1972 Bowie: Ziggy Stardust
This Album holds together as a unit more than most, telling a single, unified story regarding the tragedy of the rock star. It is for this reason said to be one of the first "concept albums." The first side is not a tragedy, and at first seems unrelated to the story of Ziggy Stardust the rock star on Side Two. The key to the unity of the album is the connection. Side One is not a tragedy, but has the structure of comedy, the structure of an ascent. This is more remarkable since Side One begins with the news that the earth has only five years to continue. There is no Ziggy on Side One. The character is Bowie himself, and he avoids the tragedy of the rock star, in part by the lesson of rock tragedy studied on Side Two. He appears briefly in each of the first two songs, where the lyric speaks in the first person of "I," and then more fully in Moonage daydream, where he tells us who he is. The last two songs on Side One are about his activities. Side two is then the tragedy of the rock star Ziggy.
"Five Years" has the dramatic setting of the day that mankind learns that there are very surely only five years left to the earth and humanity. The particular disaster is not mentioned, since this is not what is important. Nicholas Pegg (p. 78) cites Bowie as saying he imagined that the earth was running out of resources. Yet it is as though the news were that there were some unavoidable astronomical disaster, as an asteroid collision, or an inevitable shifting of the poles known to be coming in exactly five years. That his brain hurt like a warehouse recalls the warehouse eyes of Dylan in "Sad Eyed Lady." Plato's Socrates, in one theory of knowledge, compares the mind to an aviry (Theatetus). The difference between folk prophesy in "Hard Rain" and in "Five Years," just five years later, shows the result of the transition.
Pushing through the market square
So many mothers sighing eyes
News had just come over
We had five years left to cry in
News guy wept and told us
Earth was really dying
Cried so much his face was wet
Then I knew
He was not lying.
I heard telephones, Opera house, favorite melody
I saw boys, toys, electric irons and T. V's
My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare
I had to cram so many things to store, everything in there
And all the fat skinny people
And all the tall short people
And all the nobody people
And all the somebody people
I never thought I'd need so many people
Girl my age went off her head
Hit some tiny children
If the black hadn't have pulled her off
I think she would have killed them
Soldier with a broken arm
fixed his stare to the wheels of a Cadillac
Cop knelt and kissed the feet of a priest
And the queer threw up at the sight of that
I think I saw you in an ice cream parlor
Drinking milk shakes cold and long
Smiling and waving and looking so fine
Don't think you knew you were in this song
And it was cold, and it rained, so I felt like an actor
And I thought of Ma and I wanted to get back there
Your face, your race, the way that you talk
I'll kiss you, your beautiful
I want you to walk
We've got five years
Stuck on my eyes
What a surprise
Five years, stuck on my eyes, we've got five years
My brain hurts a lot
Five years That's all we've got.
The specter of the end sets off the colors of the world in their painful, transitory beauty. It also sets him to a feverish mental activity, as later in "Moonage Daydream," when he is bustin' up his brains for the words. The stanza of his seeing "you" in an ice cream parlor makes "Five Years" also a love song, and this is the ultimate addressee of the album. It also draws attention to the line of the illusion between imitation and reality. She is in the song the day she was waving, without knowing it. She also may not know she has only five years.
Soul Love
This song is like a snapshot of what he sees when he said "never thought I'd need so many people." It continues the theme from five years of looking at life and humanity from the apocalyptic view of a time when we knew we had only five years. The song surveys three different kinds of love, the mother, the young lovers and the priest, then summarizes them in a general statement that shows how all three are somehow the same thing, love. A fourth kind of love, that of the poet, is alluded. I once sent this song to a philosophy professor in demonstration of the argument that there is something more than swarmy love present in this popular music.
