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Rating: I apologize in advance, as this will be a rather spontaneous review...
It's difficult for me to talk about Bowie...
This is a shitty album, kitschy, emphatic, fake, melodramatic...a kind of parody...yet, despite this, or perhaps because of this, it's a fantastic album.
The worst—therefore the best—was only achieved by punk, making music that seemed like it couldn't be any shittier, even shittier. After all, everyone knows that some song by the Pistols borrowed the riff from some song on this album. And for me, that's where the circle closes.
Except then the difference with punk is that Bowie staged it, and punk was the scene.
But no kitsch, no melodrama in punk; what was needed was the admirable essentiality and the dry, nervous sound of the best songs by Ziggy. The rest, too cool stuff, will be one of the textbooks for a certain new wave.
Oh yes, Bowie was cool, very cool, and the punks were not. Punks were horrible. And many, many of them, as kids, were taken by the hand by Uncle David, dazzled by his perfect transcendent image.
That Bowie was a mystical androgynous harlequin freak with bicolored eyes that came from where, from Mars? Please, watch the video of when he sang "Starman" on Top of the Pops.
I too would have liked to be taken by the hand, I was horrible too. And I certainly could have used a strange guy who would talk to me about the man of the stars from the record ring. It would have been a nice thing to believe in.
That Bowie, even while singing about paranoia, that first time at Top of the Pops was pure light. A kind of naive (and fake) innocent madness...in other words, the essence of pop.
But later, it became like a terrible musical...paranoia, sequins, glitter, stage costumes...and image...
Ah, governments should allow pop (or rock, as you please) only to obscure subordinates with anonymous faces...music yes, but without charm...Plato said it too: power to the philosophers and music to the clerks. Can you imagine Morrison or Brian Jones in a trench coat and hat? Maybe with those faces barbers used to put on display in the seventies?
But we were saying about the musical...
Yes, it was just a musical studied down to the smallest detail...is it possible that no one understood?...That the problem was not understanding, the problem was that, even understanding, the fact remained that that album was fantastic...
Oh yes, really fantastic, full of immortal riffs, for example, and glittering epiphanies...the essence of rock inside a soap bubble that never burst. Punk would take care of bursting it...but even punk didn't last a moment...because paranoia, you know, slowly takes over everything and hunts down the few existing lights.
And punk was a great light.
And anyway, "Ziggy" is a great album. The lyrics then are stuff almost too fabulous for that shitty music...
Who, who has ever managed to define the rock star better than Mr. Bowie? Or do you not remember the alien invader described in "Moonage Daydream", the perfect mom/dad for pre-punk kids? Mom/dad as well as rock'n'roll whore, of course. Yeah. Who managed that? No one, no one has ever managed...
Not to mention, even within a rather slapdash plot, the perfect depiction of paranoia (oh God, how many times have I written paranoia?)...
Not to mention that "Rock'n'Roll Suicide" sounds like Jacques Brel... Yes, yes, add the Brel of this song to the rest of the album, which is proto punk, comic book, B-movie, along with sugary melodies...
Not to mention that it's not easy to be both myth and parody...
Not to mention how, at the time, it pissed off prog rockers and hard-core rockers who considered him akin to a buffoon.
In short, a fucking masterpiece...
Babbo Lulù has included this album among the hundred most beautiful in music history, somewhere between sixty and seventy I don't remember well. And he is someone who understands. Then he confided in me, and I'm sure he'll be mad at me for revealing it here, that he would have put it among the top ten.
"Only how can one put a shitty album among the top ten?" Yes, how?
Trallallà...
Tracklist Lyrics and Samples
03 Moonage Daydream (04:39)
I'm an alligator, I'm a mama-papa comin' for you
I'm the space invader, I'll be a rock 'n' rollin' bitch for you
Keep your mouth shut, you're squawking like a pink monkey bird
And I'm bustin' up my brains for the words
Keep your 'lectric eye on me, babe
Put your ray gun to my head
Press your space face close to mine, love
Freak out in a moonage daydream, oh yeah!
Don't fake it baby, lay the real thing on me
The church of man, love
Is such a holy place to be
Make me baby, make me know you really care
Make me jump into the air
Keep your 'lectric eye on me, babe
Put your ray gun to my head
Press your space face close to mine, love
Freak out in a moonage daydream, oh yeah! (repeat 3x)
Freak out, far out, in out
04 Starman (04:14)
Didn't know what time it was,
the lights were low
I leaned back on my radio
Some cat was layin' down
some rock 'n' roll 'lotta soul, he said
Then the loud sound did seem to fade
Came back like a slow voice on a wave of phase
That weren't no D.J. that was hazy cosmic jive
There's a starman waiting in the sky
He'd like to come and meet us
But he thinks he'd blow our minds
There's a starman waiting in the sky
He's told us not to blow it
Cause he knows it's all worthwhile
He told me:
Let the children lose it
Let the children use it
Let all the children boogie
I had to phone someone so I picked on you
Hey, that's far out so you heard him too!
