Ziggyology Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Preface

  PROLOGUE – The Eve Of No More

  BOOK I: THE COMING OF THE STARMAN

  1. The Dream

  2. The Strange Ones

  3. Rock ’N’ Roll

  4. The Different Boy

  5. The Cold Region

  6. Lightning

  7. The Good Soldier

  8. The Sound

  9. The Fear

  10. The Professor

  11. Mateus!

  12. Vinyl

  13. The Loneliness

  14. The Rival

  15. Naming Baby

  16. Becoming

  17. The Modern Prometheus

  BOOK II: THE EARTH UNDER THE STARMAN

  1. The Birth

  2. The Cut

  3. The Image

  4. The Broadcast

  5. The Glory

  6. The American

  7. The Break

  8. The Frenzy

  9. The Bomb

  10. The Death

  EPILOGUE – Dead London

  Picture Section

  Ziggyographies

  Bibliography

  Index

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  About the Book

  He came from Outer Space…

  It was the greatest invention in the history of pop music – the rock god who came from the stars – which struck a young David Bowie like a lightning bolt from the heavens.

  When Ziggy the glam alien messiah fell to Earth, he transformed Bowie from a prodigy to a superstar who changed the face of music forever. But who was Ziggy Stardust? And where did he really come from?

  In a work of supreme pop archaeology, Simon Goddard unearths every influence that brought Ziggy to life – from HG Wells to Holst, Kabuki to Kubrick, and Elvis to Iggy. Ziggyology documents the epic drama of the Starman’s short but eventful time on Planet Earth… and why Bowie eventually had to kill him.

  About the Author

  Simon Goddard is a freelance UK music journalist whose work has appeared in, amongst others, Q magazine, Uncut and the Independent On Sunday. He is best known for his two previous books on The Smiths and their former lead singer Morrissey. His first, Songs That Saved Your Life, was named ‘the best Smiths book’ by the Guardian and was followed up by the critically acclaimed Mozipedia – The Encyclopedia Of Morrissey and The Smiths. He lives in London.

  For Spike Reeve-Daniels.

  A Starman is born.

  PREFACE

  THIS IS A book about Ziggy Stardust, the alien pop star who inhabited the mind, voice and trousers of David Bowie from, roughly, late 1971 until his death on stage at the Hammersmith Odeon on 3 July 1973.

  It is the story of how Ziggy entered Bowie’s head and what happened once he got there.

  It is the story of how long it took human civilisation to arrive at the concept of Ziggy Stardust and how short it took for one human to do his bidding before resorting to suicide.

  This book is mostly the story of Ziggy Stardust but only sometimes the story of David Bowie.

  All events, places and characters in this book are based on factual documentary evidence and eyewitness testimony.

  This book was written out of love –

  For Ziggy, Ronno, Weird and Gilly.

  For art and outer space.

  For glamour and rock ’n’ roll.

  For youth and hope.

  For glitter and nail paint.

  And for all those who, like its author, choose to live looking up at the stars.

  Simon Goddard

  Telephone kiosk 0207 734 8719

  London

  PROLOGUE

  THE EVE OF NO MORE

  ‘Since the dawn of time over 100 billion human beings have walked on this planet.

  Now, 100 billion is about the number of stars in our Milky Way galaxy. This means that for everyone who’s ever lived there could be a star.

  Stars are suns with planets circling around them. So isn’t it an interesting thought that there’s enough land in the sky for everyone to have a whole world?

  We don’t know how many of those worlds are inhabited, or by what kinds of creatures, but one day we should know. Perhaps by radio. Perhaps by other means. Perhaps by contact.

  The impact of that on the human race will be profound.’

  ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  TO ANY EYES of any creatures on any worlds that might be peering across the gulf of space to the planet Earth, it is a Tuesday just like any other Tuesday. So named by England’s Nordic ancestors after their god of war, Tiw. Or as the Romans called him, Mars.