Soul love
She kneels before the grave
Her brave son
Who gave his life to save the slogan
That hovers between the headstones
And her eyes
For they penetrate her grieving
New love
A boy and girl are talking
New words
That only they can share in
New words
A love so strong it tears their hearts to sleep
In the fleeting hours of morning
The first stanza opens on a mother grieving for her son, a fallen soldier. He gave his life to save the slogan that hovers between many a headstone, but the poet penetrates what is not a mere name, in her eyes and her grieving. The compassion of Bowie is phenomenal, and the theme distinguishes his topic from the antiwar focus of the hippies. Her love smites her with almost unbearable grief, which leads to the reflection on the accidental and painful carelessness or irrationality of love, which seems to descend upon us defenseless mortals without reason. The refrain is:
Love is careless in it's choosing
Sweeping over cross a baby
Love descends on those defenseless
Idiot Love would spark the fusion
Inspiration have I none, just to touch the flaming dove
All I have is my love of love
And love is not loving.
Love is this thing that descends upon our circumstances, in our relations, as over a baby, when the parents begin to love it, and idiot love, unable to speak and give an account of itself, proceeds unknowingly or without foresight, yet as in the case of the new lovers considered next, it sparks the fusion, joining humans in all sorts of relations. But for himself, the solitary poetic observer of love, he has no inspiration, except to touch the flaming dove, or divine grace, as soon becomes apparent in his description of the Priest. He is not a lover, except of love, and so writes of three or four kinds. The Zen-like saying that "love is not loving" becomes apparent in the priest, and is the lover's own conclusion for himself. There is a point where erotic love contradicts itself. The most loving thing for the lover to do is to transcend eros, into agape.
The second kind of love is the new love of boy and girl talking new words that only they can share. Love tears their hearts to sleep as morning slips away.
The final set of lines is the most astonishing:
Soul love, the priest that tastes the word
and told of Love
And how my God on high is all love
Through reaching up my loneliness evolves
By the blindness that surrounds him
The priest that, as in the Eucharist, tastes the bread of life that is the word, has told of love, and "How my God on High is all love (I John 4:7, 16)." That God is love is the scriptural, and especially the New Testament message. The Greeks apparently never conceived of such a thing, but wrote of philia or friendship, as distinct from eros. In the writing of John Donahue on Beauty, the anum kara is translated "soul love" or "soul friend."[11] It is in conversation with the friend that we are understood, and so at home. As noted by Pegg, the priest is a character carried over from the scene in "Five Years," when he saw a cop kneel and kiss the feet of a priest, and a queer throw up at the sight of it. His loneliness, which at first appears the opposite of friendship, opens him to a fourth kind of love, evolves by the blindness that surrounds the love of the celibate priest. The emptiness of the lost lover is filled by Love that is divine, as he is guided by the priest. Philia is the word used by Plato in describing the "friend of God."
Moonage Daydream suddenly bursts electrified into the peak of the comic side of the album, and the live version shows it to be one of the six or eight best songs of Bowie. The electricity is a love call, for the one loved to enter into the rock vision. At the same time, should she take up his invitation, the goddess of the beloved is like an alien visitor, as the sci-fi myth replaces the divine with space aliens: "Put your ray gun to my head ? Press your space-face close to mine, love." She is lured to come play along. Is the woman here the space invader? The rock star as space invader captures the imagination of the fans. I remember the girls dressing up for the early Bowie shows. Nothing has yet been said of the starman. The first lines say he is an alligator, a mother-father calling to you. He is the space invader and will be a rockin' rollin' bitch for "you." So far his message has been the beauty of the humans and the significance of love against the background of the mortality of the human world. He is all the characters on Ziggy stardust, the alien, the tragic rock star and dude, who brings the same news as the news guy. The coherence of the album centers on the dual meaning of "star."
…So keep your mouth shut
Your sqaulkin' like a big monkey bird
and I'm bustin up my brains for the words:
Keep your 'lectric eye on me, babe
Put your ray gun to my head
Press your space face close to mine love
Freak out in a moonage daydream
Oh yea
Don't fake it, Baby
Lay the real thing on me
The church of man, lover,
Is such a holy place to be
Make me baby,
Make me know you really care
Make me jump into the air.
Keep your 'lectric eye…
I for one am willing to hear "the Church of Man, love, is such a holy place to be." Mankind is the bride of the Lord, and given the things said in Soul Love, it is not impossible that this is intended. The three themes of the album meet in these lines. For her to come along and give her genuine love is to enter into the church of man. But does he also mean man-love? Does he mean to say this too can be a holy sort of love? That would be the question, whether love of this sort works the same way to connect us with Love.
