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Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of I Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show

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Speaker 1: that gives you the secret histories and little known fascinating

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Speaker 1: facts behind your favorite movies, music, TV shows and more.

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Speaker 1: My name is Jordan Runt Tug and I am the

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Speaker 1: naz with God given ass Yes you are. And in

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Speaker 1: case that hint doesn't clue you in, today we're focusing

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Speaker 1: on something very near and dear to both of our

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Speaker 1: hearts and many others as well. Uh you know, of

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Speaker 1: all the pop culture monoliths we've examined on this show

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Speaker 1: so far, I'm probably hard pressed the name one that

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Speaker 1: has such a special place in people's hearts. With the

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Speaker 1: possible exception of Baby Got Back. To call this one

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Speaker 1: of the most influential albums in history is under selling

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Speaker 1: it a little bit from my perspective. More important than

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Speaker 1: all the trails that it blazed across music, fashion, performance, art,

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Speaker 1: and visual design, it's provided encouragement to generations of people

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Speaker 1: who felt out of step or other. In so many cases,

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Speaker 1: this album gave people the strength to embrace their inner

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Speaker 1: freak and unapologetically be themselves. Just like the man who

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Speaker 1: made it. I'm talking about David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust and

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Speaker 1: the Spiders from Mars, which turns fifty years old this week.

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Speaker 1: Hi go in our stairway to have an episode. You

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Speaker 1: talked about Chuck Closterman's theory that every guy, or at

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Speaker 1: least a certain type of guy, goes through a led

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Speaker 1: Zeppelin phase, and I'd argue that most artistically inclined sensitive

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Speaker 1: people that I know I went through a Ziggy star

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Speaker 1: Dust phase at one time or another, did you, um?

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Speaker 1: You know? I was a total dilettante until I until

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Speaker 1: basically my mid twenties. I mean I had changes because

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Speaker 1: that was what my dad had the greatest hits, um,

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Speaker 1: and I loved it. I don't know what I was,

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Speaker 1: you know, I was an idiot. I was like, I

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Speaker 1: love all this, I will not investigate further, like like

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Speaker 1: a total dummy. These are some of my favorite songs.

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Speaker 1: I'm sure there's nothing else out there. So it wasn't

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Speaker 1: until my mid twenties that I started really getting into

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Speaker 1: like Scary Monsters and the Berlin Trilogy and like, you know,

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Speaker 1: just the mass of Bowie and I didn't really check

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Speaker 1: out until nineties, like him, um, and I think it

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Speaker 1: was when he died that it just sort of crystallized,

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Speaker 1: like i'ed up because he came through Pennsylvania. I had

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Speaker 1: all these opportunities to see him and I didn't, And

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Speaker 1: it was like, you know, really watching all the tributes

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Speaker 1: roll in and seeing people right so movingly about what

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Speaker 1: he meant to them that I was like, oh, yes, yes,

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Speaker 1: he is an al teimer and I whiffed this. I

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Speaker 1: whipped my fandom. So yeah, late blooming Bowie fan, but

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Speaker 1: very much one still. That's so funny you mentioned that

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Speaker 1: for somebody who is into music as you are and

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Speaker 1: I am, I had almost the exact same experience. My

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Speaker 1: exposure to Bowie was really weird because there was such

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Speaker 1: a cult around him in my high school and you know,

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Speaker 1: in the early two thousands, and to me, he just

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Speaker 1: became like another T shirt artist, which was like just

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Speaker 1: somebody that you liked, and it said more about who

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Speaker 1: you wanted to portray yourself as rather than actually liking

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Speaker 1: this artist. And it was just become like a sort

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Speaker 1: of fashion signifier, like the Dark Side of the Moon

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Speaker 1: logo or the Grateful Dead Bears at my high school.

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Speaker 1: And as a result, I really delayed in listening to

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Speaker 1: all those artists for reasons that I really can't articulate.

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Speaker 1: It was a sense of, like, I mean, the classic

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Speaker 1: rock industrial complex kind of ruins this stuff. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: it's because it's hard they find it on your own.

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Speaker 1: It's just like ambiently in the air so much that

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Speaker 1: you're like, oh, I know, I know all there is,

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Speaker 1: like I've heard those songs a million times. I know

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Speaker 1: about them, and then you don't because you're an idiot

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Speaker 1: in your seventeen So it's like, yeah, but no, I'm

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Speaker 1: with you. And so do you remember when he died?

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Speaker 1: Were we working? Were you? We were both the people

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Speaker 1: when he died, right, No, it was just before I

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Speaker 1: got there. Actually, this is really weird. Bowie kind of

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Speaker 1: popped up in my life in a really weird way.

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Speaker 1: The first Rolling Stone piece I was ever asked to

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Speaker 1: write was the day Bowie died. Um and that. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it was a strange mix of like, oh my god,

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Speaker 1: this is terrible and oh my god, him rolling for

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Speaker 1: Rolling Stone, like any kid who grew up watching Almost Famous,

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Speaker 1: was a dream come true. So he's just always kind

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Speaker 1: of been this strange presence that's popped up in my

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Speaker 1: life almost like that episode of Flight of the Concourse.

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Speaker 1: He was just I had this friend who would describe

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Speaker 1: Bob Dylan's work to another friend who wasn't really into

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Speaker 1: him at the time, was when you're ready to receive Bob,

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Speaker 1: he will make himself known to you. And that's how

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Speaker 1: I sort of feel about Bowie. He always kind of

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Speaker 1: popped up. Yeah, the day he died was really the

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Speaker 1: day that I started diving into him in a serious

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Speaker 1: way actually for that piece. And then a few years

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Speaker 1: later the folks at My Heart asked me to write

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Speaker 1: a biography podcast about him. This is a shameless plug

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Speaker 1: for that. It's off the record David Bowie and it's

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Speaker 1: it's fourteen hours long. It took up a year of

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Speaker 1: my life. Um, Jordan went insane while he was writing this.

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Speaker 1: I was in touch with him the entire time and

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Speaker 1: it was worth it. Well, thanks so good. It's it's

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Speaker 1: fourteen hours long and it was written from April twenty

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Speaker 1: to May one, so the peak dark days of the

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Speaker 1: pandemic and Bowie, Um, in addition to sort of driving

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Speaker 1: me insane, also got me through these really tough days.

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Speaker 1: So I I feel in a funny way that I've

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Speaker 1: gotten to know him, and I've become extremely fond of

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Speaker 1: him ever since. And um, you know, for that project,

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Speaker 1: it interviewed so many fans and artists who worked with him,

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Speaker 1: and they really Bowie people are like some of the

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Speaker 1: best fans I've ever known, just the biggest hearts and yeah,

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Speaker 1: so that really was just such a cool experience. So

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Speaker 1: um yeah, Bowie people all the best, and I hope

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Speaker 1: we do them proud with uh with this episode, which

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Speaker 1: you know, Bowie broke so many boundaries and defied so

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Speaker 1: many expectations. So in keeping with that same bold spirit

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Speaker 1: of innovation, we're delivering our very first two part too

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Speaker 1: much information episode exactly. We really hope you enjoy it.

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Speaker 1: From the eccentric, reclusive rock stars who inspired the character

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Speaker 1: of Ziggy, to the legendary piano used on the setons,

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Speaker 1: the funny connection between Starman and the Wizard of Oz,

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Speaker 1: and the moment Freddie Mercury stood front row center for

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Speaker 1: Ziggy's grand unveiling. Here's part one of everything you never

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Speaker 1: knew about Ziggy, Stardust and the spiders from Mars Spot.

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Speaker 1: I can't do spiders, I'm going to please. Yeah, the

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Speaker 1: webs from all spiders catching things get in there he'd

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Speaker 1: saw it. Oh boy, it'll come up again. Oh I'm

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Speaker 1: sure it will organically. So it's early nineteen seventy one

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Speaker 1: and David Bowie is at a cross roads. We have

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Speaker 1: to start every episode impossible with the artists at a

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Speaker 1: cross roads. He's been trying to break into the music

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Speaker 1: business since nineteen sixty five, which a lot of people

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Speaker 1: don't realize. He put in the work and he's changed

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Speaker 1: his musical poses again and again to adapt to the

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Speaker 1: prevailing tastes and trends of the time, starting with early

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Speaker 1: mod style R and B groups in the mid sixties

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Speaker 1: with names like the Mannished Boys and the king Bees,

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Speaker 1: which are both named for Blue Standards. And he dropped

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Speaker 1: his self titled debut album in nineteen sixty seven on

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Speaker 1: the same day the Beatles dropped Sergeant Pepper, and they

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Speaker 1: both have a similar yeah yeah, talk about getting the

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Speaker 1: cliffs um and they both had this sort of similar

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Speaker 1: psychedelic carnival music hall feel. And by nineteen nine he'd

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Speaker 1: entered into his freak folk troubadour phase with stuff like

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Speaker 1: Space Oddity, where he cashed in on the Apollo eleven

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Speaker 1: moon landing, and that brought him to like the closest

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Speaker 1: he ever come to having a hit, really uh. And

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Speaker 1: then by the dawn of the seventies he teamed up

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Speaker 1: with guitarist Mick Ronson and amped up his sounds sort

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Speaker 1: of like led Zeppelin the Who for the album The

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Speaker 1: Man Who Sold the World, which flopped spectacularly upon its release,

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Speaker 1: despite being a really sort of FM friendly sound with

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Speaker 1: that heavy rock and roll um. This is a super

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Speaker 1: broad overview and a gross over simplification of Bowie's over

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Speaker 1: Bowie's cannon to this point, but by night seventy one

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Speaker 1: very much looked like he was destined to be a

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Speaker 1: one hit wonder on par with you know, Zagger and

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Speaker 1: Evans or Barry McGuire in terms of like late sixties slander,

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Speaker 1: Barry McGuire moody, doomy apocalyptic songs. And then he can

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Speaker 1: see the alien alter ego Ziggy And this would not

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Speaker 1: have happened were it not for two trips literal not

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Speaker 1: chemical trips that he took this year nine one to America.

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Speaker 1: It is such a shame that Man Who Sold the

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Speaker 1: World flopped because that record is like a sneaky It's

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Speaker 1: a sneaky contender for one of his most influential. Obviously,

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Speaker 1: the big thing off of it is the title track

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Speaker 1: because Nirvana covered it. But yeah, man, it's a bummer.

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Speaker 1: I remember the band I was in when he died.

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Speaker 1: We got invited to do like two songs at a

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Speaker 1: tribute set, and we did Suffragette City, which killed. But

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Speaker 1: then we did black black country Rock because such a

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Speaker 1: killer riff that we were just like, we were so

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Speaker 1: into that and it went over like the proverbial lead balloon.

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Speaker 1: People were just like, this is a Bowie song. So

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Speaker 1: I have a soft spot for man Who's old the world.

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Speaker 1: That is a great record. It's one that's so unexpected.

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Speaker 1: I mean, especially when hurt against Hunky Dorry, which came next,

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Speaker 1: which is like a McCartney solo record. It's all piano based.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, incredible album. So David Bowie may have been English.

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Speaker 1: The ziggy Stardust was born in America. In many ways,

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Speaker 1: the United States was David Bowie's spiritual home. It's gleefully excessive,

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Speaker 1: larger than life, and filled with contradiction. I could say

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Speaker 1: the same about Bowie. You could be whoever you wanted

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Speaker 1: the United States. I think that was really what differentiated it.

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Speaker 1: From the UK at this time, and this place had

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Speaker 1: mesmerized David since he was a little boy. I mean,

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Speaker 1: growing up in England, all culture was American, you know,

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Speaker 1: I mean from Disney movies, Hamburgers, Coca Cola, Elvis. It

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Speaker 1: just seemed like America's chief export was pop culture. So

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Speaker 1: his first trip to the United States in February nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy one was a big deal. And fittingly it was

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Speaker 1: in Hollywood, the land of make believe and movie stars,

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Speaker 1: where anything seemed possible, that the Ziggy Startus notion really

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Speaker 1: began to take root, and he sketched early notes for

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Speaker 1: it on Hotel Stationary and cocktail Napkins. And initially the

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Speaker 1: Ziggy start Us idea was conceived as a Broadway style

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Speaker 1: production and the score was going to serve as a

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Speaker 1: new album. And this is because, from Bowie's perspective, rock

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Speaker 1: and roll had become by one really dull, and he

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Speaker 1: felt that it embraced showmanship but not theatricality. And despite

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Speaker 1: the recent spade of rock operas like The Who's Tommy

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Speaker 1: and the Pretty Things, s F Sorrow and Arthur by

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Speaker 1: the Kinks, he thought that all the other elements like

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Speaker 1: clothes and set design and lights and dance moves and

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Speaker 1: acting were all treated as secondary to the music if

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Speaker 1: they were attended to it all, and David wanted to

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Speaker 1: incorporate all of these things. And he'd recently caught a

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Speaker 1: performance by Alice Cooper, who was sort of the new

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Speaker 1: gender bending shock rocker on the scene at the time,

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Speaker 1: and he was extremely not impressed by the whole electric chair,

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Speaker 1: straight jacket bow constrictor routine. In fact, he later said

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Speaker 1: that he felt embarrassed for Alice because he basically seemed

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Speaker 1: like so much of a try hard. Yeah, he said,

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Speaker 1: it's a quote. I think he's trying to be outrageous,

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Speaker 1: David said at the time. You can see him, poor dear,

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Speaker 1: with his red eye sticking out and his temples straining.

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Speaker 1: He tried so hard. I find him very demeaning. It's

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Speaker 1: also premeditated. That is rich comings from Bowie, by the way,

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Speaker 1: but I would just like to take issue with that

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Speaker 1: for a number of reasons. One, while Alice Cooper is

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Speaker 1: pretty firmly lodged in the popular consciousness for like the

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Speaker 1: decapitated baby stick and the shock rocker things sort of

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Speaker 1: being this Marilyn Manson precursor a lot of the early

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Speaker 1: press around him that Bowie would have been reading around

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Speaker 1: this time centered around the gender stuff, the naming convention

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Speaker 1: of naming this band. And by the way, his early

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Speaker 1: band was called the Spiders, So spiders um the Spiders

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Speaker 1: count stands yeah, dan um. They talked about this all

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Speaker 1: the time. John Mendelssohn and Entertainment World, who would also

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Speaker 1: go and write about Bowie, said of Alice Cooper, he

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Speaker 1: looked like a nightmare vision of unisex run a muck

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Speaker 1: um in life. In nineteen seventy one, there was an

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Speaker 1: article starring him called rock in the Androgenous Zone Um.

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Speaker 1: Also from that year, in Crawdaddy there was an article

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Speaker 1: called Alice Cooper, Are you a boy or are you

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Speaker 1: a girl? Uh? In the in Milwaukee Journal there was

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Speaker 1: one called Alice Cooper of Freaky Rock Fame is just

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Speaker 1: an all American boy girl and he's been really written out,

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Speaker 1: I think, and it's I you know. As early as

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine, he was saying in a magazine called Popping,

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Speaker 1: people don't accept that they're both male and female, and

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Speaker 1: people are afraid to break out of their sex thing

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Speaker 1: because that's a big insecurity that's doing that. So I

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Speaker 1: think I just want to give some shouts to Alice Cooper,

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Speaker 1: and I think Bowie slamming him is Bowie trying to

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Speaker 1: distance himself from someone who, as with many other people,

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Speaker 1: he would promptly rip off. That's my iles, Cooper stick,

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Speaker 1: thank you for coming to my ted talk. Thank you

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Speaker 1: for that stirring defense. Also, those records slap. So this

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Speaker 1: l A trip was in February n and in September

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Speaker 1: of that same year, Bowie travel to America again to

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Speaker 1: sign his new deal with r C A Records, And

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Speaker 1: this label was home to Elvis Pressley, who was Bowie's

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Speaker 1: birthday twin in addition to being you know, the king

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Speaker 1: of rock and roll, and he saw himself as the

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Speaker 1: heir to the king's throne and all in all, this

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Speaker 1: trip to New York was a big deal for Bowie

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Speaker 1: and he had some new friends that he wanted to

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Speaker 1: meet in town, the cast of a very very very

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Speaker 1: off Broadway show called Pork. Hi. I'll tell us about

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Speaker 1: park I I want you to really well, they don't

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Speaker 1: teach pork and drama school. Uh. It has been described

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Speaker 1: somewhat uncharitably but not inaccurately as an orgy with artie dialogue.

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Speaker 1: Script had been heavy scare quotes written by Andy Warhol

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Speaker 1: cold from over two hundred plus hours of recorded foam

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Speaker 1: conversations with the factory kids and who are also in

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Speaker 1: the cast. And this was a really such a common

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Speaker 1: thing around this time. I mean, that's whole lou Reid's

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Speaker 1: whole thing was just jotting down stuff that he heard

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Speaker 1: around the factory and making it into songs. And it's

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Speaker 1: very hand in hand with Andy Warhol's literally factory like

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Speaker 1: industrial approach to art, like, well, we gotta make a

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Speaker 1: play now, I've got all these conversations laying around. This

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Speaker 1: is now the play. We have a play anyway. Uh,

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Speaker 1: these are just some of the wildest people alive in

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Speaker 1: this They talk about it extensively in Please Kill Me,

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Speaker 1: which is the punk oral history, just flashing their boobs

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Speaker 1: during performances. Uh. The plot of this thing has full

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Speaker 1: frontal nudity, masturbation, homosexuality, douching on stage, simulated coprophagia with

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Speaker 1: chocolate putting subd in is the real thing. I felt

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Speaker 1: dirty just reading that. Uh. The run lasted a scant

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Speaker 1: few weeks in the heady summer of ninete but somehow

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Speaker 1: they got an offered to perform in England, which is

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Speaker 1: like the English was lost in the country. The English

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Speaker 1: didn't know. It was probably just the Warhol thing, right,

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Speaker 1: they were like the English didn't know it hit him.

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Speaker 1: An actress flashed reporters outside of the Queen's Palace. Other

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Speaker 1: cast members were busted having sex in the bathroom of

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Speaker 1: a pub. Yeah, that tracks. It seemed only natural that

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Speaker 1: such free spirited attention seekers would find their way to Bowie.

