David Bowie – Rock ‘n’ Roll Star! (5 CD + 1 Blu-ray)

What does it sound like?:

In David Bowie’s universe, all the stars aligned for The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars, catapulting him into superstar status. However, as this 5CD + Blu-Ray box demonstrates, its gestation was far from straightforward. A ragbag of songs were only pulled together thematically at the last minute. Some had been released under a different name and more were intended for other artists. It was less of a carefully calculated concept and more a string of serependitious events. However, the final dystopian product, delivered by the outrageous, charismatic persona Bowie adopted, filled a cultural void in the early, pessimistic seventies, and launched his career.

Disc one takes us back to the same wellspring as A Divine Symmetry in early 1971 and Bowie’s return from an eye-opening promotional tour of America, his head bursting with ideas for songs. Both Ziggy and Lady Stardust were there from the start, along with many Hunky Dory songs. Neither were part of a grand scheme. Lady Stardust was originally a tribute to Marc Bolan, entitled He Was Alright (Song For Marc), and could easily have worked its way onto side two of Hunky Dory. Isolated as a demo, just Bowie singing and strumming an acoustic guitar, Ziggy Stardust is an amalgam of Jimi, Marc, Iggy and Lou (and, possibly, Vince Taylor) achieving Rock Stardom, only to crash and burn. As part of this clutch of demos, Ziggy was merely another human dreaming of being a star, just like Bowie himself. Star, initially offered to a band aptly named Chameleon, outlines the extent of Bowie’s ambition and Hang On To Yourself, written for Gene Vincent, indulges in the pleasures a groupie can bring. Indeed, Hang On To Yourself was recorded as a single in February 1971 by a makeshift band called Arnold Corns, without a Spider in sight. Its A side was Moonage Daydream, originally a bittersweet farewell to the sixties, it became a song about a sexually voracious alien visiting earth to freak our minds, and later the psychedelic centrepiece of the final album. It wasn’t the first time Bowie had written about aliens, nor sex.

Hunky Dory took up most of the rest of the year. Bowie, Mick Ronson, Woody Woodmansey and Trevor Bolder only started recording Ziggy properly in November, under the watchful eye of Ken Scott. Rick Wakeman had decamped to join Yes. Ronson plays piano perfectly well but without Wakeman’s sophistication and flourish, the band were forced to simplify the sound and focus more on the guitar. Those songs demoed in February are transformed by Ronson’s interventions come November. His orchestrations are masterful but it’s his guitar work that really catches the ear. He defines Glam Rock guitar on this album.

In the meantime, Ziggy had developed as a character. Old songs retooled for The Spiders From Mars included The Supermen, Shadow Man, It’s Gonna Rain Again, Looking For A Friend and Holy Holy. Chuck Berry’s Round And Round and The Who’s I Can’t Explain were considered the sort of songs a band from outer space would cover. If that’s the case, listening to this box, aliens like an exhilarating, rough-arsed garage band, with a hysterical frontman. New songs, Sweet Head and Velvet Goldmine, depict the alien as obsessed with oral sex. Most importantly, the dramatic scene-setter, Five Years, brought to life the Ziggy narrative with its tremulous heart-beat rhythm and panoramic world view, the gorgeous ambiguity of Soul Love, the yang to its ying. A running order for the LP was pencilled together and has been available separately as a stand alone vinyl LP, entitled Waiting In The Sky (Before The Starman Came To Earth), since Record Store Day.

Then, on 17th December 1971, RCA released Hunky Dory. No doubt, he was justifiably very proud of his work. However, when he booked into BBC Radio studios a week apart in mid January, for John Peel then Bob Harris, the only track Bowie performed from the product in the shops was its most Ziggy-adjacent, Queen Bitch. Bowie was already stuck in Ziggy mode, Waiting For My Man the obligatory Velvet Underground cover. The sound quality of the Peel session is dreadful, the worst in this box, and cannot be sourced from the original tapes. Before broadcast of either programme, he delivered his “I’m gay” interview for Melody Maker and revealed his new look: big red Clockwork Orange boots, skin-tight jump suit, carrot top hair and outlandish make up.

The 4th February 1971 is the most significant day in Bowie’s career. It was the day he recorded Starman, Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide and Sufragette City, a song rejected by Mott The Hoople. RCA demanded a single. Starman, inspired by Marc Bolan yet again, became the first record to drum up chart interest in Bowie since Space Oddity. Many people thought it was the follow up. The other two tracks are equally important, giving the album its dramatic, one-two gutpunch finish in the most satisfying conclusion to an LP since Abbey Road. It must have been a moment of relieved eureka when they were in the can. It Ain’t Easy’s vertiginous view from the heavens to the rooftops, a leftover from Hunky Dory featuring Wakeman on harpsichord, was a snug fit for the customary cover slot. Suddenly, the whole was satisfying and complete, greater than the sum of its parts, an album to savour with a beginning, middle and end. Those three songs, recorded almost as an afterthought, brought the album together. Without them, it would have been yet another Bowie dud in a dispiritingly long sequence.