Switch on the TV we may pick him up on channel two
Look out your window I can see his light
If we can sparkle he may land tonight
Don't tell your poppa or he'll get us locked up
in fright
There's a starman waiting in the sky
He'd like to come and meet us
But he thinks he'd blow our minds
There's a starman waiting in the sky
He's told us not to blow it
Cause he knows it's all worthwhile
He told me:
Let the children lose it
Let the children use it
Let all the children boogie
There's a starman waiting in the sky
He'd like to come and meet us
But he thinks he'd blow our minds
There's a starman waiting in the sky
He's told us not to blow it
Cause he knows it's all worthwhile
He told me:
Let the children lose it
Let the children use it
Let all the children boogie
07 Star (02:47)
Tony went to fight in Belfast
Rudi stayed at home to starve
I could make it all worthwhile as a rock 'n' roll star
Bevan tried to change the nation
Sonny wants to turn the world, welll he can tell you that he tried
CHORUS (x2)
I could make a transformation as a rock 'n' roll star
So inviting - so enticing to play the part
I could play the wild mutation as a rock 'n' roll star
(second time: Get it all, yeah!)
I could do with the money
I'm so wiped out with things as they are
I'd send my photograph to my honey - and I'd c'mon like a regular superstar
I could fall asleep at night as a rock 'n' roll star
I could fall in love all right as a rock 'n' roll star
08 Hang On to Yourself (02:39)
She's a tongue twisting storm, she will come to the show tonight
Praying to the light machine
She wants my honey not my money she's a funky-thigh collector
Layin on 'letric dreams
Chorus:
So come on, come on, we've really got a good thing going
Come on, come on, if you think we're gonna make it
You better hang on to yourself
We can't dance, we don't talk much, just ball and play
But then we move around like tigers on vaseline
The bitter comes out better on a stolen guitar
You're the blessed, we're the spiders from Mars
Repeat Chorus
09 Ziggy Stardust (03:13)
Ziggy played guitar,
jamming good with Weird and Gilly
And the spiders from Mars.
He played it left hand,
But made it too far,
Became the special man,
then we were Ziggy's band.
Ziggy really sang,
screwed up eyes and screwed down hairdo
Like some cat from Japan,
he could lick 'em by smiling
He could leave 'em to hang
They came on so loaded man,
well hung and snow white tan.
So where were the spiders
while the fly tried to break our bones
Just the beer light to guide us,
So we bitched about his fans and
should we crush his sweet hands?
Ziggy played for time,
Jiving us that we were voodoo
The kids were just crass,
he was the nazz
With God given ass
He took it all too far
But boy could he play guitar.
Making love with his ego
Ziggy sucked up into his mind
Like a leper messiah
When the kids had killed the man
I had to break up the band.
Ziggy played gui...tar
10 Suffragette City (03:24)
Hey man, oh leave me alone you know
Hey man, oh Henry, get off the phone, I gotta
Hey man, I gotta straighten my face
This mellow thighed chick just put my spine outta place
Hey man, my schoolday's insane
Hey man, my work's down the drain
Hey man, well she's a total blam-blam
She said she had to squeeze it but she... then she...
(CHORUS)
Oh don't lean on me man
Cause you can't afford the ticket
I'm back on Suffragette City
Oh don't lean on me man
Cause you ain't got time to check it
You know my Suffragette City
Is outta sight...she's all right
Hey man, oh Henry, don't be unkind, go away
Hey man, I can't take you this time, no way
Hey man, droogie don't crash here
There's only room for one and here she comes, here she comes
CHORUS
Oh hit me!
CHORUS x2
A Suffragette City, a Suffragette City
I'm back on Suffragette City, I'm back on Suffragette City
Ooo, Suffragete city, ooo, Suffragette City
Oooh-how, Sufragette City, oooh-how, Sufragette-
Ohhh, Wham! Bam! Thank You, Ma'am!
A Suffragette City, a Suffragette City
Quite all right
A Suffragette City
Too fine
A Suffragette City, ooh, a Sufragette City
Oh, my Sufragette City, oh my Suffragette City
Oh, Suffragette
Suffragette!
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Other reviews
By Mr_Iko
You can’t be afraid of loneliness when you have so many friends, ready to give you their essence, ready to transform you.
Bowie is not a musician. He is a state of mind.
By vonhesse
"Rock’n’roll with lipstick," John Lennon will define it.
The natural conclusion of the album will be a "rock and roll suicide," executed in the most theatrical way.
By POLO
This album did nothing but legitimize mediocrity, blending a brainless mix of the Beatles, T-Rex, and a pseudo-theatrical epic so banal only Pink Floyd might emulate it.
Plastic and empty sounds, riffs that draw a big whatever, melodies bloated with self-imposed goosebump-inducing rhetoric.