Starman continues the transcendence begun in Moonage Daydream, but suddenly changes to acoustic guitar, changes the pace by shifting the perspective to that of the terrestrial music fan who suddenly comes into contact with the space invaders:
Hey, now, look out low!
I didn't know what time it was, the lights were low
I leaned back on my radio
Some cat was layin down some rock and roll
Lotta soul he said
Then the loud sound did seem to fade
Came back like a slow voice on a wave of haze
That were no DJ, that was hazy cosmic jive
The contact with the heavenly beings is through the radio, or through this modern music. They may have heard Moonage Daydream! The starman story joins the rock star and the space alien in an analogy based on how the poet actually does connect the fan with the intelligible meaning of higher things.
There's a starman waiting in the sky
And he'd like to come and meet us,
But he thinks he'd blow our minds.
There's a starman waiting in the sky
And he's told us not to blow it,
'cause he knows its all worthwhile.
He told me, let all the children lose it,
Let all the children use it,
Let all the children boogie.
Look out your window, I can see his light
If we can sparkle, he may land tonight
Don't tell your papa, or he'll get us locked up in fright
This is how the Gospel message can be presented in pop art, in images that reflect the intelligible on a lower or visible level, as is done by C. S. Lewis, Tolkien, the Arthurian myths, and elsewhere. It is of course central to the Credo that He, Jesus, "will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and of his kingdom there will be no end." In other words, "There's a starman waiting in the sky / And he'd like to come and meet us / but he thinks he'd blow our minds." This cannot be presented in popular art directly, as in Jesus Christ Superstar, but it can be presented playfully through the analogy of the images. There is no indication of a savior in "Five Years." Bowie's description of the ecological demise of the earth, from a lack of resources. The place of a savior is to be held by the Star Man, who can, and Ziggy who cannot, bear the image.
There is a diabolical imitation of the divine, and a natural imitation, as the soul itself is an image of God. Whether the imitation is right or perverse depends on the logos or the meaning, which can of course only be accessed by reading the image. Here, the poet is not the star man himself, but has heard his new message from the star man first hand. The message is: "Let all the children boogie."
The story of Ziggy is different from "Space Oddity," as here in Ziggy, the spaceman is not an earthling, but one from the stars. In "Space Oddity," a terrestrial astronaut is likened to the modern seeker-poet who leaves his fellow humans, and the whole atmosphere, like the rocket man that is Bernie Taupin. Though there is nothing about the star man at all on side II, the intention seems to be that contact with the star man has made Ziggy Stardust a star. Carl Jung suggests that in the phenomenon of UFOs, we see a myth in the process of formation.[12] UFOs are seen sometimes by more than one person, with both with the eye and on radar, or seen by pilots. Apart from the question of what they are, the phenomenon of the UFO allows for the projection of material from the collective unconscious, much as modern art, by being unintelligible, calls up contents from within. The conscious circumstance of modern man is one of collective distress. Jung (p. 414) writes: "Yet the dominance of science leaves us without a living myth."
No Christian will contest the importance of a belief like that of the mediator, nor will he deny the consequences which the loss of it entails. So powerful an idea reflects a profound psychic need which does not simply disappear when the expression of it ceases to be valid. What happens to the energy that once kept the idea alive and dominant over the psyche? A political, religious, and social conflict of unprecedented proportions has split the consciousness of our age. When such tremendous opposites split asunder, we may expect with certainty that the need for a savior will make itself felt…between the psychic opposites there is generated a "uniting symbol" at first unconscious…Should something extraordinary or impressive then occur in the outside world, be it a human personality, a thing or an idea, the unconscious content can project itself upon it, thereby investing the projection carrier with numinous or mythical powers. Thanks to its numinosity, the projection carrier has a highly suggestive effect and grows into a savior myth whose basic features have been repeated countless times.
