David Bowie On Killing Ziggy Stardust

On the night of July 3, 1973, David Bowie performed his last concert as Ziggy Stardust and killed his alter ego that had brought him to fame. Ziggy was Bowie’s creation. The rock star needed to be someone else on stage, and that person had been Ziggy. He made Ziggy, and Ziggy made Bowie the glitter rock king he was known as, but Ziggy realized his own prophecy. He rose on stage and died on stage by suicide, just like the story of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust warned listeners.

“Of all the shows on this tour, this particular show will remain with us the longest, because not only is it the last show of the tour, but it's the last show that we'll ever do. Thank you,” Ziggy said his parting words.

The decision to kill off his alter ego was sudden, but it has been the plan all along. 

David Bowie Believed Rock n Roll Was Devil’s Music

David Bowie wasn’t exactly a reliable source when it comes to the things he said. He has warned everyone not to take his words too seriously because just like anyone else, he changed his mind sometimes. But his view on rock n roll didn’t change much over the years. 

Bowie was skirting through a drug-dazed, sleep-deprived 1975 as the Thin White Duke when he cut the mind-blowing experimental album, Station To Station. He accidentally told a Rolling Stone reporter who he really thought about rock music.

“Rock has always been the devil’s music. You can’t convince me that it isn’t,” the rock star said. 

While the line is often taken out of context for shock value, what has led him to this conclusion proves to be interesting. Bowie lived through the 70s being crowned as the “glitter rock king.” Of course, the rock star didn’t give much attention to this title, but the level of stardom he had made him fear. He had so much power that it didn’t even feel real. 

“It’s (rock n roll) in great danger of becoming an immobile, sterile fascist that constantly spews its propaganda on every arm of the media. It rules and dictates a level of thought and clarity of intelligence that you’ll never raise above,” he said in the same interview.

The Problem of Rock and Its Teenage Audience

“Pop has the power to turn cliche into myth,” Nick Cohn, one of the best rock critics said after watching Gary Glitter and David Bowie in 1973. “Think about McLuhan. Or gulp and think about Hitler. And remember that we are talking about the dominant cultural experience and leisure habit of most young people today — a music that fails if it is so tame as to be simple entertainment. It must coerce one’s involvement, or it isn’t rock and it doesn’t work.”

Rock music was to be as provocative as possible. It was promoted to teenagers who have yet to form a deeper understanding of the world. It was made plastic. When Bowie reflected the success of Ziggy, he found it have everything to do with his teenager fan base. “Why do you think teenagers are the way they are? They run around like ants, chewing gum and flitting onto a certain style of dressing for a day; that’s as deep as they wish to go. It’s no surprise that Ziggy was a huge success,” Bowie told Cameron Crowe.

Ziggy made David Bowie. Ziggy exhilarated glam. But what Ziggy is, is an invention, a character that Bowie dreamed up based on a rock n roller called Taylor, who deteriorated on stage, claiming himself to be Jesus Christ. Teenagers got caught up in the grand concepts and out-of-the-world daze of this character, and even Bowie himself became obsessed with the fantasy he created. But none of it was real.

Ziggy Stardust Needed To Die

“Everybody was convincing me that I was a Messiah, especially on that first American tour. I got hopelessly lost in the fantasy,” said Bowie.

Initially a cultural movement soon became something else.

Calling it a cult wouldn’t be an exaggeration. What was it like to attend a Ziggy Stardust concert? Bowie wrote in 2002 about his high-profile chaotic show at Earl’s Court, “No one could hear, no one could see. There were fights out there, too. An unmitigated disaster. Lots of nude dancing in the aisles, though.”

When Bowie looked back, he reflected on the potential danger that Ziggy could have provoked. “I could have been Hitler in England. Wouldn’t have been hard. Concerts alone got so enormously frightening that even the papers were saying, ‘This ain’t rock music, this is bloody Hitler! Something must be done!’ And they were right,” he spoke on the same 1975 interview.

He killed Ziggy on a night in 1973.

There’s a downside in every movement, and when one person has too much power, it can become very problematic. The second wave punk resulted in a branch of Skinhead reviving Nazism, and Ziggy Stardust too commanded too much power and craze amongst the public. Such extreme then resulted in a chain of reaction.

In 1975, Bowie thought about his rise to stardom and said, “I think we are due for a revival of God-awareness, a very medieval, firm-handed masculine God awareness where we will go out and make the world right again. I’m feeling more and more that way.”

Surely he wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Old school religious-oriented organizations emerged, doing basically the same thing in the name of saving the world.