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Speaker 1: In fact, they were some of the few Americans who

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Speaker 1: actually knew who he was. They had read David's first

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Speaker 1: major profile and Rolling Stone earlier that year, and they

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Speaker 1: were intrigued by the photos of David looking very indrogynous

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Speaker 1: in his long hair and quote man dress. So it

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Speaker 1: reminds me of this anecdote about Iggy Pop where he

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Speaker 1: his lawyer came and picked him up from jail, like

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Speaker 1: out of the drunk tank or whatever, and he was

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Speaker 1: wearing a dress and he enters the cell and he goes,

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Speaker 1: he why are you wearing a woman's dress? And Iggy

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Speaker 1: pulls himself up and like dust himself off, and he says,

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Speaker 1: I beg your pardon. This is a man's dress and

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Speaker 1: walks out. Yeah. So this cast of the Warhol factory

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Speaker 1: freaks they hit England, they decided to look up Bowie

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Speaker 1: and uh, you put this akin to uh what's her

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Speaker 1: name from the basis of legally blonde writing all of

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Speaker 1: her stuff on pink paper. Like, if you put yourself

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Speaker 1: out there, the right people will find you the most,

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Speaker 1: be the most authentically you, and it will track the

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Speaker 1: right people and the right kind of attention, and you

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Speaker 1: will be seen for exactly who you are. I think

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Speaker 1: this is another great example of that. And this next

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Speaker 1: anecdote will undo everything that you just said, because they

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Speaker 1: were not impressed with David Bowie and the version of

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Speaker 1: himself he was at the time. He was kind of

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Speaker 1: in this transitional folky phase. He was wearing baggy pants,

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Speaker 1: his big hat and doing an acoustic set. And I

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Speaker 1: think the quote from one of the Warhol scensters was

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Speaker 1: they loved Angela because she was like pregnant and like

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Speaker 1: behaving really outrageously, and then she was American and so

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Speaker 1: she had that kind of like Yeah, I I interviewed

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Speaker 1: a few of these factory people, Cherry Vanilla and Tony Zanetta,

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Speaker 1: and they both had the same thing that David. I

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Speaker 1: think the word they used was kind of a drip,

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Speaker 1: like very quiet, and I mean because he was a

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Speaker 1: shy guy. I mean, that's the thing that they would

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Speaker 1: always remark on was he had the capacity kind of

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Speaker 1: like Marilyn Monroe to just turn it on and everyone

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Speaker 1: in the room would just turn their head to him

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Speaker 1: when he didn't do anything, you know, perceptively, but just

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Speaker 1: his whole energy would change. But he could also just

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Speaker 1: completely disappear if he wanted to also, So yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: kind of what they said, is he was in this

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Speaker 1: kind of awkward phase stylistically and you know, fashion wise,

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Speaker 1: but also they kind of got him in a shy,

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Speaker 1: shy mode. But it's just it's funny because they go

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Speaker 1: see David's concert and they're just thoroughly not impressed by

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Speaker 1: this kind of folky drip that they see on the stage,

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Speaker 1: and then they invite him to go see their play,

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Speaker 1: and you know, it's like Leonardo DiCaprio and Titanic, like

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Speaker 1: want to go to a real party, and then he

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Speaker 1: sees everything you described on stage from you know, homosexuality

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Speaker 1: on stage, douching, et cetera, and this completely shattered his

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Speaker 1: mind because it had only been three or four years

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Speaker 1: since there had been a censor board that had to

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Speaker 1: approve all plays that were performed in England. I mean,

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Speaker 1: so this was just you know, it was just four

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Speaker 1: years after homosexuality had been criminalized. I mean, that's what

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Speaker 1: we're working with here. Yeah, And the kind of gritty

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Speaker 1: urban grossness that they represented was like a long time

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Speaker 1: obsession for him. And he read the beat poetry, he

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Speaker 1: read the care Act novels, he loved Velvet Underground and

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Speaker 1: so to see this seriously underground stuff suddenly performed on stage,

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Speaker 1: especially after David had spent so much of his youth,

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Speaker 1: you know, reading all the beat poets and Caro Wakin

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Speaker 1: as you mentioned Velvet Undergrounds music and uh, you know

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Speaker 1: John Ricci's City of Night and stuff like that. This

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Speaker 1: completely blew his mind. So he went to see Pork

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Speaker 1: repeatedly and got close with the cast, and in fact,

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Speaker 1: within a year many of them would be on his payroll. Essentially.

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Speaker 1: The other thing that he got from them was the

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Speaker 1: notion of being on, always be closing, always be on um.

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Speaker 1: So Jane County would later say, we kind of took

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Speaker 1: David under our wing and we all decided to help

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Speaker 1: him out, you know, glam him up and make him

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Speaker 1: more outrageous. Um. We can quibble over whether or not

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Speaker 1: over their role. I know some of these factory types

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Speaker 1: are great reverse rememberers. Yeah, they do resent him because

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Speaker 1: a lot of their slang expressions and stuff would show

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Speaker 1: up in his song lyrics, and he did borrow a

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Speaker 1: lot from them. But their influence on him and has

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Speaker 1: you know, it's been kind of overstated a little bit,

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Speaker 1: yes in Europe saying no, I don't know, okay, So

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Speaker 1: I'm just going from the police kill me thing, because

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Speaker 1: Jane County does talk about she fronted this proto punk

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Speaker 1: band called the Electric Chairs and they were sort of

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Speaker 1: the also rans of the Maxis, Kansas City and CBGB scene,

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Speaker 1: Like they were this really wild band but never really

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Speaker 1: caught on in the same way that a lot of

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Speaker 1: the other peers from that scene did. Um. And she

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00:20:04,320 --> 00:20:07,639
Speaker 1: has been very adamant about her influence on Bowie, you know,

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Speaker 1: she says, and please kill me. David loved my songs

380
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Speaker 1: and so I sent him my demos. He loved them

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Speaker 1: and wanted more, so I sent him three sets of demos,

382
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Speaker 1: man enough to be a woman. Are you a boy?

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Speaker 1: Or are you a girl? Queen age baby? Uh, he

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Speaker 1: wanted to take me into the studio and produce an album,

385
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Speaker 1: so I sent all my music and little bits and

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Speaker 1: pieces started showing up on his albums. So her words.

387
00:20:29,560 --> 00:20:32,840
Speaker 1: So the cast maids obviously understating this somewhat, but Pork

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00:20:33,119 --> 00:20:36,080
Speaker 1: made quite the impression on David, and so when he

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Speaker 1: gets to New York, he decides to look them up

390
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Speaker 1: and with them Andy Warhol. Yeah, it's kind of inevitable

391
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Speaker 1: that the cast of Pork brought David to Warhol's factory

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Speaker 1: to meet Andy himself. And you know, you think of

393
00:20:50,040 --> 00:20:51,520
Speaker 1: it now, this could have been one of the great

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Speaker 1: artistic summits of the seventies, but it was pretty awkward

395
00:20:56,880 --> 00:20:59,920
Speaker 1: and painful. Uh. This was just a few years after

396
00:21:00,000 --> 00:21:04,639
Speaker 1: to the assassination attempt on Warhol's life in and security

397
00:21:04,640 --> 00:21:06,879
Speaker 1: at the factory had been ramped up, and the vibes

398
00:21:06,920 --> 00:21:10,440
Speaker 1: were really bad. Um he had to ring a doorbell

399
00:21:10,560 --> 00:21:14,280
Speaker 1: marked do not ring, and then Bowie and his sort

400
00:21:14,320 --> 00:21:18,439
Speaker 1: of small entourage were grilled by Andy's guards. Just bad vibes,

401
00:21:18,680 --> 00:21:21,639
Speaker 1: and when Andy finally appeared, he was for some reason

402
00:21:21,680 --> 00:21:26,320
Speaker 1: Claude and Jodpur's high laced boots and a writing crop um,

403
00:21:26,359 --> 00:21:29,120
Speaker 1: which I'm sure added to the weird vibes. And yeah,

404
00:21:29,240 --> 00:21:32,880
Speaker 1: much like Alice Cooper, David was not impressed with any Warhol.

405
00:21:33,240 --> 00:21:35,439
Speaker 1: He would later recall, I met this man who was

406
00:21:35,480 --> 00:21:39,040
Speaker 1: the living dead, yellow and complexion, a wig on that

407
00:21:39,119 --> 00:21:42,520
Speaker 1: was the wrong color, little glasses. I extended my hand

408
00:21:42,600 --> 00:21:45,280
Speaker 1: and the guy retired. So I thought, this guy doesn't

409
00:21:45,320 --> 00:21:49,600
Speaker 1: like flesh. Obviously he's reptilian, and it's a weird thing

410
00:21:49,680 --> 00:21:52,960
Speaker 1: to say. Yeah, I mean, neither man were known for

411
00:21:53,080 --> 00:21:57,240
Speaker 1: being especially chatty, and Warhol just completely thwarted any attempts

412
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Speaker 1: to make small talk. And this was just kind of

413
00:22:00,160 --> 00:22:03,879
Speaker 1: his way. He was just not the most socially tactful person.

414
00:22:04,200 --> 00:22:06,680
Speaker 1: But David took it really personally, you know, he wanted

415
00:22:06,720 --> 00:22:09,840
Speaker 1: to be taken seriously by Warhol as a peer, and

416
00:22:09,880 --> 00:22:13,800
Speaker 1: so he viewed this as rejection. And so David tried

417
00:22:13,840 --> 00:22:16,160
Speaker 1: to break the ice by playing a new song he'd

418
00:22:16,200 --> 00:22:18,919
Speaker 1: written and he'd recorded, but it wasn't out yet, called

419
00:22:18,960 --> 00:22:22,280
Speaker 1: Andy Warhol, which would be on Hunky Dory, and he

420
00:22:22,359 --> 00:22:24,439
Speaker 1: played it for Andy, played it for the you know,

421
00:22:24,600 --> 00:22:27,199
Speaker 1: the man who inspired it, and Warhol listened for a

422
00:22:27,200 --> 00:22:30,159
Speaker 1: minute before sort of absolutely wandering away. And then a

423
00:22:30,160 --> 00:22:32,720
Speaker 1: few minutes later one of the factory flunkeys came over

424
00:22:32,760 --> 00:22:35,480
Speaker 1: and informed David that Andy hated the song that he

425
00:22:35,600 --> 00:22:39,840
Speaker 1: named for him, which is amazing. I mean, I guess

426
00:22:39,880 --> 00:22:42,440
Speaker 1: the only thing that Warhol actually liked about Bowie were

427
00:22:42,480 --> 00:22:45,040
Speaker 1: the bright yellow patent leather shoes that he had on,

428
00:22:45,600 --> 00:22:48,359
Speaker 1: and he was so intrigued that he grabbed the polaroid

429
00:22:48,400 --> 00:22:52,400
Speaker 1: and just began photographing the shoes obsessively inches away from

430
00:22:52,400 --> 00:22:54,760
Speaker 1: the shoes and not even making eye contact with David,

431
00:22:55,160 --> 00:22:59,320
Speaker 1: which is incredible. And before David left, he took part

432
00:22:59,359 --> 00:23:03,080
Speaker 1: in one of war Halls famous screen tests, where guests

433
00:23:03,119 --> 00:23:06,240
Speaker 1: are placed in front of a camera and encouraged to

434
00:23:06,280 --> 00:23:09,200
Speaker 1: do whatever comes to mind. It's basically a video portrait,

435
00:23:09,720 --> 00:23:13,439
Speaker 1: and David, who had this extensive background in mime, acted

436
00:23:13,480 --> 00:23:17,360
Speaker 1: out his own disembowelment, just ripping his guts out bit

437
00:23:17,480 --> 00:23:19,640
Speaker 1: by bit. You can see this on YouTube. I think

438
00:23:19,640 --> 00:23:21,359
Speaker 1: it's on YouTube. I've seen it before. It might be

439
00:23:21,440 --> 00:23:24,240
Speaker 1: this in a documentary, but yeah, this disembowlment, as far

440
00:23:24,240 --> 00:23:26,200
Speaker 1: as he was concerned, that was kind of a physical

441
00:23:26,200 --> 00:23:30,080
Speaker 1: manifestation of what this visit was like for him. Can

442
00:23:30,119 --> 00:23:32,800
Speaker 1: you imagtion being one of the like lesser known factory

443
00:23:32,840 --> 00:23:35,800
Speaker 1: flunkey's who's almost assuredly on acid at this point, and

444
00:23:35,920 --> 00:23:38,520
Speaker 1: like this is the scene that you're confronted with, Like

445
00:23:39,200 --> 00:23:42,600
Speaker 1: this tall alien looking stranger comes in, plays Andy Warhol

446
00:23:42,720 --> 00:23:47,359
Speaker 1: a song about Andy Warhol and then has his shoes

447
00:23:47,400 --> 00:23:50,639
Speaker 1: obsessively photographed and then acts out his own disembolvement. I

448
00:23:50,680 --> 00:23:53,720
Speaker 1: mean that would put me off drugs for the rest

449
00:23:53,760 --> 00:23:55,239
Speaker 1: of my life. I mean, think about being the one

450
00:23:55,240 --> 00:23:57,440
Speaker 1: who had to go in form Bowie that Andy hated

451
00:23:57,480 --> 00:24:00,879
Speaker 1: his song. I mean that's arguably worse. So that's true.

452
00:24:01,320 --> 00:24:04,200
Speaker 1: All in all, this meeting with Warhol kind of a bust,

453
00:24:04,359 --> 00:24:07,920
Speaker 1: but thankfully things went slightly better when David met another

454
00:24:08,000 --> 00:24:12,560
Speaker 1: Warhol's associates, Mr lou Reid. I love Louis. I mean

455
00:24:12,680 --> 00:24:15,639
Speaker 1: he's such a cantankerous especially around this point of his life,

456
00:24:15,800 --> 00:24:18,600
Speaker 1: oh big time. I mean, yeah, this is this was

457
00:24:18,640 --> 00:24:21,840
Speaker 1: the period when lou Is basically uh in a self

458
00:24:21,840 --> 00:24:24,679
Speaker 1: imposed state of exile from music and living out on

459
00:24:24,720 --> 00:24:27,399
Speaker 1: Long Island with his parents and I think working on

460
00:24:27,520 --> 00:24:32,000
Speaker 1: it as a typist in his father's aunt. Yeah, so

461
00:24:32,000 --> 00:24:34,480
Speaker 1: so yeah, not a great time to meet lou Reid,

462
00:24:34,480 --> 00:24:37,879
Speaker 1: I suppose, but Bowie was thrilled because this is just

463
00:24:37,920 --> 00:24:41,200
Speaker 1: one of his heroes and it's interesting. Bowie got past

464
00:24:41,359 --> 00:24:45,280
Speaker 1: an advanced copy of The Velvet Underground's debut back in

465
00:24:45,359 --> 00:24:49,720
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six, becoming probably one of the very first people,

466
00:24:49,760 --> 00:24:52,720
Speaker 1: if not the first person in England to ever hear it.

467
00:24:52,800 --> 00:24:54,640
Speaker 1: His manager at the time had brought it back over

468
00:24:54,720 --> 00:24:57,959
Speaker 1: during a business trip in New York and Bowie just

469
00:24:58,119 --> 00:25:00,960
Speaker 1: devoured the album. I mean, this was like Caro wax

470
00:25:01,040 --> 00:25:03,520
Speaker 1: Books put some music and he incorporated a few of

471
00:25:03,560 --> 00:25:06,880
Speaker 1: the Velvet Underground songs into his early set I mean, definitely,

472
00:25:06,920 --> 00:25:09,760
Speaker 1: making him the first person in England to cover stuff

473
00:25:09,760 --> 00:25:12,280
Speaker 1: like Waiting for the Man in White Light, White Heat.

474
00:25:12,840 --> 00:25:15,760
Speaker 1: And Bowie had visited New York on his first trip

475
00:25:15,800 --> 00:25:17,960
Speaker 1: to America earlier that year. The same trip, he went

476
00:25:17,960 --> 00:25:19,840
Speaker 1: to l a and he made a point to go

477
00:25:19,880 --> 00:25:23,240
Speaker 1: see The Velvet Underground downtown and after the show, he

478
00:25:23,520 --> 00:25:26,359
Speaker 1: snuck backstage and cornered the guy that he thought was

479
00:25:26,440 --> 00:25:29,439
Speaker 1: lou Reid and just fan boyd out and after it

480
00:25:29,520 --> 00:25:32,040
Speaker 1: was all over, he learned that the guy that he'd

481
00:25:32,040 --> 00:25:34,920
Speaker 1: been fawning over was not Lou read it was lou

482
00:25:34,960 --> 00:25:38,960
Speaker 1: Reid's replacement. Doug Yule Okay, though easy mistake to make,

483
00:25:39,040 --> 00:25:40,840
Speaker 1: and in fact one that I made when I was

484
00:25:40,920 --> 00:25:45,639
Speaker 1: first downloading Velvet Underground songs off because because Doug Yule's

485
00:25:45,680 --> 00:25:48,199
Speaker 1: whole thing at this point was trying to sound he

486
00:25:48,240 --> 00:25:50,680
Speaker 1: idolized Lou. When he came into the band and sings

487
00:25:51,240 --> 00:25:54,119
Speaker 1: his he is a better version of lou Reid's vocals,

488
00:25:54,200 --> 00:25:56,880
Speaker 1: like oh sweet nothing, he's like his That is such

489
00:25:56,880 --> 00:25:59,560
Speaker 1: a beautiful performance, and he sounds like Lou if you

490
00:25:59,560 --> 00:26:01,600
Speaker 1: read about them. At this time, he had also started

491
00:26:01,720 --> 00:26:04,800
Speaker 1: dressing like Lu and they sort of look they're both

492
00:26:04,880 --> 00:26:07,280
Speaker 1: just like you know, mousey brunette guys. So I was like,

493
00:26:07,880 --> 00:26:09,520
Speaker 1: this is before the internet. You don't know what lou

494
00:26:09,600 --> 00:26:12,000
Speaker 1: Reid looks like. You see a guy who sounds like him,

495
00:26:12,040 --> 00:26:16,320
Speaker 1: and you're seeing the Velvet Underground. I made the same mistake, David. Okay,

496
00:26:16,840 --> 00:26:19,680
Speaker 1: well remember this incident, because the whole sense of stardom

497
00:26:19,760 --> 00:26:22,800
Speaker 1: is just what people think you are. Mentality comes back

498
00:26:22,880 --> 00:26:26,199
Speaker 1: later in the Ziggy Started story. But now Bowie is

499
00:26:26,240 --> 00:26:29,359
Speaker 1: sharing a meal with the real Lou Reid, who again

500
00:26:29,560 --> 00:26:31,359
Speaker 1: is just sort of a shadow of his former self

501
00:26:31,359 --> 00:26:33,680
Speaker 1: at this point. But what do they bond over? They

502
00:26:33,720 --> 00:26:38,000
Speaker 1: bond over um not really caring much for Andy Warhol.

