“Very thin”: David Bowie and a very lamented masterpiece
There are certain works of art that need the grand scale of society’s attention. David Bowie was never quite built for the grassroots mainstay of the back room at the Bull & Dog. Half of the patrons of an English boozer would drop their pint of bitter if they saw him strutting across the quaint pub carpet in his full Ziggy Stardust garb.
Ironically, however, he failed to gain the gaze of the world for alarmingly long. Never perturbed by the need to fit in, he tried to find fame through a failed multi-media mime act that always seemed destined to flop in the eyes of any sane individual. He wrote novelty songs like ‘The Laughing Gnome’ and wondered why he wasn’t getting taken seriously. And his songwriting for hire always had a wild edge of individualism.
“I’m an instant star,” he once said, “Just add water”. In the early days, he was just waiting for the kettle to boil. This meant that when he finally did garner attention, he was prepared to double down and place artfulness ahead of any notions of commerciality. After years solidifying his status as the biggest weirdo in Bromley and Brixton, he was ready to take that to the next level and embody a space prophet by the name of Ziggy Stardust.
He wanted to change the world with this creation. He once stated: “I suppose for me as an artist it wasn’t always just about expressing my work; I really wanted, more than anything else, to contribute in some way to the culture I was living in.” The second he stepped foot on Top of the Pops, androgynously dressed like some form of Martian lizard, and pointed down the lens of the camera, it was clear he was going to succeed with that aim.
Aside from the shock, the songs themselves were necessarily masterful. The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars may well be the greatest album ever. It took rock ‘n’ roll to new heights at a supersonic speed. There are few records that get close to its anthemic nature, but there are none that do that while imparting a prescient tale about the apathetic slide of modern culture.
Looking back on the record in 1990, Bowie saw the album as a typifying embodiment of his own disposition at the time. “The thing I’ve found interesting is the amount of enthusiasm and fire in the early stuff – there was a real desperate edge to it. This guy really wanted to be heard. I’m not sure if it’s endearing or embarrassing, but you definitely get the impression that this person didn’t want to be left behind,” he told Paul Du Noyer.
That bold and important outlook did, however, mean that he often found himself in a hurry. From start to finish, Ziggy Stardust was cut in around two weeks. This not only meant that certain parts of the concept’s narrative were jostled and lost, but Bowie also felt that the sound itself could’ve done with a bit more time in the gym before its bout with the mainstream.
“I find the Ziggy Stardust record very thin. I don’t like the sound on that, it’s much thinner than I always thought it was. It sounded really powerful then; maybe systems have got better, it sounds kind of weedy,” he continued. “It’s the very early stuff, there’s a naivety there that’s not disenchanting, but I’m not very comfortable with it.”
Potentially, this perception of a watery sound explains why the album floundered in the US. The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars reached number five in the UK charts and a mind-bending 75th in the States. Over on the far side of the pond, bands like the Grateful Dead were experimenting with new sonic depths, creating a culture more perceptible to audiophile ideals, so maybe the thinness explains its floundering chart position.
In truth, Bowie’s critique seems wildly harsh—the product of a man who fussed over details to such an extent that even his own inspired masterpieces are graced with an asterisk. But that very humility is what made him so magical in the first place—how could he ever expect to be sucked in by his own charisma like the rest of the world.
