David Bowie
Ziggy Stardust - The Motion Picture

Bowie. David Bowie. An agent with an alien ascendant and a slight Venusian strabismus. In the 70s, he landed on planet Earth with a hell of a band; his only tactical error—because his genius was also calculation and strategy—was not handcuffing Mick Ronson for life. He should never have let him get away. Yes, just like Victoria Abril in “Tied Up” and in Almodovar’s films, even at night he should have tied the blondie to the bed and never let him slip through his fingers. Then again, who knows, maybe Iman would actually have liked that idea. This is the last concert of our Starman before evolving into his evocative and sonic metamorphoses: the Young American, the Berlin crooner, the White Duke. This is the very last concert of the Spiders from Mars, and he and the band give it their all, playing as hard as they can, enjoying themselves, pushing their material to the limit, experimenting like perhaps never before. It’s much more than a live album. It’s a cosmic ritual, a fragment of the universe’s history taking shape on a stage set ablaze by the earthly call of Mick Ronson’s guitar. A celestial creature—Ziggy Stardust—descends to Earth to shape it, illuminate it, infect it with possibilities, and then dissolve again into pure energy. Just like Bowman in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Ziggy passes through his own personal stargate: he’s born, he manifests, he burns out, and at last he is transfigured, returning to his primordial state of pure and celestial energy.

This recording gathers the very best of Bowie from 1969-1973, five incandescent years that spawned just as many essential albums. It is conceived as a film, as an initiation journey. It’s iconic, because it simply couldn’t be anything else: it marks Ziggy Stardust’s final act, perhaps the most current, enduring, and beloved character Bowie ever embodied. Recorded during the unforgettable July 3rd, 1973 concert at London’s Hammersmith Odeon, this concert film—released only ten years later—is the true point of no return. Here, Bowie and Ziggy cease to be two separate entities and become a single organism, a single vibration. But like any star that burns too intensely, Ziggy must collapse to allow for a rebirth. His end is necessary. His end is cosmic. And this recording is his megalomaniac, perfect, inevitable farewell.

The sequence that unfolds—from Hang On to Yourself / Ziggy Stardust all the way to the symbolic epilogue of Rock ’n’ Roll Suicide—is the complete biography of a being from another world. It is pure rock; it is glam that will open up endless new scenarios and derivations; it is Genesis. Also proto-punk, foreshadowing imminent revolutions. It is a seed that will grow into post-punk, darkwave, into generations of artists who even today feed off that very same light.

And then, how can you possibly stay still in front of Cracked Actor or Suffragette City? How could you keep your feet on the ground when All the Young Dudes, Moonage Daydream, or Space Oddity explode? It might become impossible in this emotional gravitational field—Bowie, like Bowman, crossing his final threshold. It is Ziggy, like a supernova, imploding to be reborn in a new form. It is the artist tearing off the mask so he can continue to create.

Thank you, Mr. Bowie. For the music, for the art, for the metamorphoses, for showing us—after fifty years of orbits and revolutions—that changing form is the only way to remain eternal.