“I’ve heard people say it’s about a guy who comes to save the world from outer space,” said bassist Trevor Bolder, “but to me, it’s just songs.” “To me, three songs link together – ‘Ziggy Stardust,’ ‘Lady Stardust’ and ‘Star,’ because they’re all about the same person – and after that, it’s a bunch of songs that work together,” said producer Scott. But it’s still unclear whether Bowie had planned Ziggy Stardust as a narrative, or if he retrofitted the story after he had the songs. It made a certain amount of sense – at least as much as, say, the Who’s Tommy. And they tear him to pieces onstage during the song ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide.'” When the infinites arrive, they take bits of Ziggy to make themselves real, because in their original state they are anti-matter and cannot exist on our world. He takes himself up to the incredible spiritual heights and is kept alive by his disciples. “Ziggy starts to believe in all this himself and thinks himself a prophet of the future starmen. “Ziggy is advised in a dream by the infinites to write the coming of a starman … this amazing spaceman who will be coming down to save the Earth,” Bowie explained to William S. And in the end, he is destroyed by his own excesses and by his fans. Bowie’s plot, loosely, was that humanity was in its final five years of existence, and Ziggy was dispatched to deliver a message of hope: He’s a wild, hedonistic figure (“well-hung and snow-white tan”), but at his core communicates peace and love he’s the ultimate rock star.
As he fleshed out the concept further, Ziggy became an omnisexual alien rock star, sent to Earth as a messenger. “He always described how he’d take bits and pieces from all over the place, put them in a melting pot and they’d come out being him,” said producer Ken Scott.īowie dubbed this new creation “Ziggy Stardust” (first name taken from a tailor’s shop that he saw from a train). He began developing a character based on Taylor, as well as on other eccentrics like Texas “psychobilly” singer Legendary Stardust Cowboy and Japanese designer Kansai Yamamoto. “Until that time,” he later said, “the attitude was ‘What you see is what you get.’ It seemed interesting to try to devise something different, like a musical where the artist onstage plays a part.” After too many drugs and an emotional breakdown, Taylor had joined a cult and decided that he was an alien god on Earth.īowie’s fascination with space travel and science fiction had already surfaced in such songs as “Space Oddity” and “Life on Mars?” but he was being drawn toward something grander in scope. But the root inspiration for the album’s theme went deep into his past.ĭuring the mid-Sixties, Bowie had met pioneering British rocker Vince Taylor, who had recorded the 1959 classic “Brand New Cadillac” (later covered by the Clash on London Calling). Bowie had been building up to something like Ziggy Stardust for a while.
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