It was summer, 1972. East Kilbride, a "New Town" near Glasgow. I was 13 years old, and just getting into pop music.
I had favourite new song, which in the classic, cliched manner I heard first on Radio Luxembourg, under the bedclothes, with a tranny clutched to my ear.
I should explain, in those days a tranny was a transistor radio.
I didn't know if the song was by a man, or a woman, a band or a solo artist - and with the fading and interference that characterised the signal from Radio Luxembourg, I certainly couldn't make out all the lyrics.
But it sounded completely different from anything I'd ever heard in my life before. Everyone has a song like that, I imagine. Something that just sounds completely different, completely new, and completely exciting.
Thursday nights, of course, were for Top Of The Pops.
Unmissable, because in among The New Seekers doing the song from a Coke advert, the Pipes and Drums playing "Amazing Grace" and Benny Hill gurning his way through "Ernie, the fastest milkman in the West" (all of which had been number one that year), there was every chance T Rex might appear.
But that Thursday night I wasn't in front of the TV. I was upstairs, packing a rucksack for the next day's Scout camp, when I heard my dad calling me down to "come and look at this weirdo". Actually, he may not have used the word weirdo.
As I knew TOTP was on at that time, I galloped downstairs, and threw myself on the white, leather sofa in the sitting room.
Actually, it wasn't leather, it was leatherette. And it wasn't the sitting room. In our house it was the living room.
And on the screen, David Bowie. Singing the song, My song. "Starman".
And I could make out the words. More importantly, I could make out the meaning.
He sang "I had to phone someone so I picked on you, hoo, hoo", looked straight down the camera, and pointed his finger out of the screen, into the ether, and right into my eyes.
He was singing this strange, spacey, powerful lyric and he was singing and pointing directly at me!
And in that moment, everything changed.
Someone leant over my shoulder and turned a switch from "mono" to "colour".
I don't mean on the TV. I mean in East Kilbride. In Life. In The World.
From then on, I wasn't a kid, I was a teenager. I liked things my teachers didn't. I cared more about what I was wearing when I went out. I even started to wash.
And I understood cool. Just a little bit - I was never that cool. But the "Ziggy Stardust" album under your arm (big, on old style vinyl) made me feel just a little bit more cool. More knowing. More aware. And the same was true later with Aladdin Sane, Diamond Dogs, Heroes, Scary Monsters. But obviously not "Let's Dance".
Of course, I realised from later interviews with pop stars that he was also singing and pointing directly at Morrissey, Adam Ant, George Michael, Gary Kemp from Spandau Ballet, Boy George, and everyone who ever formed a punk band or became a New Romantic.
But that's what makes "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars" so important. Not just the album itself, but everything that flowed from it.
Glam rock, but with a knowing perspective. White Soul Boys who got into the sound of Philadelphia. Punk Rock, and thence Brit Pop and Indie.
Ziggy was released forty years ago, on this very day in 1972.
Virtually nothing of note from those days remains relevant. Except, perhaps, The Queen, who must currently be nursing the mother and father of all hangovers.
Ziggy changed everything for me. It lifted my eyes beyond my immediate surroundings. It showed me possibility.
Everything I know about showmanship and showing off, creativity and creative people, gender and gender politics, the understanding that if you want to change things and do things for yourself, you can, I learned from that great album and those two genius performers, David Bowie and Ziggy Stardust.
Years later, we played a track from Ziggy Stardust at my Dad's funeral, because after taking my young brother and me to see one of the last Ziggy live gigs, he fell for David Bowie too.
I hope they play one at mine.
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Nice one Kenny. When I've finished typing this I think I'll slip out the LP (yes, on vinyl), lower the needle into place, sit back and take another trip to Mars...
ReplyDeleteI'm a bit younger than you, at the same age it was 1984 for me. For new rock, that time was a wasteland and for many of my generation it was all about discovering the treasures of the recent past.
For me at that age, hearing the sounds for the first time of Pink Floyd's 'See Emily Play', The Kinks 'You Really Got Me', the Beatles 'Rain' and the Byrds 'Eight Miles High' made me set my sights on that far-out guitar-based psychedelic sound, inspiring my own songs and band.
Playing psychedelic rock in the late eighties to a audience of Rick Astley and Pet Shop Boy ears felt like we were far from home. Until 1990 when the hopes to shake off the dull 80s were ignited by a song I heard playing over the speaker in a clothes shop. It sounded like someone had distilled my musical dreams and packed it into a brand new single. It was Blur with 'There's no other way'.
They had grown up, like us, looking back, trawling through second hand record shops, gobbling up re-issue back catalogues on new fangled CDs.
To me that moment was the sign of the return, full circle. Music was back. It opened up the whole Madchester, baggy, indie, Britpop era where every band had Kinks in their DNA, Bowies in their soul and the Beatles Revolver as their Bible. Cue Ocean Colour Scene, Pulp, Kula Shaker, Dodgy, Oasis and my favourites; Supergrass.
Have a peek at my thoughts on why you have to play vinyl here: http://aydinstone.wordpress.com/2012/04/16/a-record-for-your-life/
Deep Purple in Rock, Dark Side Of The Moon and On The Threshold Of A Dream - all around between 1970 - 1972 fab music I play to this day.
ReplyDeleteIn fact Im listening to one right now on spotify!
Bless you Kenny for reminding me...
Regards
Peter Roper
p.s. Lets be clear seventies music, especially christmas music, will always be the best!!!
:)
Great comments guys - and so many favourite tunes we share. Ayd - my 'late discovery' experience was during the early days of punk. I was trawling around a record shop (yes, vinyl) and came across an original of "My generation" by The Who. Hissy, fizzy, and played loud, it was absolutely fantastic. And I agree with you Peter about the 70s. The decade that taste forgot? Never!
ReplyDeleteThanks for everything Kenny.
ReplyDeleteFantastic piece, I'm so glad I clicked the link to read it!
ReplyDeleteRIP. The love remains for ever!
Great piece, Kenny. I too had a similar liberating experience with the Thin White Duke. It was early 1975 and BBC were airing 'Cracked Actor' the Alan Yentob documentary about Bowie. It was showing on a Sunday and it clashed with the weekly mass at the local church that our father, a hard-as-nails old-school Scotsman of Irish heritage made my older sister and I attend. Both of us were HUGE Bowie fans so we pleaded to be excused, but he was having none of it. I should point out at this stage that father never attended mass himself! Anyway, my Italian mum stepped in and said "They're old enough to make their own decisions" and amazingly, he relented. We sat glued to the telly, watching Bowie weave his magic in a fascinating documentary (you can see on YouTube) whilst dad, for the first few minutes, muttered asides, none of which are repeatable in these Woke/Cancel times (don't start me on that!). About halfway through, I dared to risk a glance at dad ... and the old bugger was enjoying it! When it was over, dad remarked on how entertaining Bowie was and that he was a real talent ... and this, from the old reactionary who though Gilbert O'Sullivan was the be all and end all of music! Yep, Bowie was a game changer for me too and his was the only celebrity death that made me sob. Genius.
ReplyDelete