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"In one instant, in a spiritual breaking of the clouds, Ziggy was born. He hung on the stars and gestured with infinite grace and precision. He breathed the cool winds and caressed divinity as if it were his lover. And then he wove his web of poetry and beckoned from the skies to the children. And the children heard, and the children came. In their thousands they came and listened. And in his words they found life and hope. Manifested in Ziggy’s songs they perceived the true depth of the meaning of the word ‘truth’. And so they demanded more and more, until they tapped the very source of this fragile creature and sucked out his energy, channeling it through the crowds to reach the hysteria. Demanding more and more... until finally the truth had become like shattered fragments of glass, and his soul had been ravaged. And there was nothing left to mark his passing except tiny grains of Stardust which was swept up by the wind and sprinkled into the coloured hair of children all across the planet Earth...." Unknown source

Q. Who was Ziggy Stardust?  

Ziggy Stardust was the fictional rock superstar in David Bowie's album THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS (1972)

"Ziggy really set the pattern for my future work. Ziggy was my Martian messiah who twanged a guitar. He was a simplistic character. I saw him as very simple....fairly like the character Newton I was to do in the film [The Man Who Fell to Earth] later on. Someone who was dropped down here, got brought down to our way of thinking and ended up destroying himself." - Bowie

Ziggy Stardust was also the first fully-fledged alter-ego adopted by David Bowie in his career. In 1972 Bowie took to introducing himself at concerts as Ziggy Stardust and his band as The Spiders From Mars.

"I fell for Ziggy too. It was quite easy to become obsessed night and day with the character. I became Ziggy Stardust. David Bowie went totally out the window. Everybody was convincing me that I was a Messiah, especially on that first American tour (late 1972). I got hopelessly lost in the fantasy." - Bowie (1976)

David Bowie's induction into
the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame (1996).

Q. Who was David Bowie?

David Bowie (born David Robert Jones 1947-2016) is recognised as one of the most influential rock stars of the Seventies and beyond. The Ziggy Stardust era (1971-1973), the subject of this web site, was one of the busiest and most successful periods of his continuing career and one in which he moved from relative obscurity to true superstar status.

In just over two years, Bowie released three superb rock albums: HUNKY DORY (1971), THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS (1972) and ALADDIN SANE (1973); embarked on three tours of the UK, two of the US and one of Japan; produced the classic rock albums ALL THE YOUNG DUDES (1972) for Mott the Hoople, TRANSFORMER (1972) for Lou Reed and remixed the equally classic RAW POWER (1973) for Iggy Pop and the Stooges. 

From June 1972 to late 1973 (the year he spent a record total of 182 weeks on the album charts), he was the biggest act in the UK, with four Top 5 albums (with three Number 1's) and eight UK Top 10 singles over five years: Space Oddity (No. 5 - Sept 1969), The Jean Genie (No. 2 - Dec 1972), Drive In Saturday (No. 3 - April 1973), Life On Mars? (No. 3 - June 1973), The Laughing Gnome (No. 6 - Sept 1973), Sorrow (No. 3 - Oct 1973), Rebel Rebel (No. 5 - Feb 1974) & Knock On Wood (No. 10 - Sept 1974).

Just prior to leaving the character of Ziggy Stardust behind forever, he released the respected Sixties tribute album - PINUPS (1973) and staged a rock musical called The 1980 Floor Show for the American NBC TV show - The Midnight Special.

"Call me Ziggy, call me Ziggy Stardust!" - Bowie (1972)

"It was fun while it lasted.  I had a certain idea of what I wanted my rock n roll star to be like.  I've gone as far with that as I possibly can.  The star was created; he worked, and that's all I wanted him to do.  Anything he did now would just be repetition, carrying it on to the death." - Bowie (1973)

"I WAS the Space Invader." - Bowie (1974)

"Ziggy, particularly, was created out of a certain arrogance. But, remember, at that time I was young and I was full of life, and that seemed like a very positive artistic statement. I thought that was a beautiful piece of art, I really did. I thought that was a grand kitsch painting. The whole guy. Then that fucker would not leave me alone for years. That was when it all started to sour. And it soured so quickly you wouldn't believe it. And it took me an awful time to level out. My whole personality was affected. Again I brought that upon myself. I can't say I'm sorry when I look back, because it provoked such an extraordinary set of circumstances in my life. I thought I might as well take Ziggy to interviews as well. Why leave him on stage? Looking back it was completely absurd. It became very dangerous. I really did have doubts about my sanity. I can't deny that the experience affected me in a very exaggerated and marked manner. I think I put myself very dangerously near the line. Not in physical sense but definitively in mental sense. I played mental games with myself to such an extend that I'm very relieved and happy to be back in Europe and feeling very well. But, then, you see I was always the lucky one." - Bowie (1977)

