David Bowie & the Story of Ziggy Stardust Page #8

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It was not a big deal to me,

but to the other guys, they thought,

it certainly could've gone on

for another five or ten years,

but David was done with it.

And any artist at any time is

entitled to be done with something.

Those people who are lead singers

and stand alone, they have to.

They have to change. They can't do

the same show every time.

So in other words,

could be calculated,

but it's a brilliant calculation

because not many people

would have the wit or the knowledge

or the intelligence to do that.

Nearly a year to the day after

he appeared on Top of the Pops

for the first time,

Ziggy Stardust was over.

Just as Bowie had prophesized

on Rock 'n' Roll Suicide,

the final song on the Ziggy album -

art had become life

and life had imitated art.

Thank you very much.

Bye-bye, we love you.

I said I'm going back to big,

heavy melodrama

and you don't fit

into my scheme of things.

And... But I finished it.

A cruel and cutting blow,

but it had to be done.

Sometimes you've got

to be cruel to be kind.

Less than a week after

Ziggy's dramatic retirement,

Bowie was in France recording

a new album, Pinups.

But it was more of a stock album -

no original songs,

just a collection of covers.

Drummer Woody wasn't even invited

to the studio sessions.

Soon Bowie had dropped

the Spiders completely.

# Where have

all the good times gone? #

The safe thing to do would have been

to keep being Ziggy

for the rest of his career,

but he had the courage

that very, very few pop stars

have ever had to take the thing

which is most loved and say,

"I'm not doing that anymore."

The rest of the decade saw

Bowie in a creative frenzy,

producing seven ground-breaking

albums in just as many years.

He was to the '70s what the Beatles

were to the '60s.

Despite devising more

characters over those years,

Bowie struggled to exorcise

the ghost of Ziggy Stardust.

In the immediate aftermath

of the alien's demise,

Bowie sank

into a dangerous drug addiction,

battling to leave the past behind.

I had a kind of strange,

psychosomatic death thing,

I think.

But that's because I was

so lost in Ziggy, I think. Again.

It was all that schizophrenia.

And he really grew

sort of out of proportion, I suppose.

Got much bigger than I thought

Ziggy was going to be.

I didn't ever see Ziggy as big.

Ziggy just overshadowed everything.

David Bowie's incredible career

spans over 40 years but, for many,

it's Ziggy Stardust for which

he'll be best remembered.

It's so iconic.

You can track pop culture

from that very point,

and it all leads back

to Ziggy Stardust.

We wanted to know

what he was wearing,

what he was singing about,

what his videos were like.

Because he was the leader of

the artistic side of rock 'n roll.

You look at punk and basically

they are more monochromatic,

more aggressive versions

of the Ziggy construct.

'80s music wouldn't have happened

if it hadn't been for Bowie.

When it came to be our turn in 1979,

dressing up was where it started.

Makeup was where we started.

Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders

From Mars, in a way,

where the blueprint for Frankie

Goes To Hollywood in a kind of

lock up your daughters

and your sons sense.

Anyone who challenges the norms

of today are doing a Ziggy,

in a sense.

You know, it went through

to the '90s with Suede and Pulp.

His tentacles reach out and are

still being taken on board today.

I mean, if you look at someone

like Lady Gaga, her whole act,

it's Bowie, it's Ziggy Stardust.

OK, she's put a 21st-century slant

on it,

but she's not really doing anything

that Bowie didn't do 40 years ago.

I am very happy with Ziggy.

I think he was a very

successful character

and I think I played him very well.

But I am glad I am me now.

# Wham, bam, thank you, ma'am! #

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