503
00:26:40,119 --> 00:26:42,399
Speaker 1: That was really I mean, Lou during this dinner was

504
00:26:42,440 --> 00:26:44,880
Speaker 1: kind of drunken, sullen, but the only time he brightened

505
00:26:44,960 --> 00:26:47,280
Speaker 1: was when Bowie told him about this really awkward meeting

506
00:26:47,280 --> 00:26:51,840
Speaker 1: with Warhol. And Warhol was famously the Velvet Undergrounds very

507
00:26:51,840 --> 00:26:55,960
Speaker 1: hands off manager for a time, and Lu joked that

508
00:26:56,040 --> 00:26:59,840
Speaker 1: the Velvet Underground considered producing an Andy Warhol doll that

509
00:27:00,000 --> 00:27:02,800
Speaker 1: had a string and when you pulled the string, nothing happened.

510
00:27:04,800 --> 00:27:08,560
Speaker 1: So but at this point, another massively important American in

511
00:27:08,640 --> 00:27:12,480
Speaker 1: Bowie's life comes in, and that is Mr Jim Osterberg

512
00:27:12,600 --> 00:27:16,120
Speaker 1: a k A Iggy Pop. Uh Lu decides to call

513
00:27:16,160 --> 00:27:18,159
Speaker 1: it an early night, heads back to Long Island to

514
00:27:18,280 --> 00:27:23,280
Speaker 1: his cloistered life of misery and uh but Iggy Pop

515
00:27:23,320 --> 00:27:27,600
Speaker 1: shows up at maxis Kansas City, and Bowie was a

516
00:27:27,600 --> 00:27:30,080
Speaker 1: big fan of Egging the Stooges. He cited him as

517
00:27:30,119 --> 00:27:33,639
Speaker 1: his favorite singer in interviews, but more than the songwriting,

518
00:27:33,920 --> 00:27:38,280
Speaker 1: it was the Iggy Pop persona that captivated him, and honestly,

519
00:27:38,359 --> 00:27:41,680
Speaker 1: how could you not. There is this amazing bit Henry

520
00:27:41,760 --> 00:27:44,480
Speaker 1: Rawlins does about his like long running feud with Iggy

521
00:27:44,520 --> 00:27:48,200
Speaker 1: Pop that is completely one sided. He just when Rollins

522
00:27:48,280 --> 00:27:51,919
Speaker 1: band was like a thing, he was like, um, his

523
00:27:52,080 --> 00:27:55,920
Speaker 1: band was like a thing. No, No Rollins band, Rawlins band,

524
00:27:56,480 --> 00:27:59,240
Speaker 1: his band Africa. Yeah, I know. So he has this.

525
00:27:59,320 --> 00:28:02,960
Speaker 1: He has this very funny bit where he talks about, um,

526
00:28:03,080 --> 00:28:06,040
Speaker 1: he basically got blown off stage by Iggy Pop, and

527
00:28:06,080 --> 00:28:09,120
Speaker 1: so he then made it his as everyone did. Yeah,

528
00:28:09,240 --> 00:28:12,439
Speaker 1: and so he made it his mission to like train

529
00:28:12,560 --> 00:28:14,720
Speaker 1: as physically hard as he could and like rehearse the

530
00:28:14,760 --> 00:28:17,160
Speaker 1: band as much as he could to try and defeat

531
00:28:17,200 --> 00:28:20,480
Speaker 1: Iggy Pop. And and he just he has great quote,

532
00:28:20,560 --> 00:28:23,000
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly what it is, but he it's his masterful thing.

533
00:28:23,040 --> 00:28:24,840
Speaker 1: It's on YouTube. You gotta look it up. There's two

534
00:28:24,880 --> 00:28:26,840
Speaker 1: bits in it. I love. One is he says, you know,

535
00:28:26,880 --> 00:28:29,159
Speaker 1: there's Jim and there's Iggy and Jim is just a

536
00:28:29,280 --> 00:28:31,720
Speaker 1: nice guy from Ipsilanti, Michigan, like, oh hey, how you

537
00:28:31,800 --> 00:28:34,080
Speaker 1: doing and real nice to see a great gig And

538
00:28:34,080 --> 00:28:39,280
Speaker 1: then there's Iggy Pop and he's like, and you never

539
00:28:39,320 --> 00:28:41,160
Speaker 1: know who you're gonna get until or you know who

540
00:28:41,200 --> 00:28:43,720
Speaker 1: you're gonna get when it hits the stage. He talks

541
00:28:43,760 --> 00:28:46,840
Speaker 1: about like seeing the stooges of the band, whoever the

542
00:28:46,840 --> 00:28:48,600
Speaker 1: band was at this point, like vamping on down in

543
00:28:48,640 --> 00:28:52,160
Speaker 1: the street, and like seeing of Rhadi holding a mic

544
00:28:52,240 --> 00:28:55,760
Speaker 1: out at arms length from backstage, like as far from

545
00:28:55,840 --> 00:28:59,760
Speaker 1: the mic is physically possible, and seeing he comes sprinting

546
00:28:59,840 --> 00:29:03,480
Speaker 1: for backstage, grabbing the mic and just like immediately start

547
00:29:03,520 --> 00:29:06,760
Speaker 1: bleeding and like already shirtless and sweating, and he goes

548
00:29:06,840 --> 00:29:09,800
Speaker 1: this whole thing about they played some festival and Iggy

549
00:29:09,920 --> 00:29:12,960
Speaker 1: just like destroyed the stage and he invites the crowd

550
00:29:13,080 --> 00:29:16,400
Speaker 1: up on there and um, it's just just show stopping,

551
00:29:16,560 --> 00:29:20,400
Speaker 1: complete catastrophe, brings the whole festival halt rock and rolling carnet,

552
00:29:20,600 --> 00:29:23,440
Speaker 1: and he walks past Henry Rawlins, who had played before him.

553
00:29:23,440 --> 00:29:26,280
Speaker 1: He walks past Henry Rawlins like Trot's off stage, and

554
00:29:26,320 --> 00:29:28,800
Speaker 1: as he's passing Henry Rawlins, he looks and he goes, huh,

555
00:29:31,600 --> 00:29:35,760
Speaker 1: soggy pop rock and rolling carnet. Um, but he's in

556
00:29:35,800 --> 00:29:40,200
Speaker 1: a he's at a crossroads. He's at a crossroads like

557
00:29:40,320 --> 00:29:44,120
Speaker 1: Bowie and on someone's couch. You know. The Stooges were

558
00:29:44,160 --> 00:29:47,240
Speaker 1: never destined to be a They were a sprint, not

559
00:29:47,320 --> 00:29:52,280
Speaker 1: a marathon. UM. The band split. Iggy was on Heroin,

560
00:29:52,560 --> 00:29:56,480
Speaker 1: extremely on Heroin. The odeed, he crashed the van, he

561
00:29:56,560 --> 00:29:59,760
Speaker 1: was stranded in the Detroit projects at one point wearing

562
00:29:59,800 --> 00:30:02,520
Speaker 1: a Ink two two, and by the summer of seventy one,

563
00:30:02,520 --> 00:30:05,320
Speaker 1: he was crashing at his ex manager's New York City apartment,

564
00:30:05,720 --> 00:30:07,640
Speaker 1: and that is where he was on this very night

565
00:30:07,680 --> 00:30:09,920
Speaker 1: when he got the call to come meet Bowie at Max's.

566
00:30:10,400 --> 00:30:14,120
Speaker 1: But he had no idea who Bowie was, and he

567
00:30:14,160 --> 00:30:17,400
Speaker 1: was watching a Jimmy Stewart movie on TV, so he

568
00:30:17,520 --> 00:30:21,040
Speaker 1: was busy and also on Heroin. Uh so he was

569
00:30:21,080 --> 00:30:23,920
Speaker 1: finally persuaded to come down and meet Bowie and they

570
00:30:24,000 --> 00:30:26,240
Speaker 1: just hit it off. And why shouldn't they. They're both

571
00:30:26,280 --> 00:30:29,720
Speaker 1: these quiet, intelligent, semi retiring guys in their private lives

572
00:30:29,760 --> 00:30:35,040
Speaker 1: who became these larger than life rock icons. UM. I

573
00:30:35,080 --> 00:30:37,440
Speaker 1: would also like to point out the other big New

574
00:30:37,520 --> 00:30:40,200
Speaker 1: York formative punk influence on Bowie around this time, which

575
00:30:40,240 --> 00:30:44,240
Speaker 1: is the New York Dolls. Um, especially in the gender

576
00:30:44,280 --> 00:30:46,600
Speaker 1: bending department. UM. You know, the New York Dolls kind

577
00:30:46,640 --> 00:30:49,840
Speaker 1: of gets cited as like an early like the seventy

578
00:30:49,880 --> 00:30:52,240
Speaker 1: seven kind of crew of punk. But they were really

579
00:30:52,280 --> 00:30:55,240
Speaker 1: going around this time, and they were playing in all

580
00:30:55,280 --> 00:30:57,560
Speaker 1: of these downtown spots and uh, I think it's in

581
00:30:57,600 --> 00:31:00,360
Speaker 1: Please Kill Me Again that Lee Childers. Uh says that

582
00:31:00,400 --> 00:31:02,880
Speaker 1: Bowie and Reid came to see them a lot this time,

583
00:31:02,920 --> 00:31:05,560
Speaker 1: and their whole thing was like it was like proto punk,

584
00:31:05,640 --> 00:31:07,560
Speaker 1: stripped down rock and roll, and they were just a

585
00:31:07,560 --> 00:31:11,280
Speaker 1: bunch of huge, ungainly men in drag on stage. So

586
00:31:12,640 --> 00:31:15,000
Speaker 1: all of the load stars of New York City rock

587
00:31:15,040 --> 00:31:17,200
Speaker 1: and roll are kind of converging on Bowie. At this point.

588
00:31:20,040 --> 00:31:22,280
Speaker 1: We're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right

589
00:31:22,320 --> 00:31:24,960
Speaker 1: back with more too much information in just a moment.

590
00:31:35,560 --> 00:31:38,240
Speaker 1: So you have these two trips the United States. You know,

591
00:31:38,280 --> 00:31:41,160
Speaker 1: if you think about the trip to Hollywood in February

592
00:31:41,200 --> 00:31:44,360
Speaker 1: seventy one, that provided the star dust, the whole like

593
00:31:44,480 --> 00:31:48,080
Speaker 1: you know, dramatic on stage element, and then this trip

594
00:31:48,080 --> 00:31:50,280
Speaker 1: to New York that was the Ziggy, that was the

595
00:31:50,840 --> 00:31:52,520
Speaker 1: you know, as we mentioned later, a lot of people

596
00:31:52,600 --> 00:31:56,120
Speaker 1: theorized that Ziggy was Eggy with a Z. But more

597
00:31:56,160 --> 00:31:59,440
Speaker 1: on that later. So David gets back to England in

598
00:31:59,640 --> 00:32:01,920
Speaker 1: the early fall of seventy one and it begins to

599
00:32:01,960 --> 00:32:06,000
Speaker 1: assemble his own custom made superstar Ziggy Stardust, and he

600
00:32:06,040 --> 00:32:08,560
Speaker 1: holds up in his own version of Andy Warhol's factory,

601
00:32:08,640 --> 00:32:12,360
Speaker 1: this giant, decrepit gothic manor house called Hadden Hall that

602
00:32:12,400 --> 00:32:14,960
Speaker 1: he rents with his wife Angie and little son Zoe,

603
00:32:15,320 --> 00:32:17,640
Speaker 1: and his bandmates who would become the Spiders from Mars

604
00:32:17,720 --> 00:32:21,000
Speaker 1: Mick Ronson, bassist Trevor Boulder, and drummer Woody Woodman. Z

605
00:32:23,200 --> 00:32:26,080
Speaker 1: Guy's name, Yeah, I know, it's really hard to say.

606
00:32:27,000 --> 00:32:37,080
Speaker 1: The most British ever? Sorry who Woodman? And this whole

607
00:32:37,200 --> 00:32:40,280
Speaker 1: custom made superstar notion was derived in large part from

608
00:32:40,360 --> 00:32:44,280
Speaker 1: Andy Warhol, who was a painter who branched out into

609
00:32:44,320 --> 00:32:48,080
Speaker 1: film and music, and he incorporated all these mediums into

610
00:32:48,160 --> 00:32:51,960
Speaker 1: large scale happenings with a capital H, which were really

611
00:32:52,000 --> 00:32:55,200
Speaker 1: some of the first full scale multimedia events. And David

612
00:32:55,200 --> 00:32:57,480
Speaker 1: wanted to go even further. And his idea was that

613
00:32:57,840 --> 00:33:01,400
Speaker 1: his performance would become concept art. He wouldn't just exhibit

614
00:33:01,440 --> 00:33:05,880
Speaker 1: a fantasy, he would inhabit that fantasy. And getting out

615
00:33:05,880 --> 00:33:09,080
Speaker 1: there and singing songs to him was just boring. He

616
00:33:09,120 --> 00:33:12,280
Speaker 1: felt that people didn't want to recital, they wanted to show,

617
00:33:12,840 --> 00:33:16,560
Speaker 1: and Bowie promised deliver this full package, and he had

618
00:33:16,560 --> 00:33:19,280
Speaker 1: this great quote around this time, I'm the last person

619
00:33:19,320 --> 00:33:22,040
Speaker 1: to pretend that I'm a radio I'd rather go out

620
00:33:22,080 --> 00:33:25,360
Speaker 1: and be a color television set. Such a great line.

621
00:33:25,680 --> 00:33:28,840
Speaker 1: And to explore this bold new concept, David decided to

622
00:33:28,880 --> 00:33:32,280
Speaker 1: experiment on someone else, and this was another page right

623
00:33:32,320 --> 00:33:35,720
Speaker 1: out of Warhol's playbook. He would create a superstar from scratch,

624
00:33:35,880 --> 00:33:38,880
Speaker 1: and the band would be his canvas. David would write

625
00:33:38,880 --> 00:33:41,680
Speaker 1: the songs, choose the clothes, picked their new names, and

626
00:33:41,720 --> 00:33:44,520
Speaker 1: even provide the vocals. And it's really kind of a

627
00:33:44,520 --> 00:33:49,880
Speaker 1: canny move because without risking his own career, middling as

628
00:33:49,880 --> 00:33:52,760
Speaker 1: it was at this time, David could experiment to his

629
00:33:52,800 --> 00:33:56,040
Speaker 1: heart's content and discard the ideas that didn't work and

630
00:33:56,120 --> 00:33:59,000
Speaker 1: cherry picked the ones that did for himself. And to

631
00:33:59,080 --> 00:34:02,600
Speaker 1: continue the whole you know space metaphor, it's like NASA

632
00:34:02,720 --> 00:34:05,920
Speaker 1: testing early rockets with dogs and apes um. That's a

633
00:34:06,000 --> 00:34:10,200
Speaker 1: terrible metaphor, and this one's even worse. For Bowie's personal ape,

634
00:34:10,520 --> 00:34:15,920
Speaker 1: he recruited the the handsome and charismatic Freddie BARRETTI sorry

635
00:34:15,960 --> 00:34:19,400
Speaker 1: Freddy for comparing you to nape um A nineteen year

636
00:34:19,440 --> 00:34:22,799
Speaker 1: old budding clothing designer that Bowie knew from London's gay

637
00:34:22,840 --> 00:34:26,920
Speaker 1: club scene, and David re christened Freddy Varretti as Rudy

638
00:34:27,000 --> 00:34:30,040
Speaker 1: Valentino and steered him into the studio with a kind

639
00:34:30,040 --> 00:34:34,560
Speaker 1: of ragtag group of musicians that Bowie called Arnold Corns.

640
00:34:34,600 --> 00:34:37,600
Speaker 1: That was the name of this band. I guess it's

641
00:34:37,640 --> 00:34:40,440
Speaker 1: a terrible name. Is supposedly taken from his love of

642
00:34:40,480 --> 00:34:44,120
Speaker 1: the Pink Floyd song Arnold Lane, But yeah, terrible, terrible

643
00:34:44,120 --> 00:34:46,880
Speaker 1: band name. Now in the annals of rock and roll history,

644
00:34:47,080 --> 00:34:50,440
Speaker 1: the band Arnold Corne's seldom gets to mention, and this

645
00:34:50,520 --> 00:34:53,520
Speaker 1: is really not surprising. They released just two singles between

646
00:34:54,520 --> 00:34:57,319
Speaker 1: v two, both of which are mediocre and both of

647
00:34:57,320 --> 00:35:00,879
Speaker 1: which sank like stones on the charts. But despite their

648
00:35:00,920 --> 00:35:04,040
Speaker 1: total lack of commercial success, and they're truly her endous name,

649
00:35:04,360 --> 00:35:09,120
Speaker 1: Alcorn's deserves recognition because they were the prototype for Ziggy Startust. Uh.

