It is half a century since Ziggy Stardust — a character that turned David Bowie into an intergalactic star and revolutionized sexual politics in the process — crashed onto Earth. The London singer had spent a decade trying to refine his stage persona, but despite a couple of hits — 1969’s Space Oddity and Changes two years later — he had yet to achieve the stardom he craved.
“He had failed in everything he tried since the beginning of his career,” said Jerome Soligny, one of the world’s leading Bowie experts and author of David Bowie: Rainbowman.
But on June 16, 1972, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars finally pulled together all the elements he had been absorbing. There was the dirty rock of Iggy Pop and Lou Reed whom he had met in New York, the mime and theater he had studied in London, boiler suits from A Clockwork Orange and wild, androgynous styles from the underground gay clubs he frequented with his wife.
Photo: AFP
Into the melting pot went Bowie’s memories of veteran rocker Vince Taylor, who had gone off the rails and believed he was an alien god, and his obsession with a Texas country singer known as Legendary Stardust Cowboy.
And out came an alter-ego in Ziggy Stardust — a pan-sexual alien rockstar from outer space who fed a hunger in pop culture for something radical and shocking after too many years of long-haired hippies. “We wanted nothing to do with the sixties,” Bowie later said. “We were determined that we were at the beginning of the 21st century. We wanted to wipe out everything that went before.”
BEAUTIFUL CREATION
Photo: AFP
Crucial to the impact of the album was an interview he gave British music weekly Melody Maker a few months before its release.
“I’m gay and always have been, even when I was David Jones,” he said, resplendent in his red spiky hair, skin-tight jumpsuit and red plastic boots.
It was shocking at the time — the first major celebrity to come out, less than five years after homosexuality was decriminalized in Britain.
Photo: Reuters
Soon, this attitude would make him an icon, providing a psychological lifeline for generations of queer kids and outsiders.
“It was marketing before its time — [that statement] was his most beautiful creation and it allowed him to hatch, to become something more than a well-kept secret among the rock intelligentsia,” Soligny said.
‘PSYCHOLOGICAL DESTRUCTION’
Still, it took a while to catch on.
The shows were a radical change from the norm, with multiple costume changes and a story arc, but barely a dozen people showed up to some of the early Ziggy concerts — and sometimes they were booed off stage.
An appearance in July on the legendary BBC show Top of the Pops, followed by a hugely successful US tour, changed all that. It helped that there was more to Bowie than showmanship and shock value — a sophistication missing from many of his glam-rock peers.
The album remains a bona fide rock classic, packed with hits like Starman, Suffragette City and the title track. Crucially, as Rolling Stone magazine wrote at the time, Bowie “never made his sexuality anything more than a completely natural and integral part of his public self, refusing to lower it to the level of gimmick.”
Very quickly, Bowie became one of the defining artists of his generation.
And just as abruptly, he ended it — announcing at a gig in London in July 1973 that Ziggy was no more.
The success had made it dangerously hard to separate the Ziggy storyline from reality.
“With the help of some chemical substances at the time, it became easier and easier for me to blur the lines between reality and the blessed creature that I created... Then you start on the trail of chaotic psychological destruction,” Bowie later recalled.
Ziggy was dead, but Bowie had set a template for creating characters that he would continue with huge success in the years to come.
To the consternation of its biological father — China — the young nation of Taiwan seems to prefer its step-dad, Japan. When the latter was forced out, a semi-modernized iteration of the former returned. And just as some people thrive as adults, despite an unstable childhood, Taiwan has become a democratic success. Unfortunately, the island’s biological father behaves like a parent who is no use, yet who continues to meddle. A combination of rose-tinted retrospection and growing mutual respect has given many Taiwanese a highly positive attitude toward Japan. Physical reminders of the 1895-1945 period of Japanese rule are treasured,
Born in Aldershot in 1959, Russell Foster is a professor of circadian neuroscience at Oxford and the director of the Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology. For his discovery of non-rod, non-cone ocular photoreceptors he received numerous awards including the Zoological Society scientific medal. His latest book — the first he has written without a co-author — is Life Time: The New Science of the Body Clock, and How It Can Revolutionize Your Sleep and Health. The Guardian: What is circadian neuroscience? Russell Foster: It’s the fundamental understanding of how our biology ticks on a 24-hour basis. But also it’s bigger than that —
How does Hong Kong look to people born in the year of the handover — for whom the city has always been under Chinese sovereignty? Some feel their fate is tied to Hong Kong’s, while others feel like bystanders as Beijing tightens its grip. Many plan to leave sooner or later. We spoke to six 24 and 25-year-olds about the Hong Kong they grew up in, and the one they expect to exist in another 25 years. THE RETURNING PROFESSIONAL “I feel helpless witnessing the changes that Hong Kong has been through,” said Keanne Lee. “At the same time, I want to keep
In the new world of work, there’s a new type of employee: The business-leisure traveler. It’s the latest attempt to find a happy medium between working arrangements like Airbnb’s — where staff can work anywhere, anytime — and those at companies like Tesla Inc, whose chief executive officer Elon Musk tweeted that unless employees turn up in the office, “we will assume you have resigned.” Business-leisure travelers are a subset of digital nomads, living and working abroad for longer than a typical holiday without taking up permanent residence. They usually spend weeks or months overseas before returning home, while other nomads may
RSS