Three days later, they performed Queen Bitch, Five Years and Oh! You Pretty Things for The Old Grey Whistle Test, the first glimpse the public had of The Spiders in action, Ziggy’s disconcerting reptilian eyes and jagged teeth in unforgiving close up. Queen Bitch is fabulous, Bowie sporting his blue Egmond, but Five Years is the most striking. Denuded of its electric guitar effects and incendiary strings, Ronson at the piano, it packs an emotional punch, the passion in the vocal counteracted by the restraint of the musicians. It was Bowie’s only appearance on the show. Two days after that, the marathon Ziggy Stardust tour began at the Toby Jug, Tolworth, in front of an audience of sixty people.

As the tour slowly picked up momentum, the band booked three more BBC sessions in May before the album release date but after the single came out. This time, White Light/White Heat was the favoured Velvet Underground number. For John Peel, the other four tracks were all Ziggy: Moonage Daydream, Hang On To Yourself, Sufragette City and Ziggy Stardust itself. Johnnie Walker’s lunchtime show was safe and commercial, treated to Starman, Space Oddity, Changes and Oh! You Pretty Things. Bob Harris had Lady Stardust, Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide plus Andy Warhol. Starman changed the game, breaching the top forty in June, though Bowie wasn’t grateful enough to include it on his first greatest hits, CHANGESONEBOWIE. That summer of 1972, the whole of the UK watched Top Of The Pops slack-jawed, half revulsed, half amazed, as the freakish-looking Bowie hooked his arm around a bacofoiled Ronson to share a microphone. This was most definitely not for the mums and dads. Starman reached number ten and The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars began a two year long run in the album charts, peaking at number five.

Disc One of this box set consists of demos, the Arnold Corns records and some rough rehearsals at Hadden Hall. Discs two and three have all of the BBC Radio sessions and TV performances in chronological order. Disc Three, recorded across May 1972 to a high standard, acts as an especially good live-in-the-studio representation of the stage act, including some pre-Ziggy songs, the band tight and purring like a well-oiled Bentley. Disc four is the outtakes and remakes for the November 1971 Ziggy recordings, rounded off with some songs recorded live in Boston, a few weeks before Santa Monica 72. Disc Five is quite magical, new remixes of choice selections from the preceding studio sessions, plus an earlier version of John, I’m Only Dancing. The remix makes the ragbag of songs sound fantastic. The blu-ray includes the original album mix, a 5.1 mix, the Waiting In The Sky album, the single and additional outtakes. There are two books, one effectively Bowie’s contemporaneous notes, ideas and lyrics, and the other a lavish description of Ziggy Stardust’s creation, packed with wonderful photographs. The only way to obtain a new stereo remix of the actual album is to buy a different, stand alone blu-ray to be released later this year, also featuring a Dolby Atmos mix, which can ‘down mix’ to 5.1 on 5.1 equipment, and the original album mix.

1972 was Marc Bolan’s most successful year but David Bowie ran him close. The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars set the tone for his career. The whole package, the image, the stagecraft, the narrative, is arty and accessible, directly recruiting the audience to participate; “Gimme your hands!” The album is full of tunes and memorable riffs. It is brutally direct, Soul Love being the only song with any kind of musical subtlety, but there’s a consistency of mood, erotic, dark, unsettling. It was Bowie’s first album to chart and, at last, he gained some traction in the US. All his previous albums boosted sales in its wake, Hunky Dory doing best, hitting the UK number three spot. Its follow up went straight in at number one.

Some songs cast new light on the humdrum lives we lead, others provide insight into how other people live theirs. For many teenagers back in 1972, the songs on this LP opened up a portal to a completely different world. It’s more than a great Rock album, it’s a cultural phenomenon, thoroughly deserving the box set treatment.

What does it all *mean*?

Are we witnessing the end of days for the CD? The only way to own this material on CD is to fork out the full eye-watering cost. There is no slimmed down version except on vinyl. Otherwise, there is no vinyl box, probably because it would be unwieldy and require a mortgage to buy. The first Five Years CD box, released in 2015, has sold out and is going for over £300 secondhand. Rock ‘n’ Roll Star! is effectively a collector’s item from day one.

It might be better to wait for the stand alone blu-ray in September.

Goes well with…

A Divine Symmetry. The two boxes lock together perfectly. For a long time, the road to Ziggy was shared with the road to Hunky Dory but, in the end, they forked off in different directions. Ziggy Stardust is written in gutteral American Guitar Rock, albeit sung in a British accent. Hunky Dory has a more sophisticated English pastoral feel. Bowie obviously missed Wakeman’s piano, employing the equally dazzling Mick Garson for Aladdin Sane. In the final analysis, there are very few tracks that are realistically interchangeable. It Ain’t Easy could simply replace Fill Your Heart, but even Queen Bitch would struggle to find a spot on Ziggy Stardust. In fact, the two albums taken together boast an impressive variety and flexibilty that Bowie’s rivals could not match. Most importantly, Mick Ronson’s musical contribution 1970-1973 should never be overlooked.

Release Date:

14th June 2024

Might suit people who like…

David Bowie. Rock ‘n’ Star! is for the serious Bowie fan. Waiting In The Sky might pique the interest of the curious. Stand alone Blu-Ray feels very much the way forward these kinds of reissues.

31