and over and over again tries to explain this.
And I think the one where I hear him most,
where I can most understand where he's coming from, is
it comes in nineteen seventy six, so this is long
after Ziggy start as and landed on Earth. And he
tries one more to just explain his whole relationship to
rock and roll. Actually listen to this.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
That's where the thing about poser comes from. In English
rock and roll is that it's the artist's stance. In America,
they really are rock and rollers, they come straight out
of factories and play guitars. But in England it's sort
of it's you just tamper around with rock and roll
and you use it for something. And I guess I
was one of the first to really sort of come
(37:52):
out and say I'm using rock and roll, that it's
not my life like it is to an American rock
and roll and rock and roll is quite fun and everything,
but it's not it's money using it as a medium.
And I think that was that sort of really just
a typical attitude of the English rock and roller. But
I actually voiced him. I don't think it had been
really voiced before him.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Huh. That's really interesting because it's like, I know, when
he's talking about American rock and rollers, he's not talking
necessarily about black people by this point in time, Like
he's talking about write people write rock and rollers. But
I don't know he just like I feel like every
British rock I've heard from for McCartney on down, they're
(38:36):
they're open about taking stuff from other people across the
season all the rest of it, but you don't get
a sense that they're not as open of just like listen,
I'm I'm using this as a vehicle, like I'm using
this sort of persona and this sort of thing to
get to where I want to go, even if that's
just musically. But like he's just being very naked about it.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
He's very, very naked about the fact that I because
he sees himself as an actor and a storyteller, right,
because he is not actually invested in being a rock star,
you know, despite the fact that he is one of
history's most famous rock stars at this point, he's not
invested in that. He's invested in being a postmodern artist
(39:20):
who strikes poses in public, gets a reaction that feeds
him to strike another pose in public, to get a
reaction that feeds him to strike another pose in public.
It's weird when you think about that from the perspective
of Ziggy Start Us, because again, whatever all that was true,
the Ziggy Start Ust, the kids who took this in
(39:40):
had enormous meaning. I do not have to follow these
old rules anymore. I can be anything I want. I
can be a gender bending queer space alien if I
so please. And this meaningless pose changed the culture in
that way, you know. And then having blown up the
(40:01):
culture in this way, whether on purpose or not, David
Bowie turns around and blows up Ziggy's stardust in the
most provocative way I can imagine. Okay, and I'm going
to tell you about that after the break welcome back.
(40:23):
It's Big Lives. We're talking about the rock star alien
Ziggy Stardust with jam merged from the board mind of
David Jones who became David Bowie. So Ziggy lands on
Earth with this message of hope for the youth, which
they translate to mean I can be whatever the hell
I want to be. That message Ricochet's around the Planet
helps create the idea of glam rock, this thing that
(40:47):
would go on to be a huge part of the
seventies and early eighties. David Bowie becomes a superstar, all
this incredible stuff happens. Yeah, and then David Bowie just
pulls the plug on it.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Like yeah, I was gonna say, because I know he
has other personas, I was like, how does the position
for one through another?
Speaker 2 (41:06):
On July third, nineteen seventy three, about almost exactly a
year to date after that Top of the Pops performance, right,
he is playing the final show of the album's tour
for the Ziggy Startas album at London's Hammersmith Odeon and
they're about to perform the final song, which is called
(41:28):
rock and Roll Suicide. It's also the final song on
the album itself, and Ziggy start Us. David Bowie actually,
but Ziggy start Us announces to the crowd not only
is this the last show of the tour, but it
is the last show we will ever do. And oh
the crowd is shocked. But they are not the only ones,
(41:51):
because this is the first moment that the entire band
here's this news.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
Oh no, yes, like.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
The bassis Trevor Boulder is like, reportedly he's mouthing to
the drummer, He's like, what the he's fucking sacked us?
As they are all realizing live on stage that they
have been fired.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
Wow, and not yet they were of that character of.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
That This is the moment that they realized they were
also performing a character that is now being killed off.
And it turns out, you know, it's all part of
this planned show. Rock and Roll Suicide was a song
about Ziggy Stardust all along because that song is kind
of about this washed up rock and roller and Bowie
(42:39):
is casting him off as a washed up figure. Why
does he do this?
