The outfits David Bowie’s band said went too far: “We refused”
Being a member of the Spiders From Mars sounds like a dream job with the benefit of hindsight, yet take a moment to think of it in the context of the time. When they formed in 1970, it must have seemed a hell of a risk. After all, in 2025 we can see them as the backing band so intrinsic to the glory days of David Bowie that they ended up part of the title of his most beloved album. At the time, though, Bowie was, and it truly hurts me to say it, something of a joke.
David Bowie was a two-hit wonder at the time. One whose fifteen minutes of fame seemed to be up now that the radio plays for his second hit ‘Space Oddity’ had dried up. Its association with the Moon landings of 1969 were starting to give the (absolutely wonderful) record more than a hint of the novelty hit about it. Considering that his first had been the (absolutely godawful) novelty record ‘The Laughing Gnome’, that was an association the ever-savvy Bowie was keen to move on from.
Thus, in 1970, David Bowie decided to throw his lot in with the glam rock scene his frenemy Marc Bolan had been leading for the past couple of years. For this new, high-energy rock ‘n’ roll direction, Bowie needed a new, high-energy rock ‘n’ roll band, and that’s when the context kicks in. Imagine being a jobbing rock musician when this undeniably talented, undeniably weird singer-songwriter, star on the wane, comes up to you. He says I want to jump on this new bandwagon, and you’re just the guy to help me with it.
That would be one thing, another would be Bowie’s utterly out-there creative vision for it. He wanted to take the androgynous fashion of glam and push it even further out there. If most were comfy just sticking on some glittery eye-liner and a scarlet blazer, David Bowie would be the one in a multi-coloured catsuit, face painted like an alien from Doctor Who. What’s more, he wanted the band in on this look too. So yes, there was a catsuit waiting for you too!
What outfits did the backing band of David Bowie turn down?
Credit where it’s due, they got on board with it. In an astonishing show of faith in a creative vision ludicrously out there for the time, the band went along with it. Made up of lead guitarist Mick Ronson, drummer Mick Woodmansey and bassist Trevor Bolder, the band risked being a laughing stock to support the creative vision of David Bowie. Which, in 1970, wasn’t the dream job that it would be in for the rest of the century, don’t forget.
They did have their limits though. Limits that Bolder talked about in an interview with Classic Rock magazine. He talked about how Bowie, inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s still-excruciating masterpiece A Clockwork Orange quite literally wanted the band to be “his droogs. Originally he wanted us to wear bowler hats and boiler suits like in the movie A Clockwork Orange but we refused to do that so he commissioned our stage clothes.”
Which checks out. Said droogs get shouted out by name in ‘Suffragette City’ when Bowie, in full Ziggy flight, hollers “droogie don’t crash here / There’s only room for one”. So he was clearly inspired by the Kubrick classic and the original Anthony Burgess novel. Somehow, dressing up as a set of characters known for joyfully committing violent sexual and physical assaults wasn’t an attractive proposition to the band. Can’t imagine why that is.
Thankfully, Bowie saw that the band he’d assembled were worth a slight compromise on his artistic vision. Today, that band has a legacy that even those with the most respectable careers in music would envy. They’re in the very title of one of the great works in British rock ‘n’ roll. After all, the name of the album in full is the stage names of both entities responsible for it. The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.
