This week’s candidate for The Cultural Toolbox is the revolutionary work, not only in musical terms but also in the way it was delivered – with the invention of an alter-ego of the most unique pretence.
You can listen back to the podcast of this week's Cultural Toolbox below:
Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars was David Bowie’s major breakthrough moment, after 10 years fronting R&B bands, then as Davie Jones, and just one top 5 hit (‘Space Oddity’ in 1970) while also learning acting, dancing and mime techniques that would eventually come together to create the fully realised glam rock persona of Ziggy Stardust.
The concept of Ziggy Stardust – the bi-sexual rock star who spoke to the aliens – was an ambitious one, and would likely have fallen asunder in the hands of someone without Bowie’s remarkable talents. The character, and the album, became so iconic that they are, as John Fardy told Shane today: “this is the Bowie we all know ... there’s a whole iconography around this.”
The album too was ambitious at its most fundamental levels. Opening track ‘Five Years’ ses the scene of a scarcity of natural resources leading to an apocalypse. It is into this world that Ziggy Stardust arrives, set to save earth with rock and roll.
The success of a work of such grand designs, and so multi faceted, echoes today. John Fardy mentions artists such as The Strokes and Arcade Fire as just two direct inheritors of the Bowie sound - which came of age with Ziggy Stardust.