Speaker 6 (42:48):
You know?
Speaker 2 (42:48):
Like urban legends abound. Honestly, there's some back and forth
about mental health in his family. So his half brother
was diagnosis schizophrenic, and there's some conversation about Bowie feeling
like scared that he was becoming.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
Too close because of these characters. He's like sort of warriors.
If I stay in it too long, am I.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
It'll become me. But he did a bunch of other characters,
So I don't know why this one. You know that
the mask felt too sticky. But I think at one
point he talks about this in nineteen seventy six and
this is this is what I'm going to play you
is for me. I think what makes the most sense
about like Ziggy Startus being really just that this was
(43:35):
his He was making an artist statement about rock and roll,
and he admite.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
It very quick too for me to own up to
Ziggy stard as was my statement. But I've always thought
that in rock that you can only say one thing
in rock and roll, really, and everything else is just
an expansion of that original statement. It certainly seemed like
that with the stuff that I've done, some of it
does qualify the original statement. Now, and it's the whole period.
This was my rock and roll period. Rather than dividing
(44:02):
the rock period up into bits, it's just looking at
the whole rock period. So that was my rock period
and it dealt with this particular attitude. Rock and roll
is the decision of being establishment or non establishment. That's
the problem that rock and roll sort of poses to
be or not to be a rebel, you know, is
what it's really what it says and always has said.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
So he's just I mean, it's a little rambling, but
he's just like rock and roll is an anti establishment pose,
and I came up with the most anti establishment pose.
I can imagine this queer space alien and I did it,
and that's done, and I'm moving on to other things.
(44:45):
And I think where I'm left, and I want to
hear left. Where I'm left is like, despite the libraries
of stuff trying to make sense of David Bowie and
postmodernism and all of that, it's just in the end,
he was a bored kid in Bromley and he has
made a life where he refuses to be bored, even
(45:06):
in his own provocations. And if he stayed in Ziggie
too long, he got bored.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
Right, right, I mean, that's it sounds like it sounds
like he's just like, yeah, I was last week.
Speaker 2 (45:16):
Yeah, And it's just so hard to wrap your head
around this thing that was such a massive change in culture.
You know, and many other rock and rollers we talk about,
going all the way back to Little Richard, you know,
are changing culture and trying to disrupt culture. But no question,
certainly for white culture, Ziggy start Us is this enormously
(45:40):
disruptive before and after moment. And it's just so hard
to imagine that. For the guy who did it, it
was like, yeah, that was last week's post.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
After this, did he change? Like how abruptly he would
like he must have recognized, Okay, there was a big
reaction to this.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
Yeah. I mean he goes through a period that he
calls marking time, you know, Okay, that is this creative
transition he does. The immediate next thing he does is
like an all covers tribute album called pent Ups, and
then he does this dystopian thing. He goes dystopian the
next year. And I mean he's making so I should say,
(46:19):
we're talking nineteen seventy three, seventy four.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
Right, he's moving, he's still moving in Yeah. Then eventually
people become used to, well, this is what he does.
Speaker 2 (46:28):
What he does.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
But even with all of those characters, I mean, it's
telling to me like and I again, I should say
I am not like a David Bowie devotee. I like
Nova hits right, but I feel like like Ziggy Starts
seems like the character of his that has stuck the
most with people like it. That's the when I pictured
David Bowie, that is who I'm picturing.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
Yeah, I mean, as he says in that cut when
he's talking about rock and roll, he does say, that
was my base statement, my original statement, and everything else
is derivative of it, you know, see, I mean that's
what he thought in nineteen seventy six at least, you
know so, I think on some ways he probably agrees
that's the one that's stuck, but none of them are him.
(47:13):
There are two orders of removal from Davy Jones.
