Ziggyology – A Brief History of Ziggy Stardust

Ziggyology – A Brief History of Ziggy Stardust
By Simon Goddard
Ebury Press – £20.00

”For this is no ordinary day of Mars. This is judgement day for its Spiders and crucifixion for its cosmic messiah. The man who fell to Earth to rip a rainbow in an oblivion of grey. The file in the sponge cake beckoning the wretched to hack through the bars of their Green Shield stamp prison. The embellisher of the drab. The twister of teenage necks from the gutter to the stars. The liberator of the slaves to duty and conformity. The nail varnished hand outstetching to the lonesome and the unloved. The greatest pop star of all time. The greatest pop star of all space.”

Why? Or, to rephrase my tinged annoyance: why ought one ever feel compelled to write such irritating, unnecessary bollocks; when, in the big scheme of things, all the writer is (fundamentaly) writing about, is the populist, elongated fanfare of a rock’n’roll band – and its final gig?

Nothing more. Nothing less.

Regardless of what one thinks about David Bowie, his transient incarnation as Ziggy Stardust, still remains one of the most resolute and memorable of his entire career – and what a career it’s been. Although Ziggyology – A Brief History of Ziggy Stardust, does, as its title suggests, home in and (acutely) concentrate on said period of Bowie’s career only.

And while it does so in such a way that many might consider pedantically brilliant, yet others obsequiously trite; which ever side of the fence one decides to fall, there’s no denying the fact that Simon Goddard has herein written a book that, if nothing else, is sublimely well researched and written with a lot of love.

Warped, if not jocularly jaded as that love may be, these 305 pages of pure Ziggyology, are, from a literary standpoint at least, as regal as they are relentlessly smitten and appreciative of Bowie’s yesteryear.

While the above opening quotation is taken from the book’s Prologue, the following is from its Epilogue: ”Ziggy Stardust lives on in more than plaques and ageing mortar, more than in his music and the twenty-first-century ubiquity of his flash-bisected image. He lives not in the past, but in today’s present and tomorrow’s future. In words, in music, in fashion and in art. In pout, in posture, in silver nails and feather boa. In the undying, invincible flash of youth. In the heroic bedroom hopes of escape in every stifling, backwater Nothingville on earth. In every spat-upon nobody who looks in the mirror with the blind faith that they are a superstar. In everyone who chooses not to be a radio but a colour television set.”

From an objective perspective, one would surely have to agree that Ziggyology is a tad obsessive.

Don’t get me wrong, I adore and respect almost all of David Bowie’s music. Who in their right mind doesn’t? But such literary adulation as found herein, not to mention the choice of words and language that describes the author’s adulation, does, after a while, become tediously irksome: ”And in all who cherish the beautiful truth of his dying gospel. That we, all of us human beings, are glittering, glamorous miracles of existence in a near fourteen-billion-year old story of cosmic creation. Moulded from the same galactic clay . Woven from the same microscopic threads of stellar flotsam […].”

Stellar hogwash.

David Marx

Stepping On The Cracks

Stepping On The Cracks
By Christopher L Carter
Matador/Troubador – £8.99

Stepping On The Cracks is Christopher L Carter’s first novel, and in a way, it reads like a first novel. That’s not to say it’s bad, but given its magnificently magnetic subject matter – the questionable charm of Sarf London during the Seventies aligned with Bowie and assorted boot-boys – it really ought to have been so much better.

But writing, just like the imagination and the degree to which repetition can sometimes work (although more often than not, fall flat on its literary face), is highly subjective.

As such, it was from the premise of subjectivity alone that I continued to read these 459 pages; admittedly armed with just a little trepidation, hesitation and pangs of disappointment. Whilst kicking off admirably enough outside of Ziggy Stardust’s infamous Farewell Show at London’s Hammersmith Odeon in 1973 (July 3rd), if the word ‘Dave’ is mentioned once during the first eleven pages of Chapter One, then by the end of chapter three, it subliminally sounds as if Dave has been mentioned eight-hundred and fifty-two-thousand, nine-hundred and forty-seven times too many.

In other words, I (may have) have already lost interest, because not only is ‘Dave’ alluded to far too often – which is surprisingly annoying to say the least – he’s made out to be some sort of holy cross between Elvis Presley and strawberry jam; Julie Burchill, oral sex and wit personified. Now there’s a thought of unimaginable catharsis – although our ‘Dave,’ really is none of these.

So just what is it, that tempts or convinces one to continue reading?

Well I kept with it, purely as a result of some of the author’s admirable frankness and dare I say it, conviction; even when weighted down by some of his semi-protagonist Dave’s deeply entrenched insularity. A perfect example of which is made painstakingly clear as early as page twenty-one: ‘’It was those things that messed Dave up, the not knowing. Trying desperately to swim against the tide of natural instincts that swelled inside, instincts that made him want to impress, to make his dad proud, instead of trying to make him think that he didn’t give a toss for his approval or admiration, and in the end he would achieve neither. Left treading water, stranded in a sea of uncertainty.’’