650
00:35:09,200 --> 00:35:12,400
Speaker 1: The guy that Bowie hired to be the frontman's Freddie Bretty,

651
00:35:12,600 --> 00:35:15,239
Speaker 1: he couldn't sing to save his life, so David went

652
00:35:15,280 --> 00:35:19,560
Speaker 1: full Milli Vanilli and secretly sang on recordings of two

653
00:35:19,600 --> 00:35:22,120
Speaker 1: of his new songs, moon Age day Dream and Hang

654
00:35:22,160 --> 00:35:25,319
Speaker 1: Onto Yourself, both of which were destined for greatness on

655
00:35:25,360 --> 00:35:27,319
Speaker 1: the Rise and Fall of Ziggy starred us on the

656
00:35:27,320 --> 00:35:30,640
Speaker 1: Spiders from Mars album. But these early versions with Arnold

657
00:35:30,680 --> 00:35:33,799
Speaker 1: Corns they needed a lot of work. The tempos were

658
00:35:33,880 --> 00:35:36,360
Speaker 1: kind of sluggish and the vocal performances. I think the

659
00:35:36,440 --> 00:35:39,359
Speaker 1: keys were wrong and he sounded really kind of thin

660
00:35:39,440 --> 00:35:42,400
Speaker 1: and ready. It wasn't a good performance. So aunod Corn's

661
00:35:42,640 --> 00:35:45,279
Speaker 1: commercial flop, but by no means a failure, because it

662
00:35:45,280 --> 00:35:48,960
Speaker 1: allowed Bowie to toy with alter egos and high concept

663
00:35:49,080 --> 00:35:51,120
Speaker 1: pop and now he was ready to give it a

664
00:35:51,120 --> 00:35:54,000
Speaker 1: shot on his own. But there was a problem. What

665
00:35:54,040 --> 00:35:56,800
Speaker 1: was that problem? The problem is David had just wrapped

666
00:35:56,880 --> 00:35:59,920
Speaker 1: Hunky Dory, which is still a month out from being released.

667
00:36:00,040 --> 00:36:03,640
Speaker 1: This is your favorite Bowie record because it's piano heavy, right, Yeah?

668
00:36:03,760 --> 00:36:05,799
Speaker 1: I mean well I like a lot of the the

669
00:36:05,840 --> 00:36:08,719
Speaker 1: Berlin stuff too. Yeah. I say this is god This

670
00:36:08,760 --> 00:36:13,080
Speaker 1: is the most McCartney esque fair But they didn't fit

671
00:36:13,840 --> 00:36:17,240
Speaker 1: his vision of this multimedia spectacle um and it also

672
00:36:17,320 --> 00:36:19,279
Speaker 1: sort of didn't rock. You don't get the crowd on

673
00:36:19,320 --> 00:36:22,120
Speaker 1: their feet with you know that, there's no there's no

674
00:36:22,280 --> 00:36:26,359
Speaker 1: star man, there's no, you know, five years on this

675
00:36:26,520 --> 00:36:30,040
Speaker 1: it's yeah, but our c A has sucked money into it.

676
00:36:30,200 --> 00:36:33,320
Speaker 1: But I guess they did. They say that they didn't

677
00:36:33,480 --> 00:36:35,200
Speaker 1: hear a hint on this, or they just said, we

678
00:36:35,239 --> 00:36:39,360
Speaker 1: want in the studio, we want more. God love him.

679
00:36:39,400 --> 00:36:42,640
Speaker 1: So he returns to the studio to tackle basically a

680
00:36:42,719 --> 00:36:46,120
Speaker 1: backlog of songs that he has before Hunky Dories even

681
00:36:46,160 --> 00:36:48,840
Speaker 1: out Yeah, which is you know, under the Sway of

682
00:36:48,880 --> 00:36:52,440
Speaker 1: Stooges Velvet Underground. And he told his producer Ken Scott,

683
00:36:52,880 --> 00:36:55,680
Speaker 1: I don't think you'll like this next album. It's much

684
00:36:55,680 --> 00:37:00,520
Speaker 1: more rock and roll. Um, you know the other big

685
00:37:00,719 --> 00:37:02,760
Speaker 1: I don't know if he's an unsung hero. He's pretty

686
00:37:02,840 --> 00:37:05,480
Speaker 1: much a sung hero. But you know, Mick Ronson is

687
00:37:05,520 --> 00:37:08,400
Speaker 1: like the envy the other the non Bowie m v

688
00:37:08,520 --> 00:37:12,360
Speaker 1: P category of this era. I mean's his musical director. Basically,

689
00:37:12,440 --> 00:37:15,440
Speaker 1: that guitar sound is I mean, that guitar sound is

690
00:37:15,480 --> 00:37:19,400
Speaker 1: so influential. They have created a pedal that just lets

691
00:37:19,440 --> 00:37:22,879
Speaker 1: you replicate what he did with his wah pedal, which

692
00:37:22,920 --> 00:37:25,480
Speaker 1: was do you know about this it's like halfway up right? Yeah.

693
00:37:25,520 --> 00:37:29,440
Speaker 1: They call it the cocked wah sound. I mean, I know,

694
00:37:29,920 --> 00:37:34,120
Speaker 1: hell um, the What a wall pedal does is it

695
00:37:34,200 --> 00:37:37,160
Speaker 1: sweeps through a frequency range. Right, if you leave it

696
00:37:37,160 --> 00:37:40,000
Speaker 1: in a certain position on this heel to toe spectrum,

697
00:37:40,040 --> 00:37:43,880
Speaker 1: it'll stay as a sort of frequency mid range boost.

698
00:37:44,280 --> 00:37:46,640
Speaker 1: And you know, Ronson I think is playing a less Paul,

699
00:37:46,680 --> 00:37:49,240
Speaker 1: which is traditionally a bit more of a bassy guitar,

700
00:37:49,840 --> 00:37:52,000
Speaker 1: and so he parks his wall in this mid position.

701
00:37:52,040 --> 00:37:54,000
Speaker 1: And what that does is because it's really mid range,

702
00:37:54,040 --> 00:37:56,680
Speaker 1: e honk and bite to it, and it is it's

703
00:37:56,760 --> 00:37:59,600
Speaker 1: it's become like just an archetypal. I mean, you go,

704
00:37:59,719 --> 00:38:01,160
Speaker 1: you can go to his studio and be like, I

705
00:38:01,160 --> 00:38:03,560
Speaker 1: want that mcronson sound. And so there is now a

706
00:38:03,600 --> 00:38:06,840
Speaker 1: pedal that I think electro harmonics is created that is

707
00:38:06,840 --> 00:38:10,439
Speaker 1: called the cocked WAW or some kind of cock name,

708
00:38:10,760 --> 00:38:13,719
Speaker 1: and there's a rooster on it, and uh, it just

709
00:38:13,800 --> 00:38:17,680
Speaker 1: lets you get that loss sound with a one button pedal.

710
00:38:17,840 --> 00:38:20,279
Speaker 1: So he's just a tremendously influential guy. And as you

711
00:38:20,320 --> 00:38:24,000
Speaker 1: mentioned the musical director, these sessions start at London's tried

712
00:38:24,040 --> 00:38:30,040
Speaker 1: in studios in November. Um Bowie gets bored so quickly

713
00:38:30,760 --> 00:38:32,840
Speaker 1: two or three takes to learn a new song before

714
00:38:32,880 --> 00:38:34,680
Speaker 1: he would say no, it's not working and move on.

715
00:38:35,000 --> 00:38:39,000
Speaker 1: Producer Ken Scott's of these vocals are all first takes,

716
00:38:39,239 --> 00:38:43,000
Speaker 1: which is wild. And uh Ronson finished his charts in

717
00:38:43,040 --> 00:38:47,280
Speaker 1: the bathroom usually like ten minutes before they reslated to record,

718
00:38:47,440 --> 00:38:49,359
Speaker 1: because they run that much of a time crunch. And

719
00:38:49,400 --> 00:38:51,920
Speaker 1: that's and that's why this I mean, yeah, it's a

720
00:38:51,960 --> 00:38:54,839
Speaker 1: live sounding record. It's a raw sounding record. It does

721
00:38:54,880 --> 00:38:57,080
Speaker 1: not sound like musical. It doesn't sound like cabaret. It

722
00:38:57,120 --> 00:39:02,960
Speaker 1: sounds like sweat work. And now Jordan's piano sidebar. Speaking

723
00:39:02,960 --> 00:39:06,200
Speaker 1: of cabaret, this is not a very piano centric album,

724
00:39:06,239 --> 00:39:08,040
Speaker 1: unlike Hunky Dory, but I wanted to give a quick

725
00:39:08,080 --> 00:39:10,200
Speaker 1: shout out to the piano at the studios that they

726
00:39:10,200 --> 00:39:14,759
Speaker 1: were using Trident Studios, because it's arguably one of the

727
00:39:14,800 --> 00:39:18,640
Speaker 1: most important instruments in rock. It's a Beckstein concert size

728
00:39:18,680 --> 00:39:22,560
Speaker 1: grand piano and it was used on the Beatles Hey, Jude,

729
00:39:22,960 --> 00:39:26,640
Speaker 1: Elton John's your song Tiny Dancer and Leave On, Harry

730
00:39:26,719 --> 00:39:31,160
Speaker 1: Nilsen's cover of Bad Fingers Without You. Queen's first three albums,

731
00:39:31,200 --> 00:39:34,640
Speaker 1: including Killer Queen and The Seven Seas of Rye Least,

732
00:39:34,880 --> 00:39:38,080
Speaker 1: Carly Simon's You're So Vain, another one, Loving us the

733
00:39:38,160 --> 00:39:41,919
Speaker 1: right thing to do, Lou Reid's Transformer album probably best

734
00:39:41,960 --> 00:39:46,080
Speaker 1: heard on Perfect Day, another mention, Bowie's classics like Life

735
00:39:46,080 --> 00:39:49,839
Speaker 1: on Mars and Changes another one plus George Harrison's All

736
00:39:49,880 --> 00:39:54,200
Speaker 1: Things Must Pass, super Tramps, Crime of the Century, early

737
00:39:54,280 --> 00:39:58,800
Speaker 1: Genesis albums, and so many more. And what has become

738
00:39:58,800 --> 00:40:02,520
Speaker 1: of this instrument? You may ask, Well, this, this, this

739
00:40:02,600 --> 00:40:05,480
Speaker 1: prais my heart. While the piano was being moved, the

740
00:40:05,560 --> 00:40:09,280
Speaker 1: cradle that was supporting it broke, and this priceless instrument

741
00:40:09,440 --> 00:40:12,880
Speaker 1: tumbled into the basement of the studio and had to

742
00:40:12,880 --> 00:40:17,319
Speaker 1: be rebuilt permanently, altering it sounds and um. That was

743
00:40:17,400 --> 00:40:20,719
Speaker 1: sold at auction in May, but the details of the

744
00:40:20,840 --> 00:40:23,799
Speaker 1: price and purchaser have never been made public, although its

745
00:40:23,880 --> 00:40:26,080
Speaker 1: rumored to have been sold for between three hundred and

746
00:40:26,080 --> 00:40:28,520
Speaker 1: four and a thousand pounds around four hundred and six

747
00:40:28,560 --> 00:40:32,520
Speaker 1: hundred grand and American dollars. Uh. Somewhere out there is

748
00:40:32,520 --> 00:40:34,920
Speaker 1: a piece of rock and roll history, And as I

749
00:40:34,960 --> 00:40:39,319
Speaker 1: say in every episode, it belongs in a museum. You know,

750
00:40:40,320 --> 00:40:42,080
Speaker 1: if you ever think you're having a bad damn word,

751
00:40:42,360 --> 00:40:48,120
Speaker 1: imagine being the guy you have piano god, oh man,

752
00:40:48,440 --> 00:40:50,000
Speaker 1: I mean, you can tell I mean, it's just such

753
00:40:50,040 --> 00:40:53,520
Speaker 1: a distinctive sound. I mean, think about those Elton John records,

754
00:40:54,000 --> 00:40:58,000
Speaker 1: think about I mean Life on Mars. I mean it definitely,

755
00:40:58,040 --> 00:41:02,600
Speaker 1: that's such a sound of like early seventies FM rock.

756
00:41:03,000 --> 00:41:06,920
Speaker 1: It's yah God. Anyway. One of my favorite tracks on

757
00:41:07,000 --> 00:41:10,319
Speaker 1: Ziggy Stardust is moon Age day Dream, specifically because I

758
00:41:10,360 --> 00:41:13,759
Speaker 1: love the unusual Sacks recorder duet on the solo. And

759
00:41:13,880 --> 00:41:16,839
Speaker 1: I always thought that was just Bowie being weird. Yeah,

760
00:41:17,560 --> 00:41:19,200
Speaker 1: I always thought that was just Bowie being weird. But

761
00:41:19,280 --> 00:41:22,560
Speaker 1: apparently it has a precedent. Uh. He apparently took the

762
00:41:22,600 --> 00:41:24,640
Speaker 1: idea or borrowed the idea, I should say, from the

763
00:41:24,680 --> 00:41:28,560
Speaker 1: B side of the nineteen sixties Hollywood Argyle number one

764
00:41:28,640 --> 00:41:32,319
Speaker 1: hit Ali Oop You know how you right? What did

765
00:41:32,320 --> 00:41:35,800
Speaker 1: you just say to me? All right? I guess not. Uh.

766
00:41:35,920 --> 00:41:38,840
Speaker 1: The B side was called show No A Lot about Love,

767
00:41:39,040 --> 00:41:41,279
Speaker 1: and there's a baritone and a flute playing the same

768
00:41:41,320 --> 00:41:44,160
Speaker 1: line together all through it. And but on moon Age

769
00:41:44,200 --> 00:41:47,480
Speaker 1: day Dream, Bowie's playing a recorder and a baritone. Sacks.

770
00:41:47,520 --> 00:41:49,600
Speaker 1: He played them both himself. He got his first instrument

771
00:41:49,640 --> 00:41:52,200
Speaker 1: was the sacks. Yeah. You mentioned earlier that some of

772
00:41:52,200 --> 00:41:55,240
Speaker 1: the vocal takes from the first recording session sounded weird,

773
00:41:55,320 --> 00:41:57,440
Speaker 1: so they took this one a minor third lower than

774
00:41:57,480 --> 00:41:59,920
Speaker 1: the first time they tried it because the original key

775
00:42:00,040 --> 00:42:02,000
Speaker 1: is just way too high for him. But it's funny.

776
00:42:02,040 --> 00:42:05,960
Speaker 1: He does return to this technique frequently. He loves putting

777
00:42:06,000 --> 00:42:08,839
Speaker 1: his voice through like hell. I mean, the famous one

778
00:42:08,960 --> 00:42:13,680
Speaker 1: is Um Heroes, where they set up the microphone successively

779
00:42:13,880 --> 00:42:17,880
Speaker 1: farther and farther away from him every verse, so he

780
00:42:17,920 --> 00:42:22,200
Speaker 1: had to belt louder and higher every time to get heard.

781
00:42:22,760 --> 00:42:26,080
Speaker 1: And it's just God, that's one of the best songs ever.

782
00:42:26,280 --> 00:42:28,399
Speaker 1: God love him, God love him for wrecking his voice

783
00:42:28,440 --> 00:42:30,080
Speaker 1: for us, because I don't know, you listen to some

784
00:42:30,120 --> 00:42:32,399
Speaker 1: of those later live recordings and it's like, yeah, well

785
00:42:32,400 --> 00:42:34,640
Speaker 1: that in the cocaine. You put that much cocaine down

786
00:42:34,640 --> 00:42:37,160
Speaker 1: your vocal cords, they're not gonna do what they're supposed

787
00:42:37,200 --> 00:42:40,040
Speaker 1: to do. But yes, God love him for suffering for us.

788
00:42:40,040 --> 00:42:46,200
Speaker 1: Like the Christ I mean, you mentioned Mcronson's solos here.

789
00:42:46,760 --> 00:42:49,280
Speaker 1: I mean, we could pick any one of the solos

790
00:42:49,320 --> 00:42:53,440
Speaker 1: on this album just to dissect and gush over. Just

791
00:42:54,280 --> 00:42:56,960
Speaker 1: picking this one. You mentioned that it's just so crucial

792
00:42:56,960 --> 00:42:59,840
Speaker 1: to defining this era of Bowie's sound, and Bowie so

793
00:43:00,040 --> 00:43:03,040
Speaker 1: ed up Rons's musical contributions in the booklet accompanying the

794
00:43:03,040 --> 00:43:06,560
Speaker 1: thirtieth anniversary edition of Ziggy. He said, uh, he called

795
00:43:06,640 --> 00:43:11,160
Speaker 1: Mike perfect foil and collaborator, mixed raw, passionate. Jeff Beck

796
00:43:11,239 --> 00:43:14,279
Speaker 1: style guitar was perfect for Ziggy and the Spiders. It

797
00:43:14,360 --> 00:43:17,960
Speaker 1: had such integrity you believed every note had been wrenched

798
00:43:18,000 --> 00:43:20,800
Speaker 1: from his soul and in a moment that could be

799
00:43:20,880 --> 00:43:23,839
Speaker 1: viewed as thunderstealing. Because this was after Rono had died

800
00:43:23,880 --> 00:43:27,200
Speaker 1: in the early nineties, Bowie claimed that he literally drew

801
00:43:27,239 --> 00:43:30,239
Speaker 1: out the shape of the solo that he wanted for

802
00:43:30,400 --> 00:43:34,680
Speaker 1: every song, and the graphic that he drew with a

803
00:43:34,719 --> 00:43:37,960
Speaker 1: crayon or felt tip pen for the moon Aged Daydream solo.