"I find it very refreshing to look at.   It was an extraordinary phenomena in rock at the time." - Bowie (1984)

"The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars" arrived with the audacity of a slap in the face.   Bowie offered noise and glitz and sexual ambiguity as a statement - a finger up the nose of pop sincerity; a gob in the face of chart-fodder and froth; a boot in the collective sagging denim behind of hippie singer-songwhiners" - Rykodisc Sound+Vision booklet (1990)

"I think that [Ziggy] would probably be fairly shocked that, one, I was still alive and that, two, I seem to have regained some sense of rationality about life and existence."- Bowie (1997)

"I thought he was an interesting character....I’ll develop him and his environment and his society. I’ve got three years, but there’s a lot of ground to cover."- Bowie (1999) talking about his eventually unfulfilled plans to celebrate Ziggy Stardust in "Ziggy Stardust 2002" projects with photographic, theatrical, cinematic, internet, multimedia and album material, all due for release in 2002 (The 30th anniversary year of Ziggy Stardust).

Q. Who were The Spiders From Mars?

The Spiders From Mars promotional photo (1972)

The Spiders From Mars were David Bowie/Ziggy Stardust's three-piece rock band from 1971 to mid 1973, however they were only officially known by this name following the album's release in June 1972.   Bowie has said that the inspiration for the name came when he was writing the song "Ziggy Stardust".  The band consisted of:

Left- Mick (Ronno) Ronson 1946-1993 (Band leader, guitar, piano and vocals)
Middle - Mick (Woody) Woodmansey 1951- (drums)
Right - Trevor Bolder 1950-2013 (bass)

"It was Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and somehow, along the lines, the Spiders got attached to David Bowie. So then the confusion set in, about who was Ziggy and who was David Bowie and even I didn't quite understand how all that happened. Suddenly I had a band called the Spiders and I was willing to go with it because it worked on stage. I liked the ambiguity of not being quite able to separate the personas, much like Nicholas Roeg's film, The Man Who Fell To Earth, its the ominous sort of enigma of split-personality and which side is which? and having half the creation - the Spiders, who were a figment of the imagination, actually working with a real character David Bowie on stage - that poses a serious sort of head problem." - Bowie (1976)

* More detail on The Spiders From Mars

Q. What is the Ziggy Stardust album about?

The album is the story of an alien rock superstar called Ziggy Stardust who reaches fame just as the Earth enters the last five years of its existence. He ends up the victim of his own success and becomes a "rock n roll suicide."

Side One:
Five Years - The Earth is doomed with only 5 years left                            
Soul Love - Different types of love and worship - including "Soul Love"
Moonage Daydream - The Space Invader is revealed
Starman - There's a Starman waiting in the sky offering the Earth salvation
It Ain't Easy - Striving and struggling for the rock dream

Side Two:
Lady Stardust - Rock n Roll androgyny
Star - The dream of being a rock star
Hang Onto Yourself - Rocking with the Spiders From Mars 
Ziggy Stardust - The rise and fall of Ziggy Stardust as told by a band member
Suffragette City - The perils of rock stardom
Rock n Roll Suicide - The eventual fall of Ziggy Stardust

"Every track on ZIGGY STARDUST & THE SPIDERS FROM MARS sounds like it was pulled from the rock 'n' roll bible. The album created a mythology that reached beyond the Chuck Berry folklorisms of the everyday rocker to create a new type of rock star. With ZIGGY, Bowie created a viable alter-ego to descend onto the planet and wreak havoc on rock's fertile soil. In doing so, he created the most original rock creation since the music's inception 20 years before.

Musically, the album was as inspired as Ziggy's persona. Mick Ronson's snarling guitar evoked the triumphant power of the late '60s guitar heroes, but added a flash so dynamic fans knew why the Spiders were labeled "glitter rockers." As an album, ZIGGY STARDUST told the story of rock through the eyes of Ziggy, an alien - with a narrative that was equally sensational and intimate. Any doubts as to Bowie's intentions to take over rock were displaced on a closer listen to "Star." At the end of the song Bowie (as Ziggy) whispers, "just watch me now," and his determination is eerily obvious. Combining skills as a mime artist and top-rate vocal dramatist, Bowie created Ziggy, the bi-sexual space man, who sang "songs of darkness and disgrace." The planet was dying, something made evident on the first track, "Five Years," and the only way to survive was to "Hang Onto Yourself."

