The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars (1972)
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars is a 1972 art rock album by David Bowie.
A doomed rock messiah lands on a dying Earth, and David Bowie built a whole persona to sing him. Released in 1972, the album follows Ziggy Stardust, an alien pop idol carrying a final message to a planet with five years left. Bowie and producer Ken Scott cut it at Trident Studios with the Spiders from Mars, and Mick Ronson's guitar tears through 'Moonage Daydream' and 'Suffragette City' while 'Starman' and 'Rock 'n' Roll Suicide' frame the rise and the fall. Glam theatrics, science fiction, and real ache sit together across eleven tracks that still define reinvention as pop art.
Quick answers
What is The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars about?
A doomed rock messiah lands on a dying Earth, and David Bowie built a whole persona to sing him. Released in 1972, the album follows Ziggy Stardust, an alien pop idol carrying a final message to a planet with five years left. Bowie and producer Ken Scott cut it at Trident Studios with the Spiders from Mars, and Mick Ronson's guitar tears through 'Moonage Daydream' and 'Suffragette City' while 'Starman' and 'Rock 'n' Roll Suicide' frame the rise and the fall. Glam theatrics, science fiction, and real ache sit together across eleven tracks that still define reinvention as pop art.
When was The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars released?
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars was released in 1972.
Who made The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars?
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars is by David Bowie.
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A few thoughts on The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars
Fans chasing the alien-messiah myth should watch Velvet Goldmine, Todd Haynes's glam-rock fever dream built on David Bowie's shape-shifting years. The Man Who Fell to Earth casts Bowie himself as a stranded extraterrestrial, the Ziggy story turned into cinema. For more of the same art-school swagger, Roxy Music's debut arrived the very same year.
Movies and shows built around rock's larger-than-life mythology
Ziggy Stardust turned David Bowie into an alien messiah built for the stage, and that same larger-than-life music mythology shows up in Velvet Goldmine's fictionalized glam scene, Bowie's own turn as a literal alien in The Man Who Fell to Earth, the mass spectacle of Live Aid and the campy showmanship of Eurovision Song Contest.
Albums that reach for the same theatrical, epic scale
Bowie built Ziggy Stardust as a full concept record running eleven tracks from rise to fall, and that same reach for theatrical scale drives A Night at the Opera's genre-hopping bombast, Meddle's side-long ambition, Hotel California's cinematic sweep and Whats the Story Morning Glory's arena-sized Britpop hooks.
The Beatles albums that show a band reinventing itself fast
Ziggy Stardust reinvented Bowie from folk singer to glam alien inside one record, and The Beatles ran through their own reinventions just as quickly, from the beat-pop of With the Beatles and Beatles for Sale through Revolver's studio experiments to Let It Be's stripped-back final bow.