804
00:43:38,000 --> 00:43:40,960
Speaker 1: He described it as starting as a flat line that

805
00:43:41,040 --> 00:43:44,759
Speaker 1: became a fat megaphone type shape and ended as sprays

806
00:43:44,880 --> 00:43:49,880
Speaker 1: of disassociated and broken lines, and um that whole idea

807
00:43:49,920 --> 00:43:53,319
Speaker 1: of visual representation of music was an idea that he

808
00:43:53,400 --> 00:43:56,200
Speaker 1: borrowed from. He said, he borrowed from Frank Zappa. You

809
00:43:56,200 --> 00:43:58,680
Speaker 1: said that it goes back even yeah, I mean there's

810
00:43:58,680 --> 00:44:01,200
Speaker 1: all there's like John Cage and La Monte Young and

811
00:44:01,360 --> 00:44:04,680
Speaker 1: Anthony Braxton, all these different avant garde composers of like

812
00:44:04,760 --> 00:44:09,640
Speaker 1: Anthony Braxton has just like titled his ridiculous. Uh. Some

813
00:44:09,719 --> 00:44:12,080
Speaker 1: of his compositions don't even have proper names, they're just

814
00:44:12,120 --> 00:44:15,480
Speaker 1: like graphical stuff. And also like Frank Zappa was like

815
00:44:15,520 --> 00:44:19,400
Speaker 1: a he hand did all of his scores. So I

816
00:44:19,440 --> 00:44:22,840
Speaker 1: don't know how much I buy that, but sorry, let's

817
00:44:22,880 --> 00:44:26,960
Speaker 1: do a lightning round on Suffragette City. Yeah, speaking of

818
00:44:26,960 --> 00:44:29,560
Speaker 1: innovative ways to get sounds, that sound that I had

819
00:44:29,560 --> 00:44:33,000
Speaker 1: always assumed to be saxophones on Suffragette City, It's not

820
00:44:33,080 --> 00:44:36,480
Speaker 1: a sax. It was created by an a RP synthesizer,

821
00:44:36,719 --> 00:44:40,279
Speaker 1: and Bowie wanted a larger than life sacks sounds, so

822
00:44:40,719 --> 00:44:44,480
Speaker 1: he and Ken Scott I imagine Rono all collaborated to

823
00:44:44,480 --> 00:44:48,200
Speaker 1: create sounds that a real sax couldn't. The Art Odyssey

824
00:44:48,360 --> 00:44:51,920
Speaker 1: one of the most famous synthesizers of all early synthesizers,

825
00:44:51,960 --> 00:44:55,640
Speaker 1: but deeply famous sound. You have heard it on Rocketman

826
00:44:56,000 --> 00:45:00,560
Speaker 1: Chameleon by Herbie Hancock, the doctor who theme Zappa stuff,

827
00:45:01,200 --> 00:45:06,480
Speaker 1: Kraftwerk Devout, Yellow Magic Orchestra, which is Reuchi Sakamato's first band.

828
00:45:06,520 --> 00:45:09,600
Speaker 1: I mean it is people are obsessed with the arp

829
00:45:09,880 --> 00:45:13,799
Speaker 1: and um, yeah, so if that sound sounds familiar to you,

830
00:45:14,160 --> 00:45:18,080
Speaker 1: it justifiably is. Thank you for taking that detour with us.

831
00:45:18,200 --> 00:45:22,360
Speaker 1: Let's talk about Mott the Hoople. Yes, I didn't realize

832
00:45:22,400 --> 00:45:25,640
Speaker 1: this before recording it himself. Bowie offered Suffragette City to

833
00:45:25,800 --> 00:45:28,760
Speaker 1: Mott the Hoople, who were an English band that he loved,

834
00:45:28,800 --> 00:45:30,600
Speaker 1: but they were about to break up, and to try

835
00:45:30,640 --> 00:45:34,440
Speaker 1: to persuade them not to he offered them several songs

836
00:45:34,800 --> 00:45:38,240
Speaker 1: and offered to produce them. They refused to take Suffragette City,

837
00:45:38,320 --> 00:45:41,960
Speaker 1: but instead grabbed All the Young Dudes, which became a

838
00:45:42,040 --> 00:45:45,440
Speaker 1: huge hit, thanks in large part to Bowie's uh, not

839
00:45:45,480 --> 00:45:49,480
Speaker 1: only his songwriting skills but his production work. And he's yeah,

840
00:45:50,000 --> 00:45:52,719
Speaker 1: we had my my beloved wife and I had a

841
00:45:52,760 --> 00:45:54,560
Speaker 1: semi fight about this because we were listening to the

842
00:45:54,600 --> 00:45:56,600
Speaker 1: glaston Berry said, and then we went back and listening

843
00:45:56,680 --> 00:46:00,399
Speaker 1: to the original All Young Dudes and I like, yeah,

844
00:46:00,440 --> 00:46:02,200
Speaker 1: that's Bowie on there, and she's like, no, it's not.

845
00:46:02,640 --> 00:46:04,560
Speaker 1: We looked it up and he's like a scratch vocal,

846
00:46:04,640 --> 00:46:07,440
Speaker 1: I think a guide vocal. Yeah that ends up still

847
00:46:07,520 --> 00:46:10,400
Speaker 1: on there, but yeah, you can hear him um, oh boy,

848
00:46:10,560 --> 00:46:14,279
Speaker 1: Heigel slang corner, Please Jordan give it to me. Yes,

849
00:46:14,440 --> 00:46:17,680
Speaker 1: I'll I know. Given your tireless research into the slang

850
00:46:17,719 --> 00:46:20,759
Speaker 1: found on Aretha Franklin's version of Respect, I thought you

851
00:46:20,840 --> 00:46:23,719
Speaker 1: might like this dive into the famous wham bam, thank

852
00:46:23,719 --> 00:46:27,879
Speaker 1: you ma'am exclamation on Suffragette City. The line is the

853
00:46:27,880 --> 00:46:33,000
Speaker 1: title of a track on Charles mingus album Oh Yeah,

854
00:46:33,040 --> 00:46:36,720
Speaker 1: Oh Yeah, which would have been very familiar to Bowie

855
00:46:36,760 --> 00:46:39,920
Speaker 1: because he was a massive jazz fan, and according to Mingus,

856
00:46:40,000 --> 00:46:43,360
Speaker 1: the phrase wham bam, thank you ma'am was something that

857
00:46:43,440 --> 00:46:46,239
Speaker 1: his drummer Max Roach used to say when he was

858
00:46:46,400 --> 00:46:52,160
Speaker 1: quote unable to express his inner feelings. Um I love

859
00:46:52,239 --> 00:46:55,799
Speaker 1: that and uh. David is believed to have borrowed the

860
00:46:56,200 --> 00:47:00,399
Speaker 1: Heyman backing vocal from the Velvet Undergrounds sixty eight song

861
00:47:00,480 --> 00:47:02,960
Speaker 1: White Light, White Heat, and this brings us to the

862
00:47:03,000 --> 00:47:06,799
Speaker 1: album's epic closer, Rock and Roll Suicide, which blends a

863
00:47:06,800 --> 00:47:11,920
Speaker 1: lot of different influences James Brown and Jacques Brell somehow

864
00:47:11,960 --> 00:47:14,520
Speaker 1: probably the only overlap I can ever think of these

865
00:47:14,560 --> 00:47:18,160
Speaker 1: two people. Bowie has suggested that the French poet baud

866
00:47:18,280 --> 00:47:22,319
Speaker 1: Laire helped inspire the lyrics, but there's also believed to

867
00:47:22,320 --> 00:47:26,399
Speaker 1: be connections to a poem by Manuel Machado called help

868
00:47:26,480 --> 00:47:29,480
Speaker 1: Me with This Chance and Deliu, which is probably a

869
00:47:29,520 --> 00:47:34,040
Speaker 1: reference to Chiana and Deliu, which is the man No

870
00:47:35,120 --> 00:47:37,680
Speaker 1: I think, Oh yeah, that's the slicing up Eyeballs one

871
00:47:37,960 --> 00:47:41,600
Speaker 1: slicing of Byyeballs, the Pixie Song reference it. But you

872
00:47:41,640 --> 00:47:44,440
Speaker 1: say there's a problem with this. Yeah. So the poem

873
00:47:44,520 --> 00:47:47,360
Speaker 1: has the line life is a cigarette, cinder, ash and fire.

874
00:47:47,520 --> 00:47:50,359
Speaker 1: Some smoke it in a hurry, others savor it. Uh.

875
00:47:50,520 --> 00:47:52,759
Speaker 1: It's in the Peter Doggett book, which is I think

876
00:47:52,800 --> 00:47:54,400
Speaker 1: it's called Man Who Sold the World David Bowie in

877
00:47:54,440 --> 00:47:57,759
Speaker 1: the seventies, and he is actually talking about another obsessive

878
00:47:57,840 --> 00:48:01,319
Speaker 1: Bowie fans research on this, but he points out that

879
00:48:01,400 --> 00:48:04,200
Speaker 1: David Bowie could not read Spanish as of nineteen seventy

880
00:48:04,280 --> 00:48:07,720
Speaker 1: two and that no English translation of the poem existed

881
00:48:07,760 --> 00:48:11,280
Speaker 1: at this point. So that is one Bowie fan fact

882
00:48:11,360 --> 00:48:14,520
Speaker 1: checking another Bowie fan, brought to you by two other

883
00:48:14,560 --> 00:48:19,719
Speaker 1: Bowie fans. So we're now entering recursive Bowie fandom, or

884
00:48:19,760 --> 00:48:23,480
Speaker 1: maybe it's like yeah or human centipede. But the line

885
00:48:23,560 --> 00:48:26,920
Speaker 1: oh no, love, You're not Alone likely references the Jacques

886
00:48:26,960 --> 00:48:29,760
Speaker 1: Brell song You're Not Alone, which appeared in the musical

887
00:48:29,840 --> 00:48:32,120
Speaker 1: Jacques Brell was Alive and well and living in Paris.

888
00:48:32,840 --> 00:48:36,520
Speaker 1: I love Jacques Brell. I came to his music mostly

889
00:48:36,560 --> 00:48:40,239
Speaker 1: through Scott Walker, who did tons of his songs. I

890
00:48:40,280 --> 00:48:41,719
Speaker 1: think he might have even done an album that was

891
00:48:41,800 --> 00:48:45,440
Speaker 1: just Shocked bro Co and Bowie was a huge Scott

892
00:48:45,440 --> 00:48:48,520
Speaker 1: Walker fan. He was even in the Scott Walker documentary

893
00:48:48,560 --> 00:48:51,200
Speaker 1: thirtieth Century Man a few years ago, which well, I

894
00:48:51,200 --> 00:48:55,120
Speaker 1: guess fifteen years ago by now, which is awesome. Yeah,

895
00:48:55,239 --> 00:48:59,319
Speaker 1: and Bowie love Jacques Brel and performed his song my

896
00:48:59,560 --> 00:49:02,520
Speaker 1: Death during some of the Ziggy Start Us live shows.

897
00:49:02,560 --> 00:49:05,440
Speaker 1: He's also performed I think he performed Amsterdam at the

898
00:49:05,440 --> 00:49:09,319
Speaker 1: BBC a number of his songs. So Jacques Brell big

899
00:49:09,360 --> 00:49:13,040
Speaker 1: influence on Bowie um. But in addition to this French

900
00:49:13,160 --> 00:49:16,759
Speaker 1: torch ballad, Bowie also claims that rock and roll Suicide

901
00:49:16,800 --> 00:49:20,720
Speaker 1: was influenced by James Brown's try Me and Lost Someone.

902
00:49:20,920 --> 00:49:24,520
Speaker 1: He calls them loose inspirations, which is again I just

903
00:49:24,560 --> 00:49:27,759
Speaker 1: think a crazy melding of influences. And he talked about

904
00:49:27,760 --> 00:49:30,320
Speaker 1: this later. Is it gave an interview to performing songwriter,

905
00:49:30,360 --> 00:49:32,279
Speaker 1: and he said, what I enjoyed is being able to

906
00:49:32,360 --> 00:49:36,000
Speaker 1: hybridize these different kinds of music somewhat. It wasn't obviously

907
00:49:36,080 --> 00:49:38,560
Speaker 1: a fifties pastiche even though it had that rhythm that

908
00:49:38,680 --> 00:49:41,839
Speaker 1: said total fifties, but it actually ends up as being

909
00:49:41,840 --> 00:49:45,280
Speaker 1: a French chanson. That was purposeful. I wanted that blend

910
00:49:45,600 --> 00:49:48,200
Speaker 1: to see if it would be interesting, and it was interesting.

911
00:49:48,480 --> 00:49:52,160
Speaker 1: Nobody was doing that, at least not in the same way.

912
00:49:52,440 --> 00:49:54,239
Speaker 1: Um So, now that we've gone through some of the

913
00:49:54,280 --> 00:49:57,160
Speaker 1: songs individually, let's talk about Ziggy Start Us as a whole.

914
00:49:57,360 --> 00:50:00,360
Speaker 1: It's often touted as a concept record, but it was

915
00:50:00,400 --> 00:50:04,640
Speaker 1: never really conceived as such. Um. The working title was

916
00:50:04,800 --> 00:50:08,080
Speaker 1: Round and Round, which is a Chuck Berry cover that

917
00:50:08,200 --> 00:50:10,640
Speaker 1: was recorded, but I don't think it was it released

918
00:50:10,680 --> 00:50:14,280
Speaker 1: in one of those Mammoth Gargantuan reissue sets. It's definitely

919
00:50:14,280 --> 00:50:16,840
Speaker 1: out there, but yeah, it was originally included on early

920
00:50:17,239 --> 00:50:20,920
Speaker 1: track listing for you know. The early version of ultimately

921
00:50:20,960 --> 00:50:24,200
Speaker 1: became Ziggy Startist, as was the Port of Amsterdam cover

922
00:50:24,280 --> 00:50:27,439
Speaker 1: by the Jacques Brell song and Velvet gold Mine, which

923
00:50:27,520 --> 00:50:30,200
Speaker 1: later becomes the Todd Haynes movie and another song dimension

924
00:50:30,280 --> 00:50:33,239
Speaker 1: Holy Holy, another song called Holy Holy. They didn't fit

925
00:50:33,280 --> 00:50:35,480
Speaker 1: the ziggy thing, so they got cut. Well, it wasn't

926
00:50:35,480 --> 00:50:36,960
Speaker 1: so much that they didn't fit the ziggy thing, it

927
00:50:37,000 --> 00:50:39,040
Speaker 1: was just they you know. According to Ken's Scott and

928
00:50:39,080 --> 00:50:42,520
Speaker 1: members of the band, there was really no discussion of

929
00:50:42,560 --> 00:50:45,640
Speaker 1: a plot or any kind of you know, overarching concept

930
00:50:45,680 --> 00:50:49,680
Speaker 1: while they were recording this, and David basically admitted as

931
00:50:49,760 --> 00:50:51,680
Speaker 1: much of years later. He said that he basically assemble

932
00:50:51,640 --> 00:50:54,600
Speaker 1: of an album of tracks that fit together thematically, and

933
00:50:54,920 --> 00:50:57,879
Speaker 1: the whole theme kind of emerged slowly, but it wasn't

934
00:50:57,880 --> 00:51:01,480
Speaker 1: really a premeditated thing. Yeah, so it starts to emerge

935
00:51:01,480 --> 00:51:04,680
Speaker 1: as a picture one. Stuff is getting cut and essentially

936
00:51:05,160 --> 00:51:09,479
Speaker 1: the lynchpin to this is Starman does a last minute edition,

937
00:51:09,480 --> 00:51:12,040
Speaker 1: which boggles my mind. The r C a xex listened

938
00:51:12,040 --> 00:51:15,840
Speaker 1: to an early acetate version of the record and, in

939
00:51:16,239 --> 00:51:19,920
Speaker 1: as every exact must do at one point in their life,

940
00:51:19,960 --> 00:51:25,320
Speaker 1: say where's the single? Um to their trained ears that

941
00:51:25,440 --> 00:51:28,120
Speaker 1: it lacked something catchy enough to go number one with

942
00:51:28,120 --> 00:51:30,680
Speaker 1: a bullet. So David went off and wrote a song

943
00:51:30,760 --> 00:51:34,799
Speaker 1: He bumped the Chuck Berry cover and start Man. It

944
00:51:34,880 --> 00:51:38,120
Speaker 1: references space Oddity, which he possibly did to tweak the

945
00:51:38,120 --> 00:51:39,919
Speaker 1: suits because that was his biggest hit at the point,

946
00:51:40,440 --> 00:51:42,359
Speaker 1: but you know, it had a lot of other things

947
00:51:42,360 --> 00:51:44,839
Speaker 1: that went in there. It has t Rex. We didn't

948
00:51:44,840 --> 00:51:48,120
Speaker 1: talk about Mark Bowland, but he's obviously a big rival

949
00:51:48,320 --> 00:51:51,520
Speaker 1: slash influence on Bowie at the time. Old friend. They've

950
00:51:51,520 --> 00:51:53,600
Speaker 1: known each other since like the mid sixties and they're

951
00:51:53,600 --> 00:51:56,239
Speaker 1: basically friend of me. Is the the yellow patent leather

952
00:51:56,280 --> 00:51:58,600
Speaker 1: shoes that Warhol was so obsessed with were a gift

953
00:51:58,600 --> 00:52:01,440
Speaker 1: from Mark Bowland and and uh, it's got the guitar

954
00:52:01,680 --> 00:52:05,480
Speaker 1: figure and not from you keep Me hanging on by

955
00:52:05,520 --> 00:52:08,279
Speaker 1: the Supremes. And it also has a bit of a

956
00:52:08,360 --> 00:52:11,080
Speaker 1: Judy Garland nod. You know that chorus has the octave

957
00:52:11,160 --> 00:52:19,840
Speaker 1: jump from over the Rainbow and so well. Uh, and

958
00:52:19,880 --> 00:52:22,920
Speaker 1: apparently he combined them at one point. He did a

959
00:52:22,960 --> 00:52:26,000
Speaker 1: live performance. At one point he interpolated U Somewhere over

960
00:52:26,040 --> 00:52:29,320
Speaker 1: the Rainbow into star Man. I've never heard that. That's

961
00:52:29,360 --> 00:52:31,759
Speaker 1: I think in the David Bolli in the seventies book,

962
00:52:31,960 --> 00:52:36,879
Speaker 1: and with Starman the narrative coheres. The story becomes this

963
00:52:37,000 --> 00:52:40,080
Speaker 1: idea of a visionary poet named Ziggy who attempts to

964
00:52:40,160 --> 00:52:44,279
Speaker 1: save Earth which is headed towards destruction, ultimately only to

965
00:52:44,320 --> 00:52:48,440
Speaker 1: be deified and destroyed by ego and rock and roll excess.