In the end, "they had to break up the band," according to the tale told in ZIGGY STARDUST, but the inevitably tragic strains of this "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide" had left their mark on the dying planet. They are still being felt today." - Muze (1995)

* Rolling Stone Magazine - The 100 Best Albums of the Last 20 Years - #6 ZIGGY STARDUST

Q. When was the Ziggy Stardust album released?

The album was released in the UK on 6 June 1972, and later in the US on 1 September 1972.  The single "Starman" was released on 28 April 1972 to promote the album.

* The release of "Starman" and "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars"
* Different Formats: From LP to Au20 CD

Q. Where did the name ZIGGY STARDUST come from?

ZIGGY came from the name of a London tailor's shop (called "Ziggy's") that Bowie saw from a train one day. In an interview he said that it was his private joke that because Ziggy Stardust was going to be largely about clothes, he had named him Ziggy. It is also likely to be a derivative of Iggy (Iggy Pop) and possibly Twiggy (the British model) who appeared with him on the cover of PINUPS (1973).

It was also, as Bowie later told Rolling Stone, "one of the few Christian names I could find beginning with the letter 'Z'."

Another possible source of the Ziggy name comes from Bowie's connection with Marc Bolan in the late 1960s. "Zinc Alloy" was the name that Bolan intended to use if his then current group "Marc Bolan & T.Rex" failed. But it never transpired. Later Bolan would parody the Ziggy album with his own called "Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders Of Tomorrow" (1974). So was Ziggy also a combination of "Zinc" + "Iggy"?

STARDUST came from an eccentric American Country and Western singer called Norman Carl Odom (pictured above) who went by the stage name "The Legendary Stardust Cowboy" (also known as "Ledge" to his friends) and who was on the Mercury label with Bowie in 1969. His one claim for fame was a novelty song called "Paralysed" which reached the Top 200 of Billboard (and which Bowie bought!). He appeared on the TV show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In as a serious act but the audience thought he was very funny, and devastated he walked off the stage and cried. Nowadays, he lives in San Jose and works as a security guard. 

"At the age of six I used to look at the moon and told myself that some day man will go to the moon. I would like to go to Mars instead of the moon. When I was seven years old I was walking down the street after school and told myself that some day I was going to be famous. I was sitting in my backyard thinking about cowboys and stardust in outer space. I put them together and came up with Stardust Cowboy. After that I added 'Legendary', which means that I am a legend in my own time. I figured that by singing I was able to attract all the girls but I attracted all the boys instead. I kept up with the space programme and studied it while writing songs about space and rockets. I got tired of working in a warehouse so I wrote Tiny Tim a letter with a picture of myself and musical instruments. I wanted him to help me record a record. I wanted to be on the Johnny Carson Show like Tiny Tim." - Norman Odom - aka The Legendary Stardust Cowboy

"He was a kind of Wild Man Fisher character; he was on guitar and he had a one-legged trumpet player, and in his biography he said, "Mah only regret is that mah father never lived to see me become a success." I just liked the Stardust bit because it was so silly." - Bowie (1990)

"...he's the guy I got the name "Stardust" from. For me, he's up there with people like Wild Man Fisher - it's the original outsider music. Music by people probably not playing with a full deck. He played guitar, and he had a drummer and a one-legged trumpet player. They assembled their music without any awareness that there are supposed to be rules to follow. And so they go in directions that wouldn't occur to even a semi-trained musician. And it's such a freeing exercise, listening to them commit to those performances with full integrity - knowing that they are not joking" - Bowie (1996) discussing the song "I took a trip on a Gemini Spacecraft" by The Legendary Stardust Cowboy

"When I first joined Mercury Records in the late 60s, he was one of the only other artists they had. And they gave me his entire catalogue, which at the time was three singles. I immediately fell in love with his music. Well actually, the IDEA of his music. As the music itself wasn't too recognizable as being such." - Bowie

"Music critics and record reviewers the world over have written about me: that I can’t sing, that I can’t play the guitar, that I don’t know how to carry a tune. Well, neither can Kenny Rogers nor Mick Jagger. All of us are in the same boat. It sure would be nice if David Bowie would pay me something for using part of my name in ‘Ziggie [sic] Stardust’." - Normon Odom

Now with the release of Heathen and the 30th anniversary of Ziggy, Bowie is paying that debt to the Ledge. Bowie has selected him to play at the 2002 Meltdown Festival. On his latest album 'Heathen' (2002), Bowie covers The Legendary Stardust Cowboy's 'I Took A Trip On A Gemini Spaceship'.