  Just another day of Mars in the city of London. Mankind swarming to and fro in its infinite complacency. Sweetly oblivious to any remote yet penetrating interstellar gaze. Blissfully unaware that anyone or anything out there in the endless outreach of space might be tuning in, trying to decipher and decode the strange signals of human life. That their words, phrases, songs, sounds, wild halloo and brutal noise could be echoing through the cosmos towards alien ears in a random transmission of exotic gibberish. Of work-to-rule, IRA, strip-kings, picket lines, Double Diamond, Nimble, Mark Phillips and Princess Anne. Of upstairs, downstairs, Watergate, Follyfoot, Fenn Street, Colditz and ‘Honey, can the can’. Of Hawkeye, Hot Lips, Bobby Crush, Elephant Boy, Edward Heath, Idi Amin and Dave Allen At Large. Of ‘Skweeze me!’, ‘It’s frothy, man’, ‘Stay on the bus, forget about us’, ‘Wombling free’, ‘Nice one, Cyril’ and ‘Is there life on Mars?’

  As the planet spins the sun shines high and bright over London, hitting 25 degrees as the clock tightly ticks towards noon. Our focus drifts south, to the edge of the city in the suburb of Bromley, through the streets where H. G. Wells once scampered with youthful dreams of mankind’s annihilation. On the lawn outside Princes Plain School for Girls there is a deathly hush of anxiety. Detective Superintendent Alan Jones and his ‘softly, softly’ squad are gently prodding their fingers of suspicion at the teenage pupils. Jones believes one of them may be responsible for the kidnap of a seven-week-old baby girl from her mother’s pram; the child was later discovered alive, just, covered in flies and maggots at the foot of an oak tree in nearby woodland and is now fighting for her life in hospital. Such is the cruel nature of crime on this day of Mars: of headless torsos found half buried in mudbanks; of car bombs and hunger strikes; of babies freely snatched from unattended prams to be found in clumps like unpicked daisies on every high street.

  A jolt north to Catford, home of the baby girl’s mother, where an all elbows and Instamatic-camera rabble gather around the entrance of a new supermarket to see a 45-year-old TV star cut the ribbon. ‘It’s the biggest crowd I’ve ever seen!’ declares Bruce Forsyth, tossing apples and comic books at boggle-eyed children as the Band of Life Guards skirl into activity encouraged by the baton twirls of comic mascot ‘Major Saver’. Those who don’t immediately encircle Forsyth in a jig of waving pens soon set the tills ringing with Koo marmalade, Chiltonian biscuits and the impulsive extravagance of some Hirondelle table wine; praying the latter’s reward of a fuzzy head and double Green Shield stamps will justify the havoc wreaked upon that week’s housekeeping. Others peruse the home-furnishings department with childish wonder, staring with impoverished sadness at their moping convex reflection in a Swan Regal kettle or stroking covetous paws across the scientific miracle that is the Goblin Teasmade. Such is the substance of material dreams on this day of Mars: of Servis Supertwins, of Vymura wallpaper, of Wyclox Moonbeams.

  Our attention is grabbed by fresh hysteria now echoing from the grassy courts of Wimbledon’s All England Lawn Tennis & Croque
t Club. Today, in what is being billed as the ‘Battle of the Heartthrobs’, quarter-final war is being raged with ball and racket between national pride Roger Taylor and a formidable 17-year-old string-bean Viking named Bjorn Borg. Taylor is this year’s number-three favourite; formerly sixteenth until a mass boycott by players in support of controversially suspended Yugoslavian Niki Pili´c greatly exaggerated his odds. Taylor sweats and puffs to match victory but is unable to prevent the stands quaking with the contagious aftershock of his opponent’s oestrogen-boiling beauty. A girl from Bromley is canvassed for her opinion by a reporter outside the grounds. ‘When I see Borg,’ she sighs, wilting in the afternoon heat, ‘I think, WOW!’ Such are the simply stirred loins on this day of Mars: by shining knights of Cassidy and Osmond, by fair maid Susans Lloyd and Stranks.

  Evening approaches. A scorched scent hangs in the air over Battersea Pleasure Gardens, still smouldering after this morning’s inferno when dolphins Flipper and Bubbles only just avoided being poached alive in their pool. Across the river, in the heart of the city, work-weary drones snatch the evening paper from peachy-cheeked vendors before scampering underground, squishing their fraying tempers together in smoky cylinders to digest it in silent contortion, grateful for whatever mental diversion from bodily discomfort it can bring. Actress Betty Grable, cultivator of a pair of legs magnificent enough to be insured for $1 million by Lloyd’s of London, has died of cancer, aged 56. And in Oxford, a teenage boy has been jailed indefinitely for an unprovoked attack on a meths-drinking Irish tramp whom he robbed of 1½ pence after beating to death with a brick. The boy’s defence blames the influence of the recent film A Clockwork Orange. In sentencing, the judge agrees the film has ‘produced a canker among the impressionable young which all reasonable people desire to see stamped out at once’.