The line ‘’stranded in a sea of uncertainty’’ is just one of many throughout Stepping On The Cracks, that is wholeheartedly capable of catapulting the reader right back to their own adolescence – wherever and whenever that may be. Although in this particular instance, the seventies make for a fantastic start. And not in a (n entirely) cheesy way might I add.

If nothing else: Carter comes across as meaning what he writes and writing what he means, of which the following are a fine representation: ‘’[…] so the conversation had flitted about like confetti, until it had landed safely upon the shoulders of football,’’ ‘’illegible headstones that jutted haphazardly from the ground like rows of decaying teeth,’’ ‘’the sound of Christmas trampled to death beneath the stampede of growing hostility,’’ ‘’stilted bouts of conversation, as the splintered light from the streetlight outside cascaded over us like stinging shards of humiliation.’’

Both promising and occasionally poignant, Stepping on The Cracks has ensured I’ll keep a lookout for the follow-up.

David Marx

David Bowie – The Stories Behind the Classic Songs 1970-1980

David Bowie
The Stories Behind the Classic Songs 1970-1980
By Chris Welch
Carlton Books – £9.99

This year marks fortieth Anniversary of Ziggy Stardust and his (all so influential) assorted Spiders From Mars. As such, Bowie’s everywhere right now. In fact, there’s not a glossy music magazine in sight at the moment, that hasn’t got Bowie circa ‘’Tigers On Vaseline’’ tantalisingly draped across its front cover. Indeed, were it not for an entire generation of young English cubs on bail-outs and crack-cocaine who can barely speak their own language, it might just as well be 1972 all over again.

Well, not quite, but almost…

Living in Berlin – where Bowie himself relocated for what many consider to be one of his most musically fertile and productive periods ever – it’s both fun and simultaneously infuriating to still be able to pinpoint his ever-lasting legacy circa such predominant albums as Low and Heroes. The Stalinist architecture and the slick-back hair does, the Trabant trajectory and the Berlin-Warszawa Express (and I’m not talking of the current Berlin based band of the same name), the dour misogyny of the former album’s ‘’A New Career In A New Town,’’ not to mention the relentless misconception of (German band) Kraftwerk’s idiosyncratic influence upon the likes of Station To Station. A towering and somewhat speculative album, the recording of which author Chris Welch describes Bowie’s approach as: ‘’about to take us on a wide ride aboard an electronically-emulated steam train. At least these are the sound effects heard in the extended introduction. It takes a long while to build up a piece that signals the departure of the Bowie Express to whatever strange new destinations await the listener. The German electronic synthesizer band Kraftwerk, who had enjoyed a unexpected international hit single with an intriguing track called ‘Autobahn’ during 1975, probably influenced this locomotive device.’’

Such absorbing critique is liberally peppered throughout David Bowie – The Stories Behind The Classic Songs 1970-1980 and if nothing else, it is this that accounts for the book’s prime validity; even if only to remind us of what an astonishingly compelling catalogue of material Bowie had written during the decade. Compelling is in fact too lightweight a description, for at the height of his creative prowess, no one – with the exceptions of Lennon, Dylan and eventually Springsteen – even came close to Bowie. From melody and skin-tight vision to insistent theatricality and word play, the Brixton Bard bestowed such an abundance of chameleonic induced colour; it was nigh impossible to keep up.

The 189 pages herein, are a considered reflection of such analysis (and there are countless examples), of which Welch’s writing on ‘Life On Mars’ is perhaps one of the most interesting: ‘’Rick Wakeman’s deft touch at the keyboards is unmistakable as once again Bowie plucks a devastatingly gripping and original opening line about ‘’the girl with the mousy hair.’’ The very banality of this description quickly establishes that this is no jaunt into outer space. The girl has simply had a row with her parents and has gone to the cinema, only she’s seen this picture before and is bored by the ‘’Western’’ full of familiar scenes. Like the sailors fighting in the dance hall and the lawman beating up the wrong guy. ‘’Oh man! Look at those cavemen go’’ groans Bowie at the predictable nature of base mankind – Homo Inferior indeed. Here is a song full of provocative images, of Mickey Mouse turned into a cow, of workers striking for fame. There’s even a starry-eyed reference to John Lennon […]. Extraordinary how Bowie littered his songs with clues, premonitions and prophecies like the Nostradamus of jive. Despite all this dazzling array of images and the violence on the silver screen: ‘’The film is a saddening bore ‘cause I wrote it ten times before.’’ The crucial cry ‘’Is there life on Mars?’’ is a rhetorical question posed about the likelihood of real and active life ever impinging on those victims oppressed by the grinding inevitability of everyday existence.’’

Artistic food for thought – or what? This book is nothing less than a truly fab read.

David Marx