David Bowie was known to be a pop chameleon and has slipped into many roles throughout his career. The unanimous opinion is that Ziggy Stardust’s is certainly the most famous and most influential. However, exactly 50 years ago, on July 3rd, 1973, the singer put an end to his extravagant stage creation.
At a concert at the Hammersmith Odeon in London, he shattered his imagination when he announced he would never perform as Ziggy Stardust again (a “rock ‘n’ roll suicide”, albeit with a different sign than the song sung about).
After touring as Ziggy for nearly a year and a half and enjoying worldwide success, Bowie grew weary of his own character. He was tired of glam rock, which became the basis for the post-culture icon that the singer imagined himself to be, driven by the pop-cultural and social developments of the early 1970s. Soul music, coming from cities like Detroit, was simply better for Bowie at the time.
Horror, hysteria – and sexual energy?
But the announcement of their hero was anything but encouraging for the concert-goers. Apparently, at least at this point, Bowie’s fans didn’t really feel like following their idol on the journey into the unknown. They wanted to get more of Ziggy Stardust’s sexual energy. According to eyewitnesses, the reaction in the hall was fleeting horror and hysteria. And as more than one person later testified: a sexual explosion.
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Rumor has it that following Bowie’s announcement of his retirement, the audience staged a huge impromptu orgy on stage before the end of the show at the Hammersmith Odeon, allegedly overwhelmed by the desire to dream into Ziggy’s world one last time and at the same time characterized by emotional despair over the threatened end of the pop odyssey.
Sure, Bowie liked to simulate a blowjob during his Ziggy Stardust concerts, and the liberation of sexual currents was part of the myth of his shows (albeit far more civilized and much more sublimated than his other colleagues), but an orgy around one of his concerts also appeared later more like a myth than an actual occurrence. Even if the story basically has exactly that bittersweet mixture of sadness and grandeur that the songwriter’s songs are based on.
So it’s very likely a narrative cleverly crafted to counter the lofty and dreary moment of Ziggy’s suicide (one fan wrote in the 1985 book Stardust: The David Bowie Story of men taking off their pants, a great many fluids flowed and all inhibitions went haywire), at any rate there is no evidence of this orgy in the footage of the evening obtained by legendary director DA Pennebaker.
“Ziggy Stadust And The Spiders From Mars: The Motion Picture”
To mark the 50th anniversary of the concert, the fully restored film and accompanying soundtrack will be released for the first time with “Ziggy Stadust And The Spiders From Mars: The Motion Picture”. The historical document will be shown in selected cinemas worldwide. The motion picture soundtrack will then be available on August 11th in a variety of formats: 2CD & Blu-Ray, 2CD, 2LP Limited Edition Gold Vinyl Set and digital.