  Like trapped nerves the commuters flinch and shudder over the gory particulars of the ‘Clockwork Killer’ while above their heads in Leicester Square queues form to see the same source of youthful canker at the Cinecenta. On the other side of the square at the Empire they’re drawn by the equally dystopic lure of Soylent Green, mankind’s vision of an over-populated future fifty years hence where the best available solution is state-rationed cannibalism. It is the last film to star Hollywood veteran Edward G. Robinson who died in January and whose renowned art collection has been auctioned today a few hundred yards away in Sotheby’s. One particular dealer from New York leaves the sale £270,000 lighter in the pocket after paying a record sum for Robinson’s most treasured ‘blue period’ work by Pablo Picasso, himself buried in the grounds of his French chateau only weeks ago. Catalogued as ‘La Mort (La Mise Au Tombeau)’, it is one of the Spaniard’s many tributes to his best friend, the poet Carlos Casagemas, who committed suicide by shooting himself in the head in a Montmartre café, here immortalised as the swaddled Jesus-like centrepiece of a crowd of mourners. The tragic lyricist who ended his life so publicly. ‘La Mort’, ‘My Death’, waiting like a Bible truth and a beggar blind. So the gavel strikes and the stars align with perfect poignancy on this day of Mars.

  Westwards now, past parks, parliament and palace, beyond hospital and harbour, over sauntering pedestrian and squashed passenger, on bus and train, on foot and bicycle; above the squeaking handpumps and chiming cash registers of Arms, Dukes, Lords, Oaks and Princesses, the sound of lips smacking on Courage and Watneys Red, sucking on Rothmans and Dunhill, glasses chinking the midweek merry melodies of Pernod and Cutty Sark. Until, finally, our appointed place. Where the river Thames bends in coquettish horseshoe, as if carving so unmistakable a shape to guide all roving eyes ashore. Hear its murky waters softly lapping, beckoning us upon the northern bank to Hammersmith. Past the low rafters of Riverside Studios, once haunted by the cries of Bernard Quatermass, sidling through the byways and balconies of Queen Caroline and Peabody estates – ‘no cycling, roller skating, cricket, football, ball games, hawkers, canvassers or street musicians here’, if you please.

  Almost there, now stretching before us the elevated concrete serpent of the Westway, just three years young, trembling with the thunder of Austin Allegro, Vauxhall Viva and Hillman Imp, a tuneless hum robust enough to vibrate the bones in St Paul’s churchyard below it; the rotting femurs and fibulas of forgotten Barbaras, Esthers, Williams, Johns and Georges who perished centuries ago never knowing the sweet perfume of petroleum exhaust nor the thrill of putting a tiger in one’s tank.

  The hour and place upon us on this day of Mars, the scent of fate hangs heavy, fogging the summer air opposite St Paul’s outside the Odeon cinema. Not merely because this week’s feature presentation is a comedy about funeral arrangements, Billy Wilder’s Avanti! starring Jack Lemmon. Death knows this building only too well. Just two days ago, on Sunday afternoon, its flip-up felt seats were warmed by the bony buttocks of pensioners paying five pence apiece for the promise of tapping their toes to a tunesome recital by organist Laurence James. They instead endured the unexpected trauma of witnessing said Mr James, a mere 53 years-old, flop upon the keyboard and croak his life’s last chorus before he’d so much as chirruped ‘Any requests?’ The reaper has wet his scythe once here this week. Tonight he returns for an encore.

