Listen to a rare demo of ‘Ziggy Stardust’ by David Bowie
David Bowie was always destined for stardom, whether it was in music or not. Throughout his years writing the occasional jovial folk song, Bowie was always looking to transform into something bigger than an average rock and roll star. It wasn’t until the 1970s that his inspiration fell to Earth. Ziggy Stardust was born, and his namesake track set ‘The Starman’ for success.
Before the flash of Mick Ronson came into the picture, Bowie had demoed the song earlier, sticking to just acoustic guitar and having a bit of trepidation in his voice. Although the core guitar riff is still intact, his voice is the main piece of the puzzle, sounding far more vulnerable than he did on the original version.
Since the majority of Bowie’s previous album Hunky Dory was written on the piano, this was one of his first songs for the new project being written on guitar, crafting a story about a man who came down to Earth to warn humanity of the extinction of the species in five years. Although he was aiming for the same huge stadiums that his peers like Mick Jagger were playing, this is a peek at the version of Bowie left over from Space Oddity.
For most of the ’60s, Bowie’s sound tended to fluctuate towards folk music, which is indicative of this track. Without the sound of The Spiders from Mars, the tune is a melancholy folk affair, as if he is playing the song from the perspective of someone like Bob Dylan. Compared to what fans would hear on the finished song, this feels like the treatment for a film without seeing anything put to the screen yet.
As the ’70s opened up to Bowie, the Ziggy Stardust character almost overtook his persona, with fans looking to see the spectacle of the rock and roll alien rather than the man behind the mask. After an infamous performance during which Bowie announced it being his final show, he stripped everything away for a new persona: Aladdin Sane. Framed as ‘Ziggy goes to America’, he would twist himself into different personas throughout the rest of the ’70s, including his sinister turn as The Thin White Duke on the album Station to Station.
More than anything, ‘Ziggy Stardust’ gave Bowie an in-road to look at rock and roll as something than just songs for teenagers to enjoy themselves. Outside of his first hits like ‘Space Oddity’, this carved out the blueprint for the rest of Bowie’s career, bending the parameters of what a rock star was supposed to be and creating songs in any genre that he saw fit.
While Bowie may have had his fair share of hits before and after ‘Ziggy Stardust’, this was a mission statement for what he would get up to in the next half of his career. The world of music was his oyster, and he had a lot more experimentation to do with every genre he could get his hands on. Bowie would write the story of rock’s future, and it all started with this sweet little song about Ziggy playing guitar.