"The third (cover on 'Heathen') is a song by my one time muse The Legendary Stardust Cowboy. He was a stablemate of mine on Mercury records in the late 60's and I chewed off the last part of his name for Ziggy, of course. When I read on his site that he thought that because I'd borrowed his name that, at least I should sing one of his songs I got guilty and wanted to make amends immediately. So I covered one of his best songs, 'I Took a Trip on a Gemini Spaceship' although he sings Spacecraft on the record." - Bowie (2002)

The album's title THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS may well have had its roots in a song first recorded in October 1967 by Mick Ronson's original band from Hull called The Rats.  The song they recorded was called "The Rise and Fall of Bernie Gripplestone" and had been inspired by drummer John Cambridge's visit to the local cinema. Cambridge would later play as Bowie's drummer in 1970 before Woody Woodmansey.

"I had just been to see the film "How I Won The War" which featured John Lennon and I based the name of Bernie Gripplestone on musketeer Bernard Gripweed - the character played by John Lennon." - John Cambridge

The full title was parodied by Marc Bolan with his own album called "Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders Of Tomorrow" (1974) and less sympathetically by the Strawbs who released the 7" single "Lay Down/Backside" in October 1972 (A&M ref AMS7035) with "Backside" credited to Ciggy Barlust and the Whales from Venus.

Q. Where did the idea for Ziggy Stardust come from?

Bowie has reported that roots of Ziggy Stardust lay in the desire to write a theatrical, musical piece of work:

"I wanted to write theatrical - actually, strangely enough, well, maybe it's not so strange when you look at it in context, but when I was around 17 or 18 what I wanted to do more than anything else was to write something for Broadway. I wanted to write a musical. I had no idea of how you did it or how musicals were constructed, but the idea of writing something that was rock-based for Broadway really intrigued me. I thought that would be a wonderful thing to do. I saw myself as someone who would end up writing musicals in a way - probably rock musicals of some nature - but it never actually became that. So, in a way, those ideas were kind of quashed a little when I realised what a huge ambitious thing that was to take on, you know, because you have to write dialogue and all that. And I really didn't know how to approach that so I took a far simpler course and kind of abbreviated the idea of musical to a concept piece for an album, and created the characters to go with the albums." - Bowie (2004)

Bowie has also stated that there was two main influences behind the Ziggy Stardust character - one was a meeting with a "fake" Lou Reed in the early 1970s and the other was the eccentric rocker "Vince Taylor"

"There were maybe two incidents which created the Ziggy Stardust thing for me - or put it firmly in my mind that it was an interesting way to go.  One was the fact that I went to see the Velvet Underground when I first got to the States in 1970. At the end of the show I went back and sat down and we talked for about half an hour.  Then I told my friend a few days later that I got the chance to speak with Lou and you know it was wonderful and we talked ... He said "No... no...Lou left the band last year.  You were talking to Doug Yule - his replacement - who is almost his spitting image." I said "You're kidding me!- but he sat there and talked as though he was Lou and he was talking about how he wrote "Waiting For The Man" and all these things!"  And it was at that point that I realised that, at the time, it didn't matter to me if this was the real one or a fake one.  So that was one half of the puzzle that could be the Ziggy Stardust type figure - is he real or is he artificial?  And the other one was a guy called Vince Taylor..." - David Bowie (2000)

Q. Who was Ziggy Stardust based on?   A = Vince Taylor

Vince Taylor

Bowie says that he based the character of Ziggy Stardust on the eccentric rocker "Vince Taylor" (real name Brian Holden and also known as the "French Presley") who moved to France and worked as an Elvis impersonator. Born in 1939 in Middlesex, Taylor's family migrated to the US when he was seven years old.  By the mid-1950s, his family had moved to California, where Taylor's sister married Joe Barbera, of the famous Hanna-Barbera cartoon partnership. It was in Los Angeles that Taylor - clearly influenced by Elvis Presley - began to hone his act in various LA nightclubs. In 1957 Taylor returned to London as a leather rocker and made such an impact that within a few months he was signed by EMI. At gigs, he would show all the signs of typical rock'n'roll magnetism, the screams from the women in the audience drowning out his weak voice, his only superficial flaw. Trips to Europe proved somewhat more chaotic, as his performances - with Taylor dressed in black leathers, wearing make-up, throwing himself about on stage as if in an epileptic fit - induced riots. Months of this exacting routine, however, began to take its toll as Taylor started to fall prey to the lure of drugs. Come 1964, Taylor was on the edge, his diet of drugs, wine and an increasing God complex leading to his eventual downfall. From the mid-1960s, he drifted from club to club in London, claiming to anyone who would listen that he was the Son of God, his food intake consisting solely of eggs. His best known work is his 1959 single "Brand New Cadillac" which was covered by the Clash on "London Calling" (1977). The Clash's Joe Strummer recalled: "Vince Taylor was the beginning of British rock'n'roll. Before him there was nothing. He was a miracle." Bowie first encountered Taylor at the Giaconda cafe on Tottenham Court Road in 1966.