  There will be no Avanti! at the Odeon this evening. The projector stands silent, Lemmon’s wisest cracks restrained in their film canister until tomorrow when normal service is resumed. It is for fleshly, rather than flickering, spectacle that glorious commotion now stirs upon its steps in the dusky shadow of the Westway. Policemen without coats boil with bewilderment at the swarm of little monsters encircling them. A hurricane of fabric and facial fancy: pinks, purples and scarlets; gauchos, Crusoes and Johnny Halfmast; high waistbands, deep cuffs and daggered lapels; denim, gingham and rayon; loonpants, tubetops and slingbacks; leopard print, polyester and lycra; the caped, the tight-buttoned and the bare-navelled; in mauve bangles, button badges and faceted necklaces; hair sprayed, spiked and coppery red, Wood Nymph blonde and flowing free, streaked with timid shocks of blues gone wrong, even-winged and centre-parted; nails murky gold, liquorice black and lichen green; eyelids turquoise and Tic-Tac orange, boy and girl; faces gashed in lipstick zigzags, black-mouthed, silver-eyelashed, Pierrot-cheeked, a Miners’ panstick parade of stars, symbols and reptilian scales on every other jowl, neck and forehead.

  On the hoarding above the entrance: ‘From 8 p.m., We’re All Working Together With David Bowie.’ Yet on every available pillar, it is the sacred image of their saviour.

  Their Starman.

  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 outstretching to the lonesome and unloved. The greatest pop star of all time. The greatest pop star of all space. Who tonight will commit rock ’n’ roll suicide live on stage at the Hammersmith Odeon.

  Today is Tuesday, the third of July, 1973.

  The day of the death of Ziggy Stardust.

  ‘If you really want to make an apple pie from scratch,

  you must first invent the universe.’

  CARL SAGAN

  ONE

  THE DREAM

  THE HISTORY OF Ziggy Stardust is the history of a thought. A wild and beautiful thought. A dwelling on the infinite mystique of a bewitching otherness. A dream, a fear, a fantasy, a wonder which humanity would knead, sculpt, chisel, clothe, polish, adorn and bejewel for hundreds and thousands of years until it maximised and crystallised as flesh, bone, fabric and song in the mind and trousers of David Bowie.

  It is a story as old as time. It is a story as old as the stars that sent him. It is a story which begins, as it will end, somewhere in the vicinity of Yorkshire.

  Yorkshire. Land of suicide crags
and boggy moors the dun colour of dismay. Where half the genes of the boy who would be Ziggy were fashioned in Doncaster, birthplace of his father. Where the men blessed to become the Spiders From Mars were incubated in the East Riding. And where westwards near Bingley the story of all cosmic origin found its voice in the village of Gilstead. There, in 1915, a different sort of Starman was born to local wool merchant Ben Hoyle and his Beethoven-loving pianist wife, Mabel. They christened him Frederick. Fred Hoyle of Gilstead. The man who taught the world that all the elements in the known universe were first created in the centres of stars like our own sun; that when stars spent their energy they exploded in a supernova dispersing those elements out into the cold infinity of space until the process began all over again, gas and dust clumping together to form new stars, new planets and new life-forms. Cosmologist, astrophysicist, author, radical. And the midwife of the actual birth of the universe.

  The boy who would be Ziggy was just two years-old, crawling around a terrace in Brixton the day Hoyle unconsciously kissed history, on Monday 28 March 1949. Hoyle, then a 33-year-old maths tutor at Cambridge, had been invited by the BBC to present a radio lecture on new developments in cosmology. He began by announcing he’d ‘reached the conclusion that the universe is in a state of continuous creation’, a eureka moment he’d stumbled upon without spending years cricking his spine bent over a telescope, or agonised nights of algebraic insomnia, but by a chance visit to the cinema.

  Three years earlier he’d been to see the Ealing studios’ drama Dead Of Night, a collection of five horror stories told through the linking narrative of an architect’s visit to a country farmhouse. In the opening scenes the architect drives to the house where the owner introduces him to a group of strangers, all of whom he believes to have already met in a previous dream. At the climax of the film the architect realises everything he and the audience have seen and heard for the last ninety minutes is also a dream when he is suddenly awoken at home in his bed by a ringing telephone. He answers and speaks to the owner of a farmhouse inviting him to visit for the weekend. He automatically accepts, slightly puzzled by a nagging sense of déjà vu. The closing credits roll over the same scenes of his arrival at the farmhouse seen at the start of the film, the doomed architect evidently trapped for eternity in an endless looping nightmare.