966
00:52:49,200 --> 00:52:51,360
Speaker 1: And you know this is not a move that occurs

967
00:52:51,440 --> 00:52:56,160
Speaker 1: without precedent. The Beatles had pioneered this meta idea of

968
00:52:56,520 --> 00:53:01,399
Speaker 1: portraying a fictitious group on Sergeant First, who had made

969
00:53:01,440 --> 00:53:05,239
Speaker 1: their rock opera Tommy. But Bowie commits to the bit

970
00:53:07,280 --> 00:53:11,400
Speaker 1: is what he does more than you know, he becomes,

971
00:53:11,520 --> 00:53:14,520
Speaker 1: he goes method. Basically, the structure of the record is

972
00:53:14,560 --> 00:53:17,600
Speaker 1: a meta commentary on the structure of a rock record

973
00:53:18,239 --> 00:53:22,880
Speaker 1: right while perfecting well yeah, and also an A plus

974
00:53:22,960 --> 00:53:25,359
Speaker 1: rock record. You know you Tackically, you have all these

975
00:53:25,440 --> 00:53:30,400
Speaker 1: couched political themes like the end of the world, organized religion, extraterrestrials,

976
00:53:30,400 --> 00:53:33,920
Speaker 1: the alienating nature of fame. And it comes at the

977
00:53:34,000 --> 00:53:37,840
Speaker 1: right time because by two we're into the me decade.

978
00:53:37,880 --> 00:53:42,520
Speaker 1: The optimism of the sixties has died. You've got increasing

979
00:53:42,560 --> 00:53:48,360
Speaker 1: social unrest, economic ecological uncertainty. England is into the recession.

980
00:53:48,440 --> 00:53:52,879
Speaker 1: That sort of gets the punk movement um record breaking unemployment,

981
00:53:53,040 --> 00:53:57,080
Speaker 1: near constant striking, and coupled with the fact that they're

982
00:53:57,080 --> 00:53:59,600
Speaker 1: what fifteen years out of World War Two, so it

983
00:53:59,719 --> 00:54:04,919
Speaker 1: just everything is still bombed um constant power outages because

984
00:54:04,960 --> 00:54:07,680
Speaker 1: the grid isn't working, and so it's a very real

985
00:54:07,719 --> 00:54:11,440
Speaker 1: possibility that Bowie thought there were five years left, and

986
00:54:11,440 --> 00:54:14,000
Speaker 1: whether or not he did believe it, he committed to

987
00:54:14,000 --> 00:54:18,120
Speaker 1: the bit um. There's a critic named Paul Trinka who

988
00:54:18,160 --> 00:54:21,200
Speaker 1: called Ziggy Start Us a tribute to artifice, a play

989
00:54:21,239 --> 00:54:25,160
Speaker 1: on identity, an alter ego placed on an alter ego.

990
00:54:25,880 --> 00:54:28,560
Speaker 1: It had been in David's mind since he first gushed

991
00:54:28,600 --> 00:54:31,680
Speaker 1: over a guy that he thought was lou Reid. A

992
00:54:31,800 --> 00:54:37,760
Speaker 1: star was whatever people thought you were as you meditate

993
00:54:37,800 --> 00:54:40,040
Speaker 1: on that. We'll be right back with more, too much

994
00:54:40,040 --> 00:54:53,200
Speaker 1: information after these messages, But no man is just a concept.

995
00:54:54,000 --> 00:55:01,719
Speaker 1: I am the propeller of salt. Continue. Where did z

996
00:55:01,960 --> 00:55:05,080
Speaker 1: start Us himself come from? Let's dive into the specific

997
00:55:05,120 --> 00:55:08,719
Speaker 1: influences that Bowie pulled to create this alter ego. Uh

998
00:55:08,800 --> 00:55:13,239
Speaker 1: first and foremost aliens. Bowie loved aliens. Aliens were one

999
00:55:13,239 --> 00:55:16,320
Speaker 1: of his enduring passions. It stretched back to his childhood

1000
00:55:16,320 --> 00:55:19,600
Speaker 1: when he would sneak downstairs after bedtime to watch episodes

1001
00:55:19,640 --> 00:55:23,040
Speaker 1: of the BBC's Quartermass Experiment on TV, which was this

1002
00:55:23,160 --> 00:55:26,279
Speaker 1: pioneering sci fi show, and it was one of Bowie's

1003
00:55:26,400 --> 00:55:30,200
Speaker 1: very favorites, and as a boy, he really came to

1004
00:55:30,280 --> 00:55:34,600
Speaker 1: believe that aliens were watching him, studying his habits. He

1005
00:55:34,680 --> 00:55:36,759
Speaker 1: began to wonder if he might be one of the

1006
00:55:36,880 --> 00:55:40,520
Speaker 1: Light People, who were allegedly an alien bred race of

1007
00:55:40,560 --> 00:55:44,359
Speaker 1: super people who were supposed to include luminaries like Galileo

1008
00:55:44,560 --> 00:55:47,759
Speaker 1: Churchill and Isaac Newton, and by the late sixties he

1009
00:55:47,840 --> 00:55:52,120
Speaker 1: was contributing to London UFO newsletters and even when UFOs

1010
00:55:52,200 --> 00:55:55,480
Speaker 1: spotting on his roof, I love this, he I guess,

1011
00:55:55,800 --> 00:55:57,880
Speaker 1: I don't know how this would help with UFO spotting,

1012
00:55:57,920 --> 00:56:00,239
Speaker 1: but he would point a wire coat hang are at

1013
00:56:00,280 --> 00:56:03,399
Speaker 1: the sky for long stretches. I guess I. I don't

1014
00:56:03,400 --> 00:56:06,439
Speaker 1: know what that did. But a neighbor saw him doing

1015
00:56:06,480 --> 00:56:09,480
Speaker 1: this and yelled up asking if he got transmission from

1016
00:56:09,480 --> 00:56:12,600
Speaker 1: BBC two because he looked like a TV antenna. And

1017
00:56:12,680 --> 00:56:15,120
Speaker 1: he stopped doing it soon after because he was embarrassed,

1018
00:56:15,480 --> 00:56:19,279
Speaker 1: but the subjective aliens still really fascinated him in this

1019
00:56:19,320 --> 00:56:22,359
Speaker 1: topic showed up frequently in his new songs um So

1020
00:56:22,400 --> 00:56:26,319
Speaker 1: aliens is a big one. Also Iggy and Lou his

1021
00:56:26,400 --> 00:56:29,799
Speaker 1: new friends. When composing the story of a starman who

1022
00:56:29,880 --> 00:56:33,560
Speaker 1: fell to Earth. Bowie was inspired by real life falling stars,

1023
00:56:34,000 --> 00:56:37,680
Speaker 1: these grandiose yet tragic figures who traveled too far down

1024
00:56:37,719 --> 00:56:40,360
Speaker 1: the road of excess and lost their way. And the

1025
00:56:40,400 --> 00:56:42,399
Speaker 1: most obvious of these is Ziggy Pop, who we talked

1026
00:56:42,440 --> 00:56:46,040
Speaker 1: about earlier. Um, it was really come on hard times

1027
00:56:46,080 --> 00:56:48,799
Speaker 1: in this period and he really become something of an

1028
00:56:48,800 --> 00:56:52,680
Speaker 1: obsession to Bowie. Over the last year. He'd obtained footage

1029
00:56:52,680 --> 00:56:55,480
Speaker 1: of Iggy performing at I think it was the Cincinnati

1030
00:56:55,560 --> 00:56:59,840
Speaker 1: Festival in nineteen seventy. It's very famous early Iggy footage.

1031
00:57:00,200 --> 00:57:04,040
Speaker 1: It rules. Yeah, it's on YouTube. It rules. There's the

1032
00:57:04,080 --> 00:57:06,759
Speaker 1: line where he's wearing the silver gloves and literally it's

1033
00:57:06,800 --> 00:57:09,399
Speaker 1: that famous photo of him pointing with one hand which

1034
00:57:09,920 --> 00:57:12,520
Speaker 1: held aloft by the crowd. Yeah, it's like, I think

1035
00:57:12,560 --> 00:57:14,759
Speaker 1: it's like the moment the crowds. Well, it probably isn't

1036
00:57:14,760 --> 00:57:16,960
Speaker 1: the moment the crowdsurfing was born, but one of the

1037
00:57:17,000 --> 00:57:21,400
Speaker 1: most incredible early examples of crowdsurfing. Uh and Bowie would

1038
00:57:21,440 --> 00:57:24,520
Speaker 1: watch this footage repeatedly on a real the real projector

1039
00:57:24,560 --> 00:57:27,760
Speaker 1: at his house and this footage inspired him, but it

1040
00:57:27,800 --> 00:57:30,640
Speaker 1: also really haunted him because on film, Iggy looked like

1041
00:57:31,400 --> 00:57:34,760
Speaker 1: a feral god. He's shirtless and again he's being held

1042
00:57:34,840 --> 00:57:39,520
Speaker 1: aloft by his you know, his legion, his disciples, and

1043
00:57:40,240 --> 00:57:43,920
Speaker 1: now Iggy could barely summon the strength to leave the

1044
00:57:43,960 --> 00:57:47,600
Speaker 1: couch that had become his home. Uh. This Iggy character

1045
00:57:47,680 --> 00:57:51,520
Speaker 1: that Jim Osterberg had created had gone haywire and nearly

1046
00:57:51,640 --> 00:57:54,240
Speaker 1: killed his creator. It's a rock and roll suicide in

1047
00:57:54,280 --> 00:57:57,640
Speaker 1: a sense. And so that was a big inspiration for

1048
00:57:57,840 --> 00:58:01,440
Speaker 1: the inner workings of Ziggy Stardust, and to a lesser extent,

1049
00:58:01,520 --> 00:58:03,959
Speaker 1: David was also inspired by Lou Reed, who was again

1050
00:58:04,040 --> 00:58:06,200
Speaker 1: now living with his parents out on Long Island in

1051
00:58:06,240 --> 00:58:09,680
Speaker 1: a state of self imposed exile from music. Both Lou

1052
00:58:09,760 --> 00:58:12,800
Speaker 1: and Iggy had become victims of the industry and also

1053
00:58:12,880 --> 00:58:15,560
Speaker 1: their own idolatry. And this was really part of the

1054
00:58:15,640 --> 00:58:19,040
Speaker 1: course for nine one, which is a really rough year

1055
00:58:19,320 --> 00:58:22,320
Speaker 1: for music. In the last three years, you had the

1056
00:58:22,360 --> 00:58:26,400
Speaker 1: deaths of Brian Jones, Jimmy Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison,

1057
00:58:26,840 --> 00:58:30,760
Speaker 1: not to mention the kind of abdication of Pink Floyd

1058
00:58:30,800 --> 00:58:34,160
Speaker 1: founder said Barrett Fleetwood, Max Peter Green and the Beach Boys,

1059
00:58:34,200 --> 00:58:37,040
Speaker 1: Brian Wilson. They all stepped back to deal with um

1060
00:58:37,120 --> 00:58:41,000
Speaker 1: increasingly debilitating mental illness. Interestingly, some have thought that the

1061
00:58:41,040 --> 00:58:43,600
Speaker 1: line in the title track zig played guitar, he played

1062
00:58:43,600 --> 00:58:45,760
Speaker 1: at left hand but made it too far was a

1063
00:58:45,800 --> 00:58:49,200
Speaker 1: reference to Jimmie Hendrix, who was also left handed. Uh So,

1064
00:58:49,280 --> 00:58:52,200
Speaker 1: David had seen the hazards of rock and roll close range,

1065
00:58:52,800 --> 00:58:56,200
Speaker 1: and during his first trip to Los Angeles he had

1066
00:58:56,280 --> 00:58:59,360
Speaker 1: met this guy, Gene Vincent, who was an early rock

1067
00:58:59,400 --> 00:59:02,320
Speaker 1: and roll pie pioneer. His song be Bappa Lula is

1068
00:59:02,360 --> 00:59:04,960
Speaker 1: like you know, one of the the sacred texts of

1069
00:59:05,000 --> 00:59:08,280
Speaker 1: early rock, and Jene visit was only thirty five, but

1070
00:59:08,320 --> 00:59:10,960
Speaker 1: when Bowie met him he was looked just really old

1071
00:59:11,040 --> 00:59:14,520
Speaker 1: and sickly, and his body had just been mangled from

1072
00:59:14,840 --> 00:59:18,520
Speaker 1: years of hard living. And just a few weeks before

1073
00:59:18,720 --> 00:59:21,960
Speaker 1: Bowie entered the studio to begin work on Ziggy Stardust,

1074
00:59:22,520 --> 00:59:25,680
Speaker 1: Jean Vincent died, and so that I think on some

1075
00:59:25,800 --> 00:59:30,720
Speaker 1: level impacted Bowie. And Bowie also borrowed Jean Vincent's movements

1076
00:59:30,720 --> 00:59:33,640
Speaker 1: on stage he'd been uh he developed a limp from

1077
00:59:33,640 --> 00:59:37,840
Speaker 1: a car crash Jean Vincent did, and David used Jean's

1078
00:59:37,960 --> 00:59:41,440
Speaker 1: hobble as part of some of his early Ziggy started

1079
00:59:41,520 --> 00:59:45,520
Speaker 1: us stage moves, and he called the hobble first position

1080
00:59:45,680 --> 00:59:50,280
Speaker 1: for ziggy star dust its ballet reference. Right yeah um.

1081
00:59:50,520 --> 00:59:54,200
Speaker 1: But the unlikely linked between down and out musicians and

1082
00:59:54,280 --> 00:59:56,880
Speaker 1: messianic aliens can be found in the story of an

1083
00:59:56,920 --> 01:00:00,560
Speaker 1: early British rocker named Vince Taylor, and it's Taylor is

1084
01:00:00,600 --> 01:00:03,120
Speaker 1: best known today for recording the original version of The

1085
01:00:03,160 --> 01:00:07,160
Speaker 1: Clashes Brand New Cadillac, which is Vince Taylor's vision Rules.

1086
01:00:07,600 --> 01:00:10,280
Speaker 1: But in the early sixties he had a brief moment

1087
01:00:10,320 --> 01:00:13,200
Speaker 1: of being poised to be kind of the new Elvis

1088
01:00:13,280 --> 01:00:15,320
Speaker 1: in Europe, at least that's how they were promoting him.

1089
01:00:15,600 --> 01:00:18,200
Speaker 1: But in the mid sixties he started suffering a series

1090
01:00:18,240 --> 01:00:23,520
Speaker 1: of really distressing mid concert breakdowns, uh, culminating one night

1091
01:00:23,840 --> 01:00:26,320
Speaker 1: when he appeared on stage in white robes and the

1092
01:00:26,400 --> 01:00:28,880
Speaker 1: form the crowd that he was in fact Jesus Christ,

1093
01:00:29,680 --> 01:00:32,680
Speaker 1: and the incident pretty much killed his career and he

1094
01:00:32,720 --> 01:00:35,840
Speaker 1: filled those days wondering the coffee shop scene in the

1095
01:00:35,920 --> 01:00:40,400
Speaker 1: London district of Soho, basically ranting at anyone who would listen.

1096
01:00:40,800 --> 01:00:42,520
Speaker 1: And it was there that he met a pre fame

1097
01:00:42,640 --> 01:00:44,600
Speaker 1: David Bowie, and they got to know each other a

1098
01:00:44,640 --> 01:00:48,600
Speaker 1: little bit and David would always remember Vince spreading out

1099
01:00:48,600 --> 01:00:52,000
Speaker 1: a crumpled map onto the sidewalk outside of a crowded

1100
01:00:52,000 --> 01:00:56,680
Speaker 1: subway station and pointing out various UFL landing sites across Europe.

1101
01:00:57,120 --> 01:00:58,920
Speaker 1: Uh So this was a guy who was, to use

1102
01:00:58,960 --> 01:01:02,440
Speaker 1: Bowie's own words, out of his gourd, totally flipped, not

1103
01:01:02,560 --> 01:01:05,560
Speaker 1: playing with a full deck at all. But he remained

1104
01:01:05,600 --> 01:01:08,520
Speaker 1: in David's mind as quote an example of what can

1105
01:01:08,600 --> 01:01:12,120
Speaker 1: happen in rock and roll midway between an idol and

1106
01:01:12,120 --> 01:01:16,280
Speaker 1: a cautionary tale. And this brings us to kind of

1107
01:01:16,320 --> 01:01:20,760
Speaker 1: the most personal influence of Ziggy start us his brother,

1108
01:01:20,960 --> 01:01:24,240
Speaker 1: his half brother Terry, and the topic of madness was

1109
01:01:24,240 --> 01:01:27,520
Speaker 1: always a very compelling theme for Bowie given the streak

1110
01:01:27,560 --> 01:01:30,640
Speaker 1: of mental illness that ran throughout his own family, especially

1111
01:01:30,680 --> 01:01:34,000
Speaker 1: as half brother Terry. And Terry is a really fascinating

1112
01:01:34,040 --> 01:01:37,880
Speaker 1: figure in Bowie's life. He looms like a specter throughout it.

1113
01:01:37,960 --> 01:01:40,960
Speaker 1: He's kind of was haunted by him forever. Terry was

1114
01:01:41,040 --> 01:01:43,840
Speaker 1: much older than David, and David looked up to him

1115
01:01:44,080 --> 01:01:46,720
Speaker 1: as a hero as a little boy, and Terry turned

1116
01:01:46,800 --> 01:01:50,360
Speaker 1: him on to art and jazz and beat poetry and

1117
01:01:50,680 --> 01:01:53,120
Speaker 1: all the stuff that David really loved as a team.

