RAMBLE ON: "Ziggy Stardust" by David Bowie

Apologies, I forgot I hadn't posted this last month. You're getting a new one this month, don't worry

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If you want to get to know me, here’s a factoid that’s probably helpful: The riff from “Ziggy Stardust” is basically always playing in my head. If I sit down at my piano, there’s a decent chance that it’s the first thing that comes out of my hands. It’s such a perfectly circular riff; I don’t know what I mean by that but that’s the shape it feels like when I play it. Honestly I think it’s the greatest riff of all time; Suck it, “Satisfaction,” eat shit “Smoke on the Water.” WHOMMMMM. DA-NA-NA-NA-NA NA, DAHHH. Stately elegant, but powerful, a herald’s fanfare announcing that the king is about to enter, and then Bowie shouts “oh!” and the beat kicks in. God, is there a single better opening to a song.

I don’t know what it says about me that “Ziggy Stardust” is my favorite Bowie song. I took an informal poll on Twitter a while back asking people what their favorite Bowie was, and I didn’t see “Ziggy Stardust” come up that often; for some reason it doesn’t seem to be the front-of-mind Bowie song for very many people. Don’t get me wrong, it’s way up there, just not first in line apparently. I can tell you that it’s not the first Bowie song I ever loved; that’s “Rebel Rebel” (the second greatest riff of all time). It’s not Bowie’s most beloved song – at this point that would probably be “Heroes,” not a major hit in its day but proven by time to be his most emotionally powerful track. It’s not his signature song – it might have a claim on it if not for “Space Oddity,” which established Bowie’s persona early and for all time, and for “Starman,” which makes more sense than “Ziggy” out of context of the Ziggy Stardust album, and was the only record’s only single. (Bizarre to think of “Suffragette City” and “Moonage Daydream” as deep cuts.) It’s not his biggest hit – Bowie had two U.S. #1s, “Fame” and “Let’s Dance,” top-tier Bowie songs to be sure, but not ones that mean nearly as much to me. (“Ziggy Stardust” was only eventually, in the ‘90s, released as a single as a live version, and it only reached #76 on the UK charts.)

What “Ziggy Stardust” is, though, is probably the Bowie-est Bowie song of all time. In the same way that most rap songs are uncoverable because they’re too tied to its artist, “Ziggy Stardust” just seems like it should not be done by anyone else. “Starman” is at least open to interpretation, but “Ziggy Stardust” is a song by Bowie, about Bowie, completely inextricable from the legend of Bowie. Yes yes, I know I’m exaggerating, that’s not literally true for a number of reasons – several acts, including Bauhaus, have done solid covers, and “Ziggy Stardust” is not actually literally about the man David Bowie. It’s about Ziggy Stardust, a character who is only one of Bowie’s many personas (albeit the most famous) and it’s sung from the point of view of one of Ziggy’s sidemen, not Ziggy himself. Even if we take Ziggy and Bowie as functionally the same person, a person singing “Ziggy Stardust” would then just be paying tribute to the superstar Bowie, the same way everyone has for decades.

And yet it just feels wrong. Even footage of later Bowie performing the song live -- without makeup, not in character --- feels wrong. “Ziggy Stardust” is a tribute to the late rock star, who has saved the Earth and returned to his home planet or something (I honestly never followed or particularly cared about the album’s plotline). In it, Ziggy is described as basically the greatest motherfucking rock & roller who ever fucking lived. He really sang, and boy could he play guitar. He was the leper messiah who made love with his ego. The narrator manages to separately compliment both his dick and his ass. It seems like the only person who could possibly pay proper tribute to the man is Ziggy Stardust himself.

Long before I knew Bowie as an artist, I knew him as an idea. He was, in my early college years, the consensus pick for the greatest rock star who had ever lived, at least among my group of friends. We were all nerds of course, and many of the people I knew were LGBT, so Bowie’s gender-bending queerness and heady thinky lyrics about identity and outer-space got everyone’s respect. But he also had fucking jams, he rocked as hard as anyone has ever rocked – it’s difficult to imagine a person who likes your more mainstream, Midwest-friendly rock anthems like “Sweet Emotion” or “Rock and Roll All Nite” but can’t get into at least one Bowie song. I knew plenty of people who were fans of the man even though I suspected they did not know his music. (I do not remember ever demanding that an alleged fan prove it by naming five Bowie songs, but I cannot promise that it never happened.) To me, “Ziggy Stardust” is the quintessential Bowie song for exactly that reason; Bowie wasn’t just cool for coolness’s sake but it is the first thing to know about him, and “Ziggy Stardust” explains why.

It’s remarkable because by the time I reached adulthood, the pompous self-mythologization of “Ziggy Stardust” should not have been cool at all. Bowie’s arrival is sometimes seen as the end of the ‘60s, but Ziggy the character is conceived as the ultimate ‘60s rock star. He was a legend in his own time, he knew it and acted like it, he died young. There are elements of Mick Jagger, Jimi Hendrix, and worst of all Jim Morrison, the ultimate ‘60s legend made embarrassing by time, strutting around in his leather pants convinced of his own charisma. (I still like The Doors but I do get why their cred has dimmed with time.) By the ‘90s, and certainly in the age of poptimism, the sex-drugs-and-rock-&-roll mythos of the Boomer generation was discredited if not outright obnoxious. The lyrics describe him in all the same way as the tedious cock rockers the ‘90s banished, with his giant ego, giant dick and incredible guitar-playing – imagine trying to make this guy cool in the guitar-theatrics-unfriendly present day. Not to mention it’s pretentious -- he was the greatest rock star ever and also he was an alien and he saved the world! What are we, thirteen? I can honestly imagine an alternate ‘90s where Bowie, or at least this phase of his, was passe.

That of course did not happen – even during the awkward Tin Machine years, Bowie was revered as something like the godfather of alt-rock, getting a key endorsement by Kurt Cobain and then a collaboration with Trent Reznor.  By the early 2000s the nerd-beloved cartoon “The Venture Bros.” had made him an actual character on the show – the head of the supervillain cabal The Guild of Calamitous Intent! – which only reflected how beloved he was by that point. As the rock & roll era ended and poptimism took over, Bowie's plasticity and over-the-top image made him exactly as revered. His artsy experiments and eclectic versatility kept from him aging badly, I think, but also the music was simply too good. When the man died, I naturally reached for “Ziggy Stardust” and I probably would have even if it were not my favorite of his songs – the man had anticipated it, he had already written his perfect eulogy. Really, who else could have? Ohhhhhhhhh yeahhhhh, Ziggy played guitaaaaaaar.