In this circumstance, the unconscious compensates by fulfilling the need for a savior. The secular mind imagines according to the principles of our modern view of the world, and the astonishing unknown objects become the occasion for the imagination, all apart from the question of the truth of the matter.
Ziggy too is especially adapted to the Moonage, when science fiction has been preparing us for decades for things like space travel, which then become realities. In this image, our imagination of the physical outer space expresses our religious imagination. The connection between these two, the visible and the spiritual, is a perennial question. It may be the most common living myth today, in the sense of Jung, as when the collective unconscious is projected outside. Jung took the imagination of UFO's very seriously, and the myth is literally believed in various forms by many, from evangelical Christians like Jack Van Impe to cults like those in California who committed suicide in expectation of meeting the aliens in this way, to those who believe themselves to have been abducted for various reasons. Given the serious versions of the modern myth, Bowie's version in art, or play might be welcome, and many fans were quite taken up by the whole thing. At the same time, there is a serious intelligible teaching presented through the image. This is that we are in circumstance where the end of humanity is possible in various ways, and the music coming through the radio does connect the listeners, through the musician, with an intelligence that is like a starman.
My favorite line of the whole album may be "If we can sparkle, he may land tonight." The glitter of the kids, their participation in the celestial twinkling, is what may call the starman to earth, when he no longer fears that he would blow our minds. In any case, he has told the poet to let the kids lose it, use it, and boogie. And do not blow it, 'cause he knows its all worthwhile!
The final song on side one, "It Ain't Easy" is an arrival, through the ascent of side one, at the tops, from where it is possible to view all the possibilities of life. The song was written by Ron Davies, and selected because of where it fits in the whole story:
When you climb to the top of a mountain
Look out over the seas
Think about the places we have for a young man to be
And then you jump back down to the rooftops
Look out over the town
Think about all of the strange things circulating 'round
It ain't easy
It ain't easy to get your love when your going down.
The poet then takes us to jump back down to the rooftops and look out over the town and think about all the strange things circulating around, a kind of political study. This is the ascent of philosophy and the return to the human world. The starman is the rock poet who has ascended to a comprehensive vision from the mountaintop. The first side of the album has been an ascent that began in the anticipation of immanent apocalypse, ascended through degrees of human love to a mythic level, and the teaching of the starman.
Side Two
This serious level means also that the musician is in danger of identifying himself with the starman when he becomes a star. Side two is a tragedy, the tragedy of the rock star that Bowie avoids. By writing the album, he shows the way through. The two sides aim toward a conjunction of comedy and tragedy. Interestingly, in Jung's essay on the modern myth, he considers a dream in which the UFO was described as a metal spider, and had a voice (p. 352). He writes : "Spiders, like all animals that are not warm blooded or have no cerebro-spinal nervous system, function in dreams as symbols of a profoundly alien psychic world. So far as I can see, they express contents which, though active, are unable to reach consciousness" (p.353). There is a danger of the identification of the ego or conscious personality with the "self." In Jungian psychology, both the starman and the UFOs would be called symbols of the self, which is the divine or the image of God in each. Contact with the archetypes leads to an inflation, where the ego attributes characteristics of the self to itself.
Lady Stardust is said to remind of Iggy Pop. Make up, long black hair. Animal grace, bright blue jeans, Songs of darkness and disgrace. There may be a bit of Marc Bolan in the character as well, who is however primarily fictional. But his Song went on forever, he was awful nice, quite paradise, and sang all night long
Fans emerge, "Femme fatals," women of fate, and he, observing "smiled sadly for a love I could not obey." He sighed when someone asked if he knew who the singer was. There is not a trace of Homosexual love in the first side of the album, and it enters here in his admiration for the strange musician.
Star The next two songs invite us to participate in the excitement of taking off with a successful rock band to catch our sympathetic participation in the tragedy. "I could make the transformation as a rock and roll star." The dreamer thinks he could fall in love alright and fall asleep at night as a rock star. Notice these are the things we really want– to fall in love and fall asleep at night. Then the last line, "Just watch me now," leads into the great jam "Hang Onto Yourself." This is just what was happening to Bowie, when the song Starman propelled him from