A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

David Bowie “killed” Ziggy Stardust because he felt like the character had subsumed him, and he was worried he’d be driven mad like so many of his family on his mum’s side. Truth be told, he was probably bored with it all.

Anyone that really gives a shit about Bowie knows this; I’ve said nothing profound. It’s Bowie cannon, part of the official story.

Bowie-ites also know he created this character from an amalgamation of Vince Taylor, The Stardust Cowboy, and a wee bit of Iggy Pop. Again, nothing terrifically revealing.

But what I’ve never really heard anyone seriously suggest is that Ziggy was Bowie. The song “Ziggy Stardust” tells a story of both what Bowie already was and what he’d come to be after the character made a rock god.

The song is so autobiographical – we see in hindsight only – as to be prophetic, if that makes sense. And the song really is the character. Most of the rest of the The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars masterpiece is either about Ziggy’s world, or nothing in particular.

Consider this…

Ziggy played guitar, jamming good with Weird and Gilly,

And the spiders from Mars.

He played it left hand

But made it too far

Became the special man, then we were Ziggy’s band

Weird and Gilly are Trevor Bolder and Woody Woodmansey, his bassist and drummer. The real band didn’t become The Spiders From Mars until after the tour in support of the album picked up steam. Fiction became reality in that sense.

Of course Bowie played guitar…though not left hand. But he made it too far, nearly self-destructing within a two-three year period.

Now Ziggy really sang, screwed up eyes and screwed down hairdo

Like some cat from Japan, he could lick ’em by smiling

He could leave ’em to hang

‘Came on so loaded man, well hung and snow white tan.

Aside from Marty Feldman, there isn’t likely a celebrity in history more known for his “screwed up eyes” than DB.

Bowie was massively influenced by Japanese culture, especially kabuki. No one knows what screwed down hair is, but his flame orange mullet – coming after the song – gave the character a distinct look. That Bowie look is the most emblematic of his many amazing styles.

And supposedly he had a big dick, attested to by many lovers. Snow white would certainly describe him.

So where were the spiders,

while the fly tried to break our balls

With just the beer light to guide us,

So we bitched about his fans and should we crush his sweet hands?

I’d be completely bullshitting to cram a lot of autobiography into those verses.

Ziggy played for time, jiving us that we were voodoo

kid was just crass, he was the nazz

With God given ass

He took it all too far but boy could he play guitar

Making love with his ego Ziggy sucked up into his mind

Like a leper messiah

When the kids had killed the man I had to break up the band.

Ziggy played guitar

Bowie certainly was crass, though in a tasteful way, if one could make such a contradictory conclusion. The nazz – it means he was cool as fuck, the shit, da bomb, bad ass… I’ve seen lots of rock shows, live and otherwise, and his Ziggy stage presence was second to none.

Where this gets prophetically autobiographical is in his descent into a personal hell from ’74 to ’76. Cocaine psychosis. Heavy occult practice – he had his swimming pool in L.A. exorcised as he believed Satan dwelt therein. Fascination with fascism, Nazi/Third Reich history, and to some extent Hitler himself. With the help of massive quantities of coke and booze, he really “sucked up into his mind” and was lucky to have survived to tell about it.

So, what started as a fictional character around which he could tell an apocalyptic yarn, ended up being a road map for his climb to the top and near tipping over the cliff.