"He was the inspiration for Ziggy. Vince Taylor was a rock n roll star from the Sixties who was slowly going crazy. Finally, he fired his band and went on-stage one night in a white sheet. He told the audience to rejoice, that he was Jesus. They put him away." - Bowie (1976)

"I met (Vince Taylor) a few times in the mid-Sixties and I went to a few parties with him. He was out of his gourd. Totally flipped. The guy was not playing with a full deck at all. He used to carry maps of Europe around with him, and I remember him opening a map outside Charing Cross tube station, putting it on the pavement and kneeling down with a magnifying glass. He pointed out all the sites where UFOs were going to land." - Bowie (1996)

"The guy was unbelievable. He had this six-day party in some guy's house, that just went on and on.  Just the weirdest kind of creature....In his own mind he did become the Messiah...He used to hang out on Tottenham Court Road and I got to know him then. And he had these strange plans, showing where there was money buried, that he was going to get together; he was going to create this new Atlantis at one time...And he always stayed in my mind as an example of what can happen in rock n roll. I'm not sure if I held him up as an idol or as something not to become. Bit of both probably. There was something very tempting about him going completely off the edge. Especially at my age, then, it seemed very appealing: Oh, I'd love to end up like that, totally nuts. Ha ha! And so he re-emerged in this Ziggy Stardust character." - Bowie (1990)

"The weird and rather scary thing is that poor Vince died not so long ago, a few years ago in Switzerland near to where I lived when I was living in Switzerland and do you know what his career had been the last few years of his life? This guy had been in and out of institutions all his life - he was an aircraft maintenance guy at Geneva Airport.  Can you believe that!  Ziggy was a maintenance guy!" - Bowie (2000)

In June 1972, the month that the Ziggy Stardust album was released, Vince Taylor had partially rebuilt his career in France and released an unsuccessful album called "Vince is Alive, Well and Rocking in Paris".  After spending much of his life in prisons and psychiatric institutions due to alcoholism and schizophrenia he died in 1991 in Switzerland from cancer at the age of 52.  He is buried in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Q. What have people said about the Ziggy Stardust album and David Bowie in this period?

* Reviews of the Ziggy Stardust album

Cash Box (1972)

"If they are still putting phonograph records in time capsules then we would like to recommend the new Bowie for inclusion. David's latest full-scale invasion of the mind is the telling saga of a rock and roll stars trek through a garden of unearthly delights. The songs are uniformly brilliant and the production by Bowie and Ken Scott is virtually flawless. It's an electric age nightmare. It's a cold hard beauty. It's another example of the shining genius of David Bowie. An album to take with you into the 1980's"

Rolling Stone

"...David Bowie has pulled off his complex task with consummate style, with some great rock & roll...with all the wit and passion required to give it sufficient dimension and with a deep sense of humanity that regularly emerges from behind the star facade...I'd give it at least a 99"

* Rolling Stone Magazine reviews

Roy Carr & Charles Shaar Murray (1981)

"The grand slam, and arguably (... we'll argue for at least an hour with anyone who says different) the definitive rock and roll concept album, and by far the most cogent comment any rock artist has ever made on his own art form. Rock and Rolls greatest analysis of itself, an object lesson in how to record and layer vocals and the blueprint for rock stardom all in one package. How could anyone resist it? If you did you were wrong"

Charles Shaar Murray

"...as an object lesson in media manipulation - it eerily presaged Malcolm McLaren's Sex Pistols adventure, and as a blueprint for a generation's capacity for self-reinvention, it marked the turning point between the worlds of hippie and punk."