Speaker 1 (47:16):
Right, because Davy Jones was classified as being not absolutely
nothing special.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
Nothing special, just a white guy in the suburbs. But
you know, also, I have to say, Emmanuel, the thing is,
I when I think about all of this, there's all
the meaning that people took from Ziggy's stardust, and so
there has to be meaning that you also take from
the killing off of Ziggy startus, right, And there's a
(47:44):
way in which his ability to try on an identity
set it down and try on another identity and set
it down. Is also this massive demonstration of liberation, right
that that because and this is one of the he
(48:05):
calls himself a postmodern rock star, And this is one
of the big ideas of postmodern is pluralism. That the
world is vast and multifaceted and messy and chaotic and
full of change and full of different kinds of people.
It's kind of a really brainy way to say diversity, right,
you know, and that you as a person, as an
(48:27):
individual human being, can contain multitudes. You know that I
can be a black gay man from the Midwest who's
progressive but getting old and getting conservative and like all
of these things can be true of me at one time, right,
(48:48):
And that there's something in the message of David Bowie
and the rise and ultimately killing of Ziggy startus to
say you can be all of the things. No one
can tell you what you can't be at any time.
You can just keep changing.
Speaker 1 (49:03):
I mean, I feel like, based on what you just said,
there's a conversation you and I need to have the
call coming from inside the house. But but no, with
David Bowie, No, that makes sense. That makes sense. It's
funny because I was just thinking to myself like, oh,
there is It's such a flex to be able to
(49:25):
just be like, you know what, this is not who
I choose to be right now? That is done. That
was an expression of this. But you've convinced me that.
I think I was looking at David Bowie, who a
kind of graduated version of that same teenager we heard
at the beginning, right, which is just this guy who's
just trying stuff and doing stuff and seeing what happens
(49:46):
and then if it blows up bigger, just being like
did I do that? It does seem more considered than that,
you know what I mean? It feels like he is
he's doing it to keep for him. He's not doing
it for society. He's doing it for his own artistic.
Speaker 2 (50:02):
Like right, fun If you underword it that way, he's
doing it for his own art, then it's a liberation,
right who you got from me? Next week?
Speaker 1 (50:12):
Okay, Well, so this one's going to be an interesting one.
I really don't know how much you know about this person,
or how much a lot of Americas know about this person.
To be honest, let's just play for first clip here.
Speaker 8 (50:24):
I mean, I was eight or nine, and I just
thowt all kids streamed of being a pop star or
being a singer. My brother was interested in photography and filming,
and we would muck around and make little films. But
I don't think any of us were good enough for
any other family mean to say, get up and do
a song for them.
Speaker 2 (50:42):
I would say, that's a voice I've never heard before.
Speaker 1 (50:45):
Wow. Okay, okay, okay, okay, I'll pay one more for you.
Speaker 8 (50:50):
Astralia is a funny place when it comes to being successful.
Speaker 1 (50:53):
Have they cut you down to size?
Speaker 2 (50:54):
Yeah?
Speaker 8 (50:54):
They I've already been through the mill. It's like a
vicious circle. They love you, then they hate you, then
they feel sorry for you, said I love you again.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
Sounds like life Australian, not Troy Sevon, which is about
the only thing I could tell you about Australia.
Speaker 1 (51:12):
So wow, that's the thing. That's the thing you can
tell me about. Okay, okay, okay, I'll play.
Speaker 8 (51:20):
I Should Be So Lucky is a really sad song.
He's disguised as the Bouncy's pop song, but lyrically it's
it's quite doom and gloom.
Speaker 2 (51:29):
Actually, well, so, I don't know who this is I'm
excited to hear about a Bounty pop song that's quite
dub and gloom. That's that sounds up by Alley.
Speaker 1 (51:38):
Okay, okay, well that we will do next time on
Big Lives.
Speaker 2 (51:44):
Big Lives is a production of BBC Studios in Pushkin Industries.
It's hosted by me Kai Wright and Emmanuel Jochi from
BBC Studios. Our producer is Emma Weatherill. Our Archi producer
is Samira Chowdry. Our executive producer is James Robinson. The
sound designer is Melvin Rickaby, production coordinator is Galen Davis Connelly,
(52:06):
and production manager is Mabel Finnegan Wright. Our apprentice is
Amy Woods from Pushkin Industries. Our executive producer is Constanza Guyato,
producer Daphne Chen, legal advisor Jank Flanagan, and marketing by
Morgan Ratner and Jordan McMillen.
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