1118
01:01:53,760 --> 01:01:57,640
Speaker 1: But by his early twenties, Terry started displaying symptoms of schizophrenia,

1119
01:01:57,760 --> 01:02:01,160
Speaker 1: which worsened dramatically as the years went on, and he

1120
01:02:01,280 --> 01:02:04,439
Speaker 1: died by suicide in the eighties, laying down in front

1121
01:02:04,440 --> 01:02:07,720
Speaker 1: of a train. Uh. And David always felt the streak

1122
01:02:07,760 --> 01:02:12,200
Speaker 1: of what he called madness in himself and frequently cited

1123
01:02:12,280 --> 01:02:15,640
Speaker 1: his music and the multifaceted personas that he had as

1124
01:02:15,680 --> 01:02:18,200
Speaker 1: a way of keeping a sanity in check. And he

1125
01:02:18,280 --> 01:02:22,240
Speaker 1: once said, one puts oneself through such psychological damage in

1126
01:02:22,320 --> 01:02:25,280
Speaker 1: trying to avoid the threat of insanity. As long as

1127
01:02:25,280 --> 01:02:28,120
Speaker 1: I could put those psychological excesses into my music and

1128
01:02:28,160 --> 01:02:30,800
Speaker 1: into my work, I could always be throwing it off.

1129
01:02:31,520 --> 01:02:35,000
Speaker 1: So Vince Taylor forced David to confront both his greatest

1130
01:02:35,080 --> 01:02:38,960
Speaker 1: dreams of rock stardom and also his deepest fear of insanity.

1131
01:02:39,120 --> 01:02:41,160
Speaker 1: And I would say that more than any one person,

1132
01:02:41,760 --> 01:02:45,640
Speaker 1: Vince Taylor was probably the guy who inspired Ziggy the most.

1133
01:02:46,760 --> 01:02:49,240
Speaker 1: And so with that we have pinned down, or at

1134
01:02:49,320 --> 01:02:53,080
Speaker 1: least mapped out the soul of Ziggy. But let's talk

1135
01:02:53,120 --> 01:02:56,440
Speaker 1: about the name. Uh. You know, it's easy to assume

1136
01:02:56,520 --> 01:02:59,040
Speaker 1: that Ziggy is just the word iggy with a Z.

1137
01:02:59,320 --> 01:03:01,520
Speaker 1: But David has said a number of things about it.

1138
01:03:01,800 --> 01:03:03,760
Speaker 1: He told Rolling Stone at one point that it was

1139
01:03:03,840 --> 01:03:06,000
Speaker 1: just one of the few Christian names he could find

1140
01:03:06,040 --> 01:03:11,200
Speaker 1: beginning with the letter Z, which I guess for convenient. Umy,

1141
01:03:11,280 --> 01:03:19,120
Speaker 1: Stardust doesn't do the same zane that actually kind of works. Um.

1142
01:03:19,360 --> 01:03:22,680
Speaker 1: Then in an interviewing Q magazine, he said that it

1143
01:03:22,720 --> 01:03:25,240
Speaker 1: came from a tailor's shop called Ziggy that he passed

1144
01:03:25,520 --> 01:03:27,600
Speaker 1: on a train, and that he glommed onto it because

1145
01:03:27,600 --> 01:03:30,200
Speaker 1: it had that the iggy connotation. But it was a

1146
01:03:30,240 --> 01:03:32,360
Speaker 1: tailor's shop, and so he said, well, this whole thing

1147
01:03:32,400 --> 01:03:34,720
Speaker 1: is going to be about clothes. So it was my

1148
01:03:34,880 --> 01:03:40,480
Speaker 1: joke calling a character Ziggy because Iggy pop famously is

1149
01:03:40,520 --> 01:03:46,760
Speaker 1: only fifty clothes at any given time. Um, possibly, Jamie,

1150
01:03:46,760 --> 01:03:50,680
Speaker 1: can we pull up those numbers? Uh? But Stardust, where

1151
01:03:50,680 --> 01:03:53,040
Speaker 1: do we get stardust from? Stardust is a nod to

1152
01:03:53,080 --> 01:03:57,120
Speaker 1: an offbeat American singer known as the legendary Stardust Cowboy

1153
01:03:57,240 --> 01:04:02,000
Speaker 1: a k a. Norman carl Odom is something approaching a

1154
01:04:02,080 --> 01:04:05,120
Speaker 1: country sci fi tiny tim It will get you in

1155
01:04:05,160 --> 01:04:10,280
Speaker 1: the neighborhood of his whole stick him. I know. I

1156
01:04:10,320 --> 01:04:13,000
Speaker 1: think I think you've talked to him inasmuch as you

1157
01:04:13,040 --> 01:04:16,880
Speaker 1: have exposed me to him. Ottoman released a charmingly bizarre

1158
01:04:16,920 --> 01:04:19,480
Speaker 1: country sci fi single called I Took a Trip on

1159
01:04:19,560 --> 01:04:22,920
Speaker 1: a Gemini Spaceship in nineteen nine, the same year as

1160
01:04:23,000 --> 01:04:26,440
Speaker 1: Space Oddity and even on the same label. David was

1161
01:04:26,480 --> 01:04:28,760
Speaker 1: given some of his singles by people at the record company,

1162
01:04:28,840 --> 01:04:32,520
Speaker 1: and much like Pork the play not the food Stuff,

1163
01:04:32,720 --> 01:04:36,040
Speaker 1: it blew his mind. When someone asked Odom why he

1164
01:04:36,080 --> 01:04:38,920
Speaker 1: added legendary to his name as a teen, he replied,

1165
01:04:39,240 --> 01:04:42,320
Speaker 1: I am a legend in my own time, which is

1166
01:04:42,600 --> 01:04:46,120
Speaker 1: very very bowie, and it's got this great mixture of

1167
01:04:46,240 --> 01:04:49,760
Speaker 1: old and new. You know, you've got stardust, which two

1168
01:04:50,040 --> 01:04:52,520
Speaker 1: people of this generation. Probably first thing that leaps to

1169
01:04:52,560 --> 01:04:55,440
Speaker 1: mind is the Jazz Standard by Jogi Carmichael, but it

1170
01:04:55,560 --> 01:04:58,320
Speaker 1: is also in a very literal sense, the dust from stars,

1171
01:04:58,480 --> 01:05:01,160
Speaker 1: and the other important ref that comes around this time

1172
01:05:01,160 --> 01:05:04,320
Speaker 1: from that is wood stock. You know. Carl Sagan is

1173
01:05:04,320 --> 01:05:07,120
Speaker 1: coming into vogue at this time, and he's recently popularized

1174
01:05:07,160 --> 01:05:10,080
Speaker 1: the notion that if all matter from the universe is

1175
01:05:10,120 --> 01:05:12,240
Speaker 1: descended from what was present at the time of the

1176
01:05:12,240 --> 01:05:17,160
Speaker 1: Big Bang, then we are really essentially matter from stars

1177
01:05:17,240 --> 01:05:20,120
Speaker 1: were stardusts, and so it's in that line and wood

1178
01:05:20,120 --> 01:05:24,480
Speaker 1: stock that everyone loves so much. Um, I take it

1179
01:05:24,520 --> 01:05:30,560
Speaker 1: that you don't like. It's fine, It's fine. No, I

1180
01:05:30,560 --> 01:05:32,400
Speaker 1: mean he gets into a little I love Carl Sagan,

1181
01:05:32,440 --> 01:05:34,160
Speaker 1: but it gets into a little that hippie deepie stuff

1182
01:05:34,200 --> 01:05:37,600
Speaker 1: for me, which we are all nothing. I'm too much

1183
01:05:37,640 --> 01:05:41,280
Speaker 1: of a nihilist to buy into that. Um, it's a

1184
01:05:41,360 --> 01:05:46,440
Speaker 1: cool name for a project like Ziggy Stardust because you know,

1185
01:05:46,520 --> 01:05:49,600
Speaker 1: the whole idea of stardust things that have existed for

1186
01:05:49,680 --> 01:05:53,320
Speaker 1: millions of years being recycled and reformed. That's kind of

1187
01:05:53,360 --> 01:05:56,360
Speaker 1: what Bowie's doing, you know, with Ziggy Stardus as an

1188
01:05:56,320 --> 01:06:00,959
Speaker 1: amalgam of familiar but disparate elements. Yeah, what he called

1189
01:06:00,960 --> 01:06:08,160
Speaker 1: a grand kitch painting. Um. But yeah, right, I mean, look,

1190
01:06:08,240 --> 01:06:11,160
Speaker 1: you can play spot the influence with Bowie, but some

1191
01:06:11,200 --> 01:06:14,240
Speaker 1: people would just call that spot the steel. Almost everyone

1192
01:06:14,280 --> 01:06:15,840
Speaker 1: in his life at some point has said like, oh

1193
01:06:15,880 --> 01:06:18,240
Speaker 1: he got that from me, right, Like he got a

1194
01:06:18,320 --> 01:06:23,080
Speaker 1: different element of a different era from me. Mick Jagger

1195
01:06:23,080 --> 01:06:25,280
Speaker 1: would famously joke never wear a pair of new shoes

1196
01:06:25,280 --> 01:06:28,720
Speaker 1: in front of David which I don't think was a joke.

1197
01:06:29,640 --> 01:06:32,640
Speaker 1: But anyway, David getting bringing this all back to the

1198
01:06:32,720 --> 01:06:35,800
Speaker 1: legendary Stardus Cowboy, David had become a lifelong fan of him,

1199
01:06:35,840 --> 01:06:37,680
Speaker 1: and he covered the I took a Trip on a

1200
01:06:37,760 --> 01:06:41,040
Speaker 1: Gemini spaceship song on his two thousand two albums Heathen,

1201
01:06:41,520 --> 01:06:44,800
Speaker 1: which surely put some badly needed royalties and the coffers

1202
01:06:44,840 --> 01:06:47,960
Speaker 1: of Mr Cowboy. Uh. And they met that year for

1203
01:06:48,000 --> 01:06:50,800
Speaker 1: the very first time after Bowie had obsessed over him

1204
01:06:50,840 --> 01:06:55,160
Speaker 1: for thirty years, and he reportedly completely fanboyed out, which

1205
01:06:55,200 --> 01:06:59,120
Speaker 1: is just truly adorable. So you know, I mean some

1206
01:06:59,320 --> 01:07:04,120
Speaker 1: of you will about Bowie and his you know Magpie. Yeah,

1207
01:07:04,200 --> 01:07:07,200
Speaker 1: he was a true music fan and when he loved somebody,

1208
01:07:07,320 --> 01:07:09,360
Speaker 1: he really went went to bat for him and tried

1209
01:07:09,400 --> 01:07:11,880
Speaker 1: to help him when he could. He could meet dignitaries

1210
01:07:11,960 --> 01:07:13,520
Speaker 1: or whatever all day long. When when he met an

1211
01:07:13,600 --> 01:07:16,040
Speaker 1: artist who really touched him, it showed, And I always

1212
01:07:16,040 --> 01:07:18,240
Speaker 1: thought that was cool. I love it when artists stay fans.

1213
01:07:19,000 --> 01:07:22,320
Speaker 1: Um So we have the name, we have the soul,

1214
01:07:23,160 --> 01:07:26,240
Speaker 1: the clothes. Everyone knows that it's the clothes that make

1215
01:07:26,320 --> 01:07:29,760
Speaker 1: the man, or in this case the star man. For inspiration,

1216
01:07:30,520 --> 01:07:33,560
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you very much for inspiration. Bowie looked

1217
01:07:33,600 --> 01:07:37,000
Speaker 1: towards the futuristic minimalist outfits worn and Stanley Kubrick's A

1218
01:07:37,040 --> 01:07:41,480
Speaker 1: Clockwork Orange, which had been released in nineteen one, only

1219
01:07:41,520 --> 01:07:44,840
Speaker 1: to be promptly banned in the UK. Um Specifically, he

1220
01:07:44,960 --> 01:07:48,560
Speaker 1: loved the look of the drugs, the androgynist teenage thugs

1221
01:07:48,560 --> 01:07:53,120
Speaker 1: who's crisp white outfits underscored their ruthless brutality. David would

1222
01:07:53,200 --> 01:07:55,680
Speaker 1: later say, I wanted to take the hardness and violence

1223
01:07:55,680 --> 01:07:57,920
Speaker 1: of those outfits and soften them up by using the

1224
01:07:57,920 --> 01:08:02,680
Speaker 1: most ridiculous fabrics. And they assembled outlandish jump suits from

1225
01:08:02,720 --> 01:08:07,240
Speaker 1: cloth obtained at London department stores and vintage furniture fabric

1226
01:08:07,320 --> 01:08:11,560
Speaker 1: and the end result was very kind of charmingly homemade looking,

1227
01:08:11,600 --> 01:08:14,400
Speaker 1: at least the early versions of the Zig Start Us outfits.

1228
01:08:14,560 --> 01:08:16,719
Speaker 1: Bowie would later have meant. It was a cross between

1229
01:08:16,720 --> 01:08:20,439
Speaker 1: the Djinski and Woolworth's, something cobbled together from whatever was

1230
01:08:20,520 --> 01:08:23,320
Speaker 1: lying around, and the look was finished off with a

1231
01:08:23,360 --> 01:08:26,120
Speaker 1: pair of knee length wrestling boots done up in fire

1232
01:08:26,120 --> 01:08:29,040
Speaker 1: engine red, and he debuted the look at his twenty

1233
01:08:29,040 --> 01:08:32,720
Speaker 1: fifth birthday party on January eighth, nine, seventy two, a

1234
01:08:32,760 --> 01:08:35,720
Speaker 1: fitting start to a new year that would be defined

1235
01:08:35,880 --> 01:08:39,360
Speaker 1: by ziggy at least in his life. Um David might

1236
01:08:39,400 --> 01:08:42,800
Speaker 1: have been very enthusiastic about dressing up as a flamboyant,

1237
01:08:42,840 --> 01:08:46,960
Speaker 1: androgynous alien, but his band not so much. These were

1238
01:08:46,960 --> 01:08:50,160
Speaker 1: all tough guys from northern England, and when they first

1239
01:08:50,160 --> 01:08:52,400
Speaker 1: got to look at these new outfits, their initial reactions

1240
01:08:52,400 --> 01:08:56,519
Speaker 1: were variations of I'm not wearing that. Mick Ronson moaned,

1241
01:08:56,800 --> 01:08:59,400
Speaker 1: I'm a musician, I've got friends that are gonna watch

1242
01:08:59,479 --> 01:09:02,240
Speaker 1: me and again. He was a hard man from Hall,

1243
01:09:02,439 --> 01:09:06,120
Speaker 1: this rough industrial town in northern England, so he was horrified.

1244
01:09:06,280 --> 01:09:08,920
Speaker 1: And he was so horrified that he actually packed his

1245
01:09:09,000 --> 01:09:12,519
Speaker 1: bags and headed to the local train station, intent on

1246
01:09:12,600 --> 01:09:15,439
Speaker 1: quitting the ban for good, apparently just before a gig

1247
01:09:15,760 --> 01:09:18,400
Speaker 1: and drummer Woody woodman Z spent an hour on the

1248
01:09:18,439 --> 01:09:23,559
Speaker 1: train platform coaxing him back into the fault. But after

1249
01:09:23,600 --> 01:09:27,600
Speaker 1: the rapturous response from audiences, particularly the ladies in the audience,

1250
01:09:27,840 --> 01:09:30,840
Speaker 1: to these new outfits, they all very quickly warmed to

1251
01:09:30,880 --> 01:09:34,400
Speaker 1: the idea of these crazy clothes, and David would later say,

1252
01:09:34,520 --> 01:09:36,519
Speaker 1: when the guys realized how many girls they could pull,

1253
01:09:36,560 --> 01:09:38,840
Speaker 1: and they look so outlandish they took to it like

1254
01:09:39,000 --> 01:09:41,479
Speaker 1: fish to water. They never had so many women in

1255
01:09:41,520 --> 01:09:45,400
Speaker 1: their lives, and so they got tardier and tartier, and

1256
01:09:45,720 --> 01:09:48,519
Speaker 1: not later and later they got sluttier and sluttier looking.

1257
01:09:50,040 --> 01:09:53,280
Speaker 1: He and Bowie used reverse psychology to get these gruff

1258
01:09:53,320 --> 01:09:55,519
Speaker 1: guys to wear makeup, telling them that it would make

1259
01:09:55,560 --> 01:09:59,160
Speaker 1: them look normal under the bright spotlights. So there was

1260
01:09:59,200 --> 01:10:02,639
Speaker 1: always this mad dash for mascara before showtime, which Trevor

1261
01:10:02,720 --> 01:10:06,680
Speaker 1: Bolder also, in addition to being a great basis one

1262
01:10:06,720 --> 01:10:09,439
Speaker 1: of my favorites from the era, probably the best set

1263
01:10:09,479 --> 01:10:12,400
Speaker 1: of mutton chops in Rock and roll. Yeah, they're like

1264
01:10:12,800 --> 01:10:15,280
Speaker 1: they look like badgers growing out of the side of

1265
01:10:15,280 --> 01:10:24,400
Speaker 1: the good Lord. Sorry as you were well. Speaking of hair,

1266
01:10:24,960 --> 01:10:29,560
Speaker 1: the hair came last. Ziggy's famous hair came indirectly from

1267
01:10:29,760 --> 01:10:33,200
Speaker 1: David's mother, which is very strange, especially we don't have

1268
01:10:33,280 --> 01:10:35,360
Speaker 1: time to get into this in this episode esppecially considering

1269
01:10:35,760 --> 01:10:40,360
Speaker 1: their difficult relationship. UM. For more, check out David Bowie

1270
01:10:40,400 --> 01:10:44,280
Speaker 1: Off the Record, available from the ir DADO. Thank you,

1271
01:10:44,360 --> 01:10:47,519
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. UM. David's mother, Peggy, had her

1272
01:10:47,560 --> 01:10:50,320
Speaker 1: hair done by a local hairdresser named Susy Fusey I

1273
01:10:50,360 --> 01:10:53,080
Speaker 1: think is her name, who would later become Mark Ronson's

1274
01:10:53,120 --> 01:10:55,880
Speaker 1: not Mark Ronson, who would later become Mick Ronson's wife.