Melody Maker

#1 Composer 1973
#1 Producer 1973
#1 Group 1973
#1 Male singer 1973
#1 Single (The Jean Genie) 1973
#2 Album (Aladdin Sane) 1973
#1 "The Most Influential Album of the 1970s" - (1985) Ziggy Stardust by 2 to 1 votes

David Fricke

"...a marvel of genetic pop engineering, a brilliant and authentic collision of classic rock n roll extremes - erotic frenzy, gender confusion, celebrity arrogance, private dread, apocalyptic fear...and featured Bowie's star-crossed glam-Christ."

New Musical Express

"Bowie is our most futuristic songwriter, and sometimes what he sees is just a little scary."

"In 1972 it was unusual for anyone to want to be a "pop star". "Intelligent" people wanted to be "rock musicians", write operas, delve into their souls and live on a farm.   David Bowie wanted to be a pop star.  He wanted to be worshipped as a god and given lots of money and look incredibly sexy.  To this end he started dressing himself and his band up, renamed them Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars and began writing short, chorus-addled, riff crazy pop songs.  Bowie also threw in a basic rock star/apocalypse concept to create an instant mythology. Stopped talking to anyone who remembered him when he was a hippie/mod/whatever...and he was worshipped as a god and looked incredibly sexy. Musically "Ziggy Stardust" was and is one of the freshest and liveliest pop records ever. Given its themes (imminent world collapse, suicide, insanity, fame), "Ziggy" is full of lightness and has an exhilaration about it. It sounds like a debut album: in some ways it is.  There's "Star" - "I could do with the money" - and there's "Suffragette City" - "so come on, so come on..." and there's "Starman", with the Morse code riff and the angel chorus.  "Ziggy Stardust" is the archetypal guitar pop album; any British guitar band who does not take it as a yardstick is either addled or in The Wedding Present." - (1990)

#40 "Greatest Albums Of All Time" (1993) - Ziggy Stardust
#7 "Greatest Albums Of The '70s" (1993) - Ziggy Stardust

"...A gloriously manufactured, futuristic rock opera which heads toward its inevitably tragic finale on Mick Ronson's mighty power chords..."

Circus Magazine

#10 in 25 Best albums of the seventies - Ziggy Stardust

Q Magazine

5 Stars (out of 5) "...Bowie's one true complete masterwork....arguably changed more people's lives in one fell swoop than any before or since." (May 1997, pp.135-6)

#11 in 50 Best albums of the seventies - Ziggy Stardust (1998)

Channel 4 (1998)

#20 in Best albums of the Millennium (36,000 voters) - Ziggy Stardust

Sounds Magazine (1973)

David Bowie
#1 Composer
#1 Group
#2 Musician
#2 Male vocalist
#4 best album - for Aladdin Sane
#2 best cover design - for Aladdin Sane

Trouser Press (Best albums)

1972 - #2 for Ziggy Stardust
1973 - #1 for Aladdin Sane

Q. Which of his albums are related to the Ziggy Stardust era?  

Official Albums

David Bowie (1967), Space Oddity (released as 'Man Of Words, Man Of Music' in the USA) (1969), The Man Who Sold The World (1971), Hunky Dory (1971), The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars (1972), Aladdin Sane (1973), Pin Ups (1973), Diamond Dogs (1974), David Live (1974), Young Americans (1975), Station To Station (1976), Low (1977),
"Heroes" (1977), Stage (1978) (includes a "Ziggy Stardust" group of songs), Peter And The Wolf (1978), Lodger (1979), Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) (1980), Let's Dance (1983), Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture (1983), Tonight (1984), Never Let Me Down (1987), Tin Machine (1989), Tin Machine II (1991), Tin Machine Live: Oy Vey, Baby (1992), Black Tie White Noise (1993), The Buddha Of Suburbia (1993), Santa Monica '72 (1995), Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars "Live" (1995), 1.Outside (1995), Earthling (1997), 'hours...' (1999), Heathen (2002), Ziggy Stardust 2002, Toy (2002?)

Key Compilations

Sound + Vision 1 (1989)
Sound + Vision Plus (1989)
RarestOneBowie (1995)
David Bowie BBC Sessions 1969-1972 (1996)
The Best of David Bowie 1969/1974 (1997)
Bowie at the Beeb: The Best of the BBC Sessions 68-72 (2000)

Key Related Other Artist Albums

Mott The Hoople: All The Young Dudes (1972)
Lou Reed: Transformer (1972).
Iggy Pop: Raw Power (1973)
Steeleye Span: Now We Are Six. (1974)
Spiders From Mars: Spiders From Mars (1976)

---This page last modified: 21 Jan 2019---