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July 1972: Alien Nation-David Bowie opens the Glam rock era
“Here is the second best of God,” announces the “Master of Ceremony”, the British DJ Kenny Everett, while the “Ode to Joy” Beethovens “Ninth Symphony” in the time -honored London “Royal Festival Hall” sounds from PA. A single red light beam aims on the stage and shapes a shining halo around a thin, alien with orange hair, a green red spaceplass and red platforms.
“Hello,” says the alien in his soft, cultivated accent to the hysterical amount. “I’m Ziggy Stardust, and Thesis” – headlights illuminate his three fellow musicians – “Are the Spiders from Mars.” It was July 8, 1972. Ziggy was actually David Bowie, 25, a moderately successful singer-songwriter from London with a little theater experience that had turned into a futuristic, androgynic Messiah, in the ultimate, bright pop god.
One of the highlights of the Ziggy concerts was that Bowie Mick Ronsons guitar blew, while Ronson played his shrill solo
The Spiders were bass players Trevor Boulder, drummer Woody Woodmansey and the explosive lead guitarist Mick Ronson, all dressed as brightly as their front man. And the show was a permanent androgynous erotic, with glittering garage skirt and songs by Bowie’s brilliant new operetta about his art figure, “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars”. That album heralded the beginning of the Glam age and also sealed Bowie’s other transformation: into a true superstar …
“I didn’t know that a concept was behind it,” says Lou Reed, who was a guest that evening in the “Royal Festival Hall” Bowie’s guest and in whose set three of his own Velvet Underground classic sang. Reed also encountered the British Glamrock for the first time, this toned androgynen antidote on the hippietum of late 1960s. “It was astonishing to look at how all this thing appeared,” recalls Reed. “There were an insanely many male jaws – and women who were on glitter.” (A British critic formulated it a little differently and described the concert leaders at Bowie’s ciggy shows in the USA at the end of ’72 as “changing Christmas trees”.)
The terrific birth of the Glam in the “Royal Festival Hall” was strangely an eco-beefic concert: the income went to the organization of Friends of the Earth and their campaign for rescue-endangered whales-a truly strange gesture for such an Egomanian cult. One of the every evening highlights of the Ziggy concerts was that Bowie Mick Ronson’s guitar blew, while Ronson played his shrill solo. “I mainly remember how many couples did a violent petting on our shows,” Bowie notes. “All inhibitions seemed to fall at the entrance like leaves.” The excitement was contagious.
As a fashion like as a sound, Glam was soon over again
Reed-which one saw only in black during Velvet times-Bowie and his wife Angie at the time soon missed a glitter outfit. “We went shopping for three, and Angie chose all these great scarves and this street -occupied jacket,” says Reed. “The jacket got about 100 degrees on stage. A few days later I for I couldn’t have come up with more fun.” Like Reed, Iggy Pop, who just recovered from the dissolution of the Stooges, belonged to Bowies Idolen. At a reception on July 16, which Bowies Manager Tony Defries gave in the “Dorchester Hotel” for American journalists in London, Bowie, Reed and Iggy provided a spontaneous appearance that was no less provocative than the ciggy shows. Bowie grabbed a sofa in the dress opened to the navel and gave quarter -hour interviews.
Reed announced that Bowie would produce his next solo album-the Glam milestone “Transformer”-then interrupted one of Bowie’s interview by going over and kissing David extensively on his mouth. Iggy, with silver eyeshadow and Marc-Bolan-T-shirt, announced that he would jump out of the window, but then thought differently. As a fashion like as a sound, Glam was soon over. But Bowie, Reed and Iggy pulled a long life out of his energy and delivered great music individually as well as teams. “I don’t think,” says Reed, “that at that time someone saw the matter as a ‘career’. It was more likely to be hoped that you weren’t fell from a cliff.”