1275
01:10:56,360 --> 01:11:00,559
Speaker 1: And David's mom passed along Susie's name to David's wife Angie,

1276
01:11:00,600 --> 01:11:02,760
Speaker 1: who came in one day to get her haircut. She

1277
01:11:02,840 --> 01:11:06,320
Speaker 1: got a spiky new do. It was dyed red, white

1278
01:11:06,400 --> 01:11:10,759
Speaker 1: and blue and very unmissible, just like Angie herself. And

1279
01:11:10,760 --> 01:11:13,640
Speaker 1: Andree was thrilled with Susie's work and suggested that she

1280
01:11:13,760 --> 01:11:15,559
Speaker 1: come back to their house to see what could be

1281
01:11:15,560 --> 01:11:19,479
Speaker 1: done with David's shaggy locks, but she deemed too Rod

1282
01:11:19,640 --> 01:11:21,840
Speaker 1: Steward dish. That's a quote, and a good one, and

1283
01:11:21,840 --> 01:11:24,040
Speaker 1: it's funny, I mean, unlike the rest of David's style,

1284
01:11:24,120 --> 01:11:28,120
Speaker 1: it really hadn't evolved much from his sixties folk hippie period.

1285
01:11:28,520 --> 01:11:31,479
Speaker 1: And Susie suggested that David get a haircut too, and

1286
01:11:31,560 --> 01:11:33,679
Speaker 1: David was open to it, and he started looking through

1287
01:11:33,720 --> 01:11:35,880
Speaker 1: magazines to try to find the look that he wanted,

1288
01:11:36,160 --> 01:11:37,599
Speaker 1: and the other result was a blend of a few

1289
01:11:37,600 --> 01:11:40,880
Speaker 1: different fashion spreads. One was modeled Christine Walton in the

1290
01:11:40,920 --> 01:11:44,400
Speaker 1: August issue of Vogue, and also a bit of Kansai

1291
01:11:44,520 --> 01:11:47,959
Speaker 1: Yamamoto shoot in Harper's where he used a red kabuki

1292
01:11:48,080 --> 01:11:51,040
Speaker 1: lion's wig too great effect. And that's not the last

1293
01:11:51,080 --> 01:11:55,400
Speaker 1: time we'll talk about Kansai Yamamoto, the great Japanese fashion designer.

1294
01:11:55,840 --> 01:11:58,559
Speaker 1: So Susie got out of razor and started slicing out

1295
01:11:58,560 --> 01:12:01,479
Speaker 1: this elaborate feathered I I was just puffy in some

1296
01:12:01,520 --> 01:12:04,360
Speaker 1: places and spiky and others like a sci fi peacock.

1297
01:12:05,200 --> 01:12:08,320
Speaker 1: And um, a few weeks later, he would famously die

1298
01:12:08,400 --> 01:12:11,439
Speaker 1: his locks red hot red. That was the color marked

1299
01:12:11,439 --> 01:12:14,200
Speaker 1: on the die, and the whole Ziggy start Us look

1300
01:12:14,280 --> 01:12:16,920
Speaker 1: was in place. I can't believe he still had hair

1301
01:12:17,200 --> 01:12:20,200
Speaker 1: after what they put that that that that die had

1302
01:12:20,200 --> 01:12:22,840
Speaker 1: thirty volume peroxide in it, and then on top of that,

1303
01:12:22,920 --> 01:12:26,639
Speaker 1: she used an anti dandruff treatment called guard like over

1304
01:12:26,680 --> 01:12:29,679
Speaker 1: the count to help it stiffen and stay in place

1305
01:12:29,760 --> 01:12:35,160
Speaker 1: like my gel a Man vocal cords hair. He put

1306
01:12:35,200 --> 01:12:37,840
Speaker 1: everything through the ringer, including his dick, as we'll talk

1307
01:12:37,880 --> 01:12:41,880
Speaker 1: about later. UM, I don't have a segway for this

1308
01:12:41,960 --> 01:12:46,880
Speaker 1: next one. Going from there, Uh, the look was in place.

1309
01:12:47,240 --> 01:12:50,439
Speaker 1: Time to capture for posterity. There you go the cover

1310
01:12:50,520 --> 01:12:52,560
Speaker 1: for Ziggy start Us and the Spiders from Mars was

1311
01:12:52,600 --> 01:12:57,120
Speaker 1: shot January nineteen seventy two at photographer Brian Ward's studio

1312
01:12:57,439 --> 01:13:00,320
Speaker 1: in Little Muse in central London. They'd had a few

1313
01:13:00,320 --> 01:13:03,639
Speaker 1: studio shots with the band before wards suggested that David

1314
01:13:03,800 --> 01:13:06,320
Speaker 1: accompany him outside to the street. It's the golden how

1315
01:13:06,479 --> 01:13:08,800
Speaker 1: he wants to make the most out of the last

1316
01:13:08,840 --> 01:13:11,280
Speaker 1: bit of natural light. But it was a cold and

1317
01:13:11,400 --> 01:13:14,680
Speaker 1: rainy winter night and David had the flu, so he

1318
01:13:14,720 --> 01:13:17,439
Speaker 1: didn't want to walk too far. He wanted something that

1319
01:13:17,560 --> 01:13:21,679
Speaker 1: evoked a Brooklyn Alley scene, so he grabbed mcronson's guitar.

1320
01:13:22,320 --> 01:13:24,280
Speaker 1: They walk a few doors down from the studio to

1321
01:13:24,439 --> 01:13:28,240
Speaker 1: twenty three head In Street and David stopped, rested his

1322
01:13:28,240 --> 01:13:32,639
Speaker 1: foot on the stoop and four snaps. That is a

1323
01:13:32,720 --> 01:13:38,439
Speaker 1: tremendously high batting average of film. To iconography. UM five

1324
01:13:38,520 --> 01:13:42,679
Speaker 1: years dot Com, which is the insanely detailed Bowie fan site,

1325
01:13:42,680 --> 01:13:45,000
Speaker 1: has suggested that some of the inspiration from the cover

1326
01:13:45,439 --> 01:13:50,200
Speaker 1: came from Michael Powell's proto serial killer film from called

1327
01:13:50,200 --> 01:13:54,439
Speaker 1: Peeping Tom, which is about a London photographer who kills

1328
01:13:54,840 --> 01:14:00,639
Speaker 1: his subjects with a knife hidden in his camera tripod. Um. Really,

1329
01:14:00,960 --> 01:14:02,560
Speaker 1: it's like up there with psycho as far as like

1330
01:14:02,600 --> 01:14:06,479
Speaker 1: the early slasher cinema. Uh, so make of that what

1331
01:14:06,520 --> 01:14:09,880
Speaker 1: you will. Now let's talk about the sign. Let's get

1332
01:14:09,880 --> 01:14:13,080
Speaker 1: even more granular and weird with it. Bowie's photographed standing

1333
01:14:13,120 --> 01:14:15,960
Speaker 1: outside of a fur dealer called k West, which you

1334
01:14:15,960 --> 01:14:19,080
Speaker 1: can see on the cover, and uh, as fans are

1335
01:14:19,080 --> 01:14:22,280
Speaker 1: want to do project all kinds of stuff onto that. Uh.

1336
01:14:22,320 --> 01:14:24,920
Speaker 1: They have theorized that it was a code for Quest,

1337
01:14:25,479 --> 01:14:30,200
Speaker 1: as in Galaxy Quest. Um. Hm, great movie. We should

1338
01:14:30,200 --> 01:14:33,200
Speaker 1: do an episode on that. Bowie loved it because it

1339
01:14:33,280 --> 01:14:36,160
Speaker 1: added a sort of you know, he loves all this

1340
01:14:36,520 --> 01:14:40,960
Speaker 1: meaning dota layers of interpretation stuff, So of course he

1341
01:14:41,000 --> 01:14:46,519
Speaker 1: loves that. But the good furriers of k West did not.

1342
01:14:47,360 --> 01:14:50,360
Speaker 1: They threatened our c a with legal action, writing a

1343
01:14:50,439 --> 01:14:53,880
Speaker 1: letter that read, in part, our clients are furriers of

1344
01:14:53,960 --> 01:14:57,360
Speaker 1: high repute to deal with a clientele generally far removed

1345
01:14:57,400 --> 01:15:00,200
Speaker 1: from the pop music world. Our clients certainly they have

1346
01:15:00,240 --> 01:15:03,080
Speaker 1: no wish to be associated with Mr Bowie or this record,

1347
01:15:03,280 --> 01:15:05,280
Speaker 1: as it might be assumed that there is some connection

1348
01:15:05,320 --> 01:15:08,519
Speaker 1: between our client's firm and Mr Bowie, which is certainly

1349
01:15:08,560 --> 01:15:12,519
Speaker 1: not the case. Incredibly British, but they did come to

1350
01:15:12,560 --> 01:15:15,360
Speaker 1: appreciate the steady flood of tourists who came to photograph

1351
01:15:15,400 --> 01:15:17,840
Speaker 1: their storefront until they closed in the early nineties. Then

1352
01:15:17,880 --> 01:15:20,400
Speaker 1: we're coming into it belongs in a museum. Part two.

1353
01:15:20,800 --> 01:15:26,000
Speaker 1: The original K West sign was quote retrieved by a

1354
01:15:26,040 --> 01:15:29,240
Speaker 1: Bowie fan after one night out on the tiles in

1355
01:15:31,040 --> 01:15:34,040
Speaker 1: This is according to the aforementioned five years dot com.

1356
01:15:34,080 --> 01:15:36,840
Speaker 1: They published an email exchange with this fan as well

1357
01:15:36,840 --> 01:15:39,559
Speaker 1: as his pictures of the sign. Uh. He claims that

1358
01:15:39,600 --> 01:15:41,800
Speaker 1: it was so badly damaged when he took it that

1359
01:15:42,080 --> 01:15:45,759
Speaker 1: this was an act of preservation. He said it quote

1360
01:15:45,760 --> 01:15:48,600
Speaker 1: it wouldn't have lasted a heavy storm. So it was

1361
01:15:48,680 --> 01:15:51,360
Speaker 1: ultimately restored and exhibited as part of a David Bowie

1362
01:15:51,400 --> 01:15:54,640
Speaker 1: exhibition in two thousand twelve, which is close enough to

1363
01:15:54,640 --> 01:15:58,040
Speaker 1: a museum to probably satisfy you. Huh, I was getting there. Yeah,

1364
01:15:59,640 --> 01:16:02,920
Speaker 1: And the same year that exhibition landed, a heritage plaque

1365
01:16:03,040 --> 01:16:06,600
Speaker 1: was placed at the site of the former K West Furriers,

1366
01:16:07,080 --> 01:16:10,160
Speaker 1: marking it into perpetuity as the place that Ziggy crashed

1367
01:16:10,240 --> 01:16:13,360
Speaker 1: to earth. Um. Now it's time to take the show

1368
01:16:13,640 --> 01:16:18,439
Speaker 1: on the road. The first Ziggy show is on January

1369
01:16:18,439 --> 01:16:22,439
Speaker 1: two at the Friars Aislesbury, not far where Cooper could

1370
01:16:22,439 --> 01:16:25,320
Speaker 1: filmed the subway attack scene in a clockwork orange. People

1371
01:16:25,360 --> 01:16:28,840
Speaker 1: paid sixty pence a ticket to see Bowie, who is amusingly,

1372
01:16:29,000 --> 01:16:32,559
Speaker 1: if not humbly, billed as the most beautiful person in

1373
01:16:32,600 --> 01:16:38,080
Speaker 1: the world. Sure, uh, only an hour from London. So

1374
01:16:38,280 --> 01:16:42,120
Speaker 1: many kids made the pilgrimage, and among them were Freddie

1375
01:16:42,120 --> 01:16:45,720
Speaker 1: Mercury and Roger Taylor, names you may recognize from a

1376
01:16:45,720 --> 01:16:49,080
Speaker 1: little group called Queen Uh. And if they were looking

1377
01:16:49,080 --> 01:16:52,360
Speaker 1: for inspiration for a theatrical, larger than life band fronted

1378
01:16:52,360 --> 01:16:55,599
Speaker 1: by a weird alien sex god, they certainly found it.

1379
01:16:57,640 --> 01:17:00,880
Speaker 1: Let's set the stage literally and metaphorically. The lights go down.

1380
01:17:01,000 --> 01:17:05,080
Speaker 1: Wendy Carlos synthesized version of Oh de Joy from the

1381
01:17:05,120 --> 01:17:10,000
Speaker 1: Clockwork Orange score blairs from the p a strobe lights,

1382
01:17:11,040 --> 01:17:15,240
Speaker 1: Trevor Boulder and his sideburns appear, Mick Ronson and his

1383
01:17:15,439 --> 01:17:19,320
Speaker 1: cheekbones appear, and they're all dressed in metallic cat suits.

1384
01:17:21,000 --> 01:17:23,880
Speaker 1: The drummer was also there. Woody Woodman see Head was

1385
01:17:23,920 --> 01:17:27,120
Speaker 1: also present. They launched him to hang onto yourself. They're

1386
01:17:27,160 --> 01:17:31,080
Speaker 1: opening tune as Bowie struts on stage with his spiky

1387
01:17:31,120 --> 01:17:36,880
Speaker 1: red hair paler than death himself, diamond patterned one piece

1388
01:17:37,320 --> 01:17:41,080
Speaker 1: red wrestling boots. I mean, I don't know. I'm surprised

1389
01:17:41,080 --> 01:17:46,320
Speaker 1: people's heads didn't actually literally explode. This blend of costume, choreography, drama,

1390
01:17:46,479 --> 01:17:48,719
Speaker 1: all couched within the context of a rock and roll show,

1391
01:17:48,760 --> 01:17:51,800
Speaker 1: nothing short of revolutionary. And then you have this, and

1392
01:17:51,800 --> 01:17:54,599
Speaker 1: then also I feel like we just keep coming away

1393
01:17:54,600 --> 01:17:58,719
Speaker 1: from this. The songs, the bangers, Banger after Banger, first

1394
01:17:58,720 --> 01:18:02,759
Speaker 1: time live live in the Flash, and people went April.

1395
01:18:03,439 --> 01:18:06,360
Speaker 1: They swarmed his dressing room. They wanted to know where

1396
01:18:06,360 --> 01:18:07,960
Speaker 1: he cut his hair, They wanted to know where he

1397
01:18:08,000 --> 01:18:10,919
Speaker 1: got his clothes. Some people just wanted to touch him.

1398
01:18:11,000 --> 01:18:15,280
Speaker 1: One girl was so overcome with emotion that she punched him,

1399
01:18:15,280 --> 01:18:18,080
Speaker 1: which sounds like something she should work out with her therapist.

1400
01:18:18,680 --> 01:18:21,320
Speaker 1: And the next day the headline about the show literally

1401
01:18:21,360 --> 01:18:24,680
Speaker 1: read A Star is Born. Not a stretch to call

1402
01:18:24,760 --> 01:18:27,160
Speaker 1: this one of the most far reaching moments in live

1403
01:18:27,240 --> 01:18:29,479
Speaker 1: rock and roll history. You know, you got your James

1404
01:18:29,520 --> 01:18:31,600
Speaker 1: Brown at the Apollo, You got Duke Gallington at the

1405
01:18:31,640 --> 01:18:35,040
Speaker 1: Cotton Club. You got Miles Davis at Newport, We got

1406
01:18:35,560 --> 01:18:44,000
Speaker 1: Zeppelin at Earl's Something Dealing at Newport, Dealing at Newport. Yeah, yeah,

1407
01:18:44,040 --> 01:18:49,840
Speaker 1: Beatles on Salt and Bowie at the Friars Aislesbury. Anyway,

1408
01:18:50,080 --> 01:18:52,360
Speaker 1: the effects of that night would ripple outward, touching on

1409
01:18:52,479 --> 01:18:56,719
Speaker 1: virtually every aspect of popular culture, not just music, but film, fashion,

1410
01:18:57,120 --> 01:19:01,080
Speaker 1: social and sexual mores, and the very nature of twentieth

1411
01:19:01,080 --> 01:19:05,760
Speaker 1: century fame itself. Uh. You know, you could call it

1412
01:19:05,800 --> 01:19:08,880
Speaker 1: the night the seventies began, couldn't you? Jordan's I think

1413
01:19:08,920 --> 01:19:11,679
Speaker 1: you could. Yes, you absolutely could. And I think that

1414
01:19:12,200 --> 01:19:14,879
Speaker 1: it's here that we should leave you all, dear listeners.

1415
01:19:14,920 --> 01:19:20,320
Speaker 1: For today Ziggy Stardust is born. Hallelujah, Rejoice. We'll talk

1416
01:19:20,360 --> 01:19:22,400
Speaker 1: about how the star Man made a star out of

1417
01:19:22,520 --> 01:19:26,880
Speaker 1: David and inspired generations of artists. On part two of

1418
01:19:26,920 --> 01:19:30,720
Speaker 1: Too Much Information, Ziggy start us edition, I go, what

1419
01:19:30,720 --> 01:19:33,519
Speaker 1: do you think? I am so excited and all and

1420
01:19:33,560 --> 01:19:36,200
Speaker 1: all of you dear people should be as well. All right, well,

1421
01:19:36,200 --> 01:19:38,439
Speaker 1: thank you so much for listening. My name is Jordan's

1422
01:19:38,840 --> 01:19:41,680
Speaker 1: and I'm Alex. Join us here next time for part two.

1423
01:19:46,960 --> 01:19:49,519
Speaker 1: Too Much Information was a production of I Heart Radio.

1424
01:19:49,720 --> 01:19:52,960
Speaker 1: The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan run Talk.

1425
01:19:53,120 --> 01:19:56,360
Speaker 1: The supervising producer is Mike Johns. The show was researched,

1426
01:19:56,479 --> 01:19:59,160
Speaker 1: written and hosted by Jordan run Talk and Alex Hegel,

1427
01:19:59,439 --> 01:20:02,599
Speaker 1: with original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra.

1428
01:20:03,080 --> 01:20:05,120
Speaker 1: If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave

1429
01:20:05,200 --> 01:20:07,719
Speaker 1: us a review. For more podcasts and I heart Radio,

1430
01:20:07,840 --> 01:20:10,840
Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever

1431
01:20:10,920 --> 01:20:12,200
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows