Ziggyology

by Simon Goddard

  David would escape into new songs, new trousers, new epochs, new accidents and new reflections in his mirror. But the world would never let him forget the lightning-shaped shadow of his past. Sometimes, when asked politely, he’d rake over the ashes of the Starman in interviews: sometimes throwing out red herrings about Burroughs or supposedly taking the name Ziggy from a tailor’s he’d claimed to have seen from a train window; and sometimes honestly explaining how he ‘fell for Ziggy’, how he was ‘obsessed night and day with the character’ to the detriment of his own identity as David Bowie. Not by way of confession, or a boast, just a simple truth.

  ‘I became Ziggy Stardust.’

  MICK RONSON REMAINED at David’s left-hand side through Pin Ups and The 1980 Floor Show before launching his solo career with 1974’s Slaughter On 10th Avenue. The album featured songs co-written with David and, in places, chafed uncommonly rich rock ’n’ roll heavens but failed to propel Ronno to the star status MainMan had wished. The same year Mick joined Mott The Hoople for their farewell single, ‘Saturday Gig’, and continued touring and recording with Ian Hunter thereafter. Mick eventually married Ziggy’s follicle-goddess Suzi Fussey in 1976. They had a daughter, Lisa, the following year.

  In April 1992, Mick reunited with David on stage at The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert at Wembley Stadium for ‘All The Young Dudes’ (with Hunter) and ‘“Heroes”’. The Spidery bond reconnected, David invited him to play on his next album, Black Tie White Noise, dusting down Ziggy’s old favourite, Cream’s ‘I Feel Free’. The month of its release, April 1993, Ronson lost his battle with liver cancer and Planet Earth bid farewell to its greatest and most genteel guitar legend. He was 46.

  ‘Weird’ Trevor Bolder was so upset by the Hammersmith announcement he refused to attend the following night’s Café Royal party. To his surprise, he was subsequently invited to record Pin Ups in France, also joining Ronson on stage at the Marquee for The 1980 Floor Show. It was the last time he worked with David.

  ‘Gilly’ Woody Woodmansey was just as aggrieved but still went to the Café Royal hoping he had a future with David. A week later, on the morning of his wedding at the British Church of Scientology headquarters, where Garson The Parson performed the ceremony, he received a phone call from MainMan informing him his services were no longer required; his initial replacement on Pin Ups and Diamond Dogs was Aynsley Dunbar, formerly of John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers.

  Mike Garson continued to work and tour with David up until 1975’s Young Americans. After relinquishing Scientology, he reunited with David on 1993’s Black Tie White Noise, playing keyboards on every major Bowie tour thereafter.

  In 1976, Bolder, Woodmansey and Garson, with a new singer and guitarist, released an eponymous album under the name The Spiders From Mars. A mistake which the world has done well to largely forget.

  David parted company with Tony DeFries and MainMan in 1975. For contractual reasons, DeFries still profited from a considerable share of David’s earnings well into the 1980s.

  Angie and David were divorced in February 1980. Their son, Zowie, who at the age of two was granted his own shortlived ‘fan club’ through MainMan, later reverted to the name of Duncan Jones.

  Iggy Pop survived heroin addiction and a Los Angeles mental hospital, where David ‘rescued’ him one day in 1976 to join him in Berlin. There they made Iggy’s albums The Idiot and Lust For Life. A few years later in Switzerland, David also taught Iggy to ski. ‘He was a good instructor,’ says Iggy.

  Relations between Lou Reed and David soured following a drunken brawl in a Knightsbridge restaurant in 1979. Time healed the wounds and Lou later joined David as a special guest of his fiftieth birthday concert in 1997.

  Terry Burns’ mental health deteriorated. A week after David’s thirty-eighth birthday, in January 1985, he committed suicide on the railtrack near the grounds of his hospital, Cane Hill, south of Croydon. He was 47. His and David’s mother, Peggy Jones, passed away in 2001, aged 88.

  Freddie Burretti continued to design clothes for David through the Diamond Dogs era. He later moved to Paris in the early-nineties, where he died peacefully in his sleep in May 2001, aged 49.

  Cyrinda Foxe married New York Doll David Johansen in 1977. They divorced a year later with Foxe immediately marrying Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler. Foxe would also divorce Tyler long before her death in September 2002 following a stroke and an inoperable brain tumour, aged 50.

  After leaving psychiatric care Brian Holden, alias Vince Taylor, eventually moved to Switzerland where he worked as a maintenance mechanic at Geneva airport. He died in August 1991, aged 52.

  Tony Visconti parted company with T. Rex in late 1973. The following year he resumed his work with David on the mixing of Diamond Dogs and played an integral role in Bowie’s later albums that decade, co-producing the tectonic-plate-shifting ‘Berlin trilogy’ of Low, “Heroes” and Lodger.

  And then there was Marc. He heroically maintained T. Rex through ensuing line-up changes, the acrimonious severance from Visconti and the breakdown of his marriage, while overcoming his own alcohol and drug excesses, his records still sometimes rumbling with the ancient thrill of T. Rexstasy even if sales sadly never reflected. In 1977, the former producer of Lift Off With Ayshea, Muriel Young, granted Marc his own equivalent children’s pop show. The last episode of Marc was recorded on 9 September, with David as his special guest. After performing his new single, ‘“Heroes”’, David was joined by Marc for the preview of a historic, hatchet-burying Bowie/Bolan original, ‘Standing Next To You’. Following a long instrumental introduction based on the riff of Bo Diddley’s ‘Road Runner’, David leaned forward to sing the opening verse at the precise moment Marc tripped over a lead and fell off the stage. There was no time to record another take. The ‘song’, tottering to an abortive halt after fifty-seven seconds, marked by a brief mushy Bowie howl before he started laughing, had to be broadcast as was. By the time it was aired at the end of the month, Marc was dead.

  Just as he’d predicted to Russell Harty and Mirabelle, King Mod never lived to see old age. At approximately 4 a.m. on Friday 16 September, Marc was in the passenger seat of a purple Mini driven by his girlfriend, singer Gloria Jones, when it careered off the road after crossing a humpback railway bridge in Barnes and crashed into a sycamore tree. Jones survived but Marc was killed instantly. He was 29. Four days later, his funeral took place at Golders Green Crematorium. Among the congregation sat David Bowie, a giant pair of dark glasses hiding his tears. And the private, confused phantom sobs of his former cosmic messiah.

  SO OUR WORLD turns and twists around our sun and every day that dawns after 3 July 1973 is another on our lonely planet without the Starman. Well, no. Not quite without.

  The dead London that Ziggy left behind in 1973 has changed its face but its ancient bones hold firm, and much of Ziggy’s spirit within them. We can still wander to the Charing Cross corner of Denmark Street, number nine, and find that the building which once housed La Gioconda still stands. We can gently trace the footsteps of David Jones and Vince Taylor past building works to the far end of Oxford Street and the pavement outside Tottenham Court Road tube station where together they crouched on the ground, analysing a map of the world, talking about spaceships and planting seeds of future wonderment.

  We can continue along Oxford Street, turning left in to Dean Street, a third of the way down cutting right into the pedestrian passage St Anne’s Court. We pause, humbled in awe, outside number 17, once home to Trident Studios. Here, under these bricks, down in the basement, Ziggy sang ‘Starman’, had his ‘Moonage Daydream’ and committed ‘Rock ’n’ Roll Suicide’. All of the Ziggy album and most of Aladdin Sane was conjured here. So too Lou’s Transformer and David’s earlier albums including Hunky Dory. Close your eyes and imagine the 1969 echo of Bowie cutting the master take of ‘Space Oddity’ inches below your toes. And perhaps kowtow and kiss the ground when you consider that it was here Tony Visconti played around with the echo on Marc Bolan�
��s guitar while taping ‘Ride A White Swan’ one July day in 1970. This tiny, secreted nook, this insignificant dotted line in a London A–Z guide is the end of the rainbow. A manger from Mars stuffed out of sight down a Soho back alley. You are standing at the undisputed birthplace of glam rock.

  A gathering of the senses and we can turn right up Wardour Street, cutting left along Noel Street, to the far end of Great Marlborough Street, past Liberty’s department store (where, maybe, Ziggy picked the fabric for his first Freddie Burretti suit as featured on the cover of the Ziggy album) to the corner of Regent Street. We could turn right and head towards Oxford Circus, to the shop at 252 Regent Street where upstairs, in what were once his management offices, Ziggy first told Michael Watts of Melody Maker he was gay and always had been. Or maybe left, straight on to the corner with Piccadilly Circus to imbibe the funereal vibes of 4 July 1973 at the Café Royal. But better to cross over and head Piccadilly-wards on the opposite side of the road, past the brand name fashion houses until seeing a small passageway on our right leading under a lintel marked ‘Heddon House’. Walking through, straight in front of us at the top end of the alley is a red telephone box. Not the same model – a later K6 rather than a vintage K2, note the difference in the shapes of the glass panelling – but in exactly the same spot as the one where Ziggy took shelter in January 1972.

  Where there were furriers, dressmakers and photo studios, now Heddon Street is jammed with bars and restaurants. So jammed that not everyone bothers to take notice of the plaque in the brickwork of number twenty-three where once a gas lamp jutted out. A black plaque unveiled in March 2012 bearing the words ‘ZIGGY STARDUST, 1972’. Behold, and salute, his sacred crib. The great city of the Starman has not forgotten him.

  Nor can it. Nor can we. Ziggy Stardust lives on in more than plaques and ageing mortar, more than in his music and the twenty-first-century ubiquity of his flash-bisected image. He lives not in the past, but in today’s present and tomorrow’s future. In words, in music, in fashion and in art. In pout, in posture, in silver nails and feather boa. In the undying, invincible flash of youth. In the heroic bedroom hopes of escape in every stifling, backwater Nothingville on Earth. In every spat-upon nobody who looks in the mirror with the blind faith that they are a superstar. In everyone who chooses not to be a radio but a colour television set.

  And in all who cherish the beautiful truth of his dying gospel. That we, all of us human beings, are glittering, glamorous miracles of existence in a near fourteen-billion-year-old story of cosmic creation. Moulded from the same galactic clay. Woven from the same microscopic threads of stellar flotsam. Each one of us, it’s true, as ‘won-der-ful!’ as he sang.

  For we are all made of stardust. We are all Ziggy Stardust.

  HOW TO MAKE A STARMAN

  The ancient space face of Japanese kabuki theatre

  An interplanetary immigration crisis awaits the citizens of Surrey in H. G. Wells’ The War Of The Worlds

  Teenage David’s ‘God’, Little Richard, cocks a divine leg in The Girl Can’t Help It.

  Professor Bernard Quatermass (actor André Morell) prepares for the worst

  Halfway to ‘Mateus’, the doomed black leather lunatic, Vince Taylor

  Waiting to hitch a ride on a Gemini Spaceship, The Legendary Stardust Cowboy

  Andy Warhol unpeels slowly

  The invincible Iggy Pop

  Alex (Malcolm McDowell) and his droogs cut the cloth for Ziggy’s wardrobe in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.

  COSMIC COSTUME DRAMAS PART 1

  The Freddie Burretti Collection.

  Original art-deco droog top and matching bipperty-bopperty hat, May 1972.

  The Technicolor Starman and his golden Spider lift off with Ayshea, June 1972.

  Ziggy proudly packs out Freddie’s number outfit on stage in Cleveland, September 1972.

  Ice blue Burretti suit as worn for Mick Rock’s ‘Life On Mars?’ promo, June 1973.

  The dye is cast. Newly ‘red hot red’ Ziggy prepares for Invasion Earth: 1972 AD at home in Haddon Hall. Portrait by Mick Rock.

  ‘I’m gay and I always have been.’ Ziggy comes out over a cuppa in his Regent Street management’s office, January 1972.

  The Unholy Trinity. MainMan impresario Tony DeFries (rear) laughs on as Ziggy, Iggy and Lou provide a crash-course in raving at London’s Dorchester hotel, 16 July 1972.

  Jimmy Dean from Mars meets Marilyn from Venus. New York sex-bomb Cyrinda Foxe and Ziggy play Nighthawks in Los Angeles, October 1972.

  Ziggy slides between the mellow thighs of the greatest guitar player on planet Earth, Mick Ronson, Oxford Town Hall, 17 June 1972.

  ‘Let’s drink to that and the passing time.’ Ziggy toasts certain death on his last journey home from Paris to London, 4 May 1973.

  Kansai Yamamoto’s kabuki-inspired designs for the 1973 Aladdin Sane tour; silk kimono.

  black vinyl ‘Spring Rain’ suit.

  Taking ’70s Elvis glitz a few tassels too far.

  Ziggy’s first Yamamoto one-piece ‘bunny suit’.

  Ziggy models the latest in Martian knitwear; a Yamamoto mammoth woollen.

  ‘Gimme your hands!’ The kids claw in vain for their alien messiah.

  Time takes a last cigarette. The condemned Starman slips backstage at the Hammersmith Odeon to face rock ’n’ roll suicide, 3 July 1973.

  Ziggy, Heil! Contemplating glam rock surrender at the London premiere of Hitler: The Last Ten Days, 7 May 1973.

  WAKE AT THE CAFÉ ROYAL, 4 JULY 1973

  The deed done, David Bowie takes his throne between bodyguard Stuey George and wife Angie.

  A lull in conversation with Lou and Mick Jagger allows the death of Ziggy Stardust to suddenly hit home.

  ZIGGYOGRAPHIES

  ZIGGY & FRIENDS ON RECORD 1972–1973

  1972

  April ‘Starman’ b/w ‘Suffragette City’

  David Bowie, RCA Victor, RCA 2199. Highest UK chart position: #10 in July 1972.

  June THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS

  ‘Five Years’, ‘Soul Love’, ‘Moonage Daydream’, ‘Starman’, ‘It Ain’t Easy’, ‘Lady Stardust’, ‘Star’, ‘Hang On To Yourself’, ‘Ziggy Stardust’, ‘Suffragette City’, ‘Rock ’n’ Roll Suicide’

  David Bowie, RCA Victor, SF8287. Highest UK chart position: #5 in February 1973.

  ‘The Supermen’

  Ziggy and The Spiders’ specially rerecorded version of earlier Bowie track included on the compilation album Revelations: A Musical Anthology For Glastonbury Fayre, Revelation, REV 1/2/3

  July ‘All The Young Dudes’ b/w ‘One Of The Boys’

  Mott The Hoople, CBS, S8217. Highest UK chart position: #3 in September 1972.

  Sept ‘John, I’m Only Dancing’ b/w ‘Hang On To Yourself’

  David Bowie, RCA Victor, RCA 2263. Highest UK chart position: #12 in October 1972.

  ALL THE YOUNG DUDES

  ‘Sweet Jane’, ‘Momma’s Little Jewel’, ‘All The Young Dudes’, ‘Sucker’, ‘Jerkin’ Crocus’, ‘One Of The Boys’, ‘Soft Ground’, ‘Ready For Love/After Lights’, ‘Sea Diver’

  Mott The Hoople, CBS, S65184. Highest UK chart position: #21 in September 1972.

  Nov ‘Walk On The Wild Side’ b/w ‘Perfect Day’

  Lou Reed, RCA Victor, RCA 2303. Highest UK chart position: #10 in June 1973.

  TRANSFORMER

  ‘Vicious’, ‘Andy’s Chest’, ‘Perfect Day’, ‘Hangin’ Round’, ‘Walk On The Wild Side’, ‘Make Up’, ‘Satellite Of Love’, ‘Wagon Wheel’, ‘New York Telephone Conversation’, ‘I’m So Free’, ‘Goodnight Ladies’

  Lou Reed. RCA Victor, LSP 4807. Highest UK chart position: #13 in September 1973.

  SPACE ODDITY

  ‘Space Oddity’, ‘Unwashed And Somewhat Slightly Dazed’, ‘Letter To Hermione’, ‘Cygnet Committee’, ‘Janine’, ‘An Occasional Dream’, ‘Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud’, ‘God Knows I’m Good’, ‘Memory
Of A Free Festival’

  David Bowie, retitled reissue of 1969 David Bowie LP in new Ziggy sleeve (red-haired portrait by Mick Rock, taken at Haddon Hall). RCA Victor, LSP 4813. Highest UK chart position: #17 in August 1973.

  THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD

  ‘The Width Of A Circle’, ‘All The Madmen’, ‘Black Country Rock’, ‘After All’, ‘Running Gun Blues’, ‘Saviour Machine’, ‘She Shook Me Cold’, ‘The Man Who Sold The World’, ‘The Supermen’

  David Bowie, reissue of 1971 LP in new Ziggy sleeve (black and white leg-kick portrait by Brian Ward). RCA Victor, LSP 4816. Highest UK chart position: #24 in September 1973.

  ‘The Jean Genie’ b/w ‘Ziggy Stardust’

  David Bowie, RCA Victor, RCA 2302. Highest UK chart position: #2 in January 1973.

  1973

  Feb ‘Satellite Of Love’ b/w ‘Vicious’