David Bowie. Ziggy Stardust vs Aladdin Sane

If it’s true that everybody’s got a book inside them, then I think there’s also room for a David Bowie album. Are you sitting comfortably?

Few artists have equalled the longevity and consistency of Bowie’s output between 1969’s Space Oddity and 1980’s Scary Monsters. That’s 13 albums. Musically, he didn’t really put a foot wrong during that period - although he did put his foot in something nasty for much of the following years. In his golden era, he created and aped styles from Space Oddity’s hippy folk, The Man Who Sold The World's sleeping pill US Rock to Glam Pop, Plastic Soul and the late 70’s Eno assisted electronica.

Each album was properly innovative but still notched up proper hits. So that’s settled then...David Bowie = pop genius between 1969 and 1980. Now you’ve got to choose the best album between The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane.

Ziggy is yer basic run of the mill concept album where an alien in the guise of a rock musician comes to save the world but is destroyed by his own excesses and the love of his fans. Aladdin Sane released the following year is Ziggy goes to America. (Each song title has the city where it was written in brackets)

Both of them still sound fantastic, but quite different to each other. But as always context is everything. I got into the records aged 15 in 1979 but I think it would have been very different aged 15 in 1973 when you’ve got the national “I can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman” conversations round the family telly. For me it was just great sounding music that clearly influenced the current music that I was listening to...6 years earlier and it would have been revolutionary.

Ziggy opens with 5 years about the imminent (well in 5 years time) end of the world, and the piano has got echoes of Lou Reed's Perfect day. Bowie had produced Reed’s Transformer album the same year. The final crescendo also has something of the feel of the end of the Beatles Day In The Life.

I think the thing about the whole lp is that it’s impact was greater than the some of it’s parts. I mean, basically we’ve got a bloke with sticky up hair and a dodgy eyeball, who may or may not be gay, wearing a quilted jumpsuit, singing half baked sci fi (and a rock opera to boot) with a guitarist in a silver suit who gurned mightily but didn’t have Lady Stardust’s “animal grace.”

Mick Ronson’s guitar playing is immense but the actual sound is really interesting, because of the way it floats on top of an unusually loud acoustic rhythm track. Soul Love is a great example of this. The slashing guitar that underpins the “Love is careless in it’s choosing” chorus has power but no extreme bass or treble, just a harsh powerful distortion...the warmth that you’d normally expect to hear in a gloriously wanged guitar sound actually comes from the acoustic.

Part of the Ziggy character is based on Vince Taylor (The Clash covered his Brand New Cadillac) and Ziggy as an album is totally in love with Rock ‘n’ Roll in a way that no one would be now. “Awl right... Out a sight...Hey Man... Come on...Let the children boogie...Wham bam Thank you mam.” Hang On to Yourself is a joyous lunging rock n roll celebration, “Laying On Electric Dreams” and it’s 3 chord descending guitar pattern became one of Punk’s musical building blocks. Sid Vicious taught himself to play bass by staying up one night with some speed, and a copy of Hang On To Yourself. It’s unconfirmed whether he actually had a bass with him that night.

Lady Stardust was originally demoed as “Song for Marc” (lady shoe wearing Marc Bolan, the Bopping Elf). With it’s descriptions of the singer who is both reviled and adored for “the make up on his face…His long black hair, his animal grace...I smiled sadly for a love I could not obey” It is the acoustic companion piece to the full on electric (but equally homo erotic) song Ziggy Stardust. ("Well hung and snow white tan”) Both songs are as gay as lederhosen and must have sounded astonishing to a mainstream audience in 1972.

The album ends with Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide (back to that Rock n Roll as a verb, a noun.... and a lifestyle) with it’s huge climactic ending of scary troll backing vocals singing “You’re wonderful” over and over again.... and over a massive strings and guitar wave.

If Ziggy Stardust is an album that constantly name checks Rock ‘n’ Roll, then Aladdin Sane just gets on with the job of actually doing it.

Watch That Man is a Stonesy riff monster with the vocals deliberately mixed low to give it a more mystery. The title track of Aladdin Sane has a bonkers noodling piano section by Mike Garson. It’s as avant garde as you could get and considering this album was the follow up to the massively successful Ziggy Stardust it just shows Bowie’s confidence and fearlessness at the time.

The album also has 2 bone fide hits in Drive In Saturday and Jean Genie. Both songs actually sound like the 70’s...saxophones were fruitier in those days. The loud acoustic/floating electric sound of Ziggy is replaced with a straightforward crunching electric. It sounds brilliant; Mick Ronson was on top form. The opening riffs of Panic in Detroit and the writhing squealing Cracked Actor are rarely bettered.

There is a wooziness to the sound of the album though that stops it being traditional sounding. Aladdin Sane has got it, as has Lady Grinning Soul and the Brecht/Brel/Scott Walker sound of Time with it’s legendary line “Time flexes like a whore falls wanking to the floor” What can it all mean? The lines “In Quaaludes and red wine, demanding Billy dolls and other friends of mine” refers to New York Dolls drummer Billy Murcia who had drowned in the bath the previous year.

The cover of Lets Spend The Night Together is an absolute romp in all senses of the word. When it breaks down in the middle Bowie murmurs “Our love comes from above...Do it…Lets make love!”

Meanwhile Ronson is making filthy and phallic guitar sliding noises. The band had done the avant garde bit on the title track, now they were getting back to some very base basics.

In terms of influence and context, Ziggy is the more important album but if I had to choose between the two albums I’d go for Aladdin Sane, just because I like it’s sound so much. And if ever an album cover came to define an artist then Aladdin Sane’s lightening flash make up and collarbone teardrop gave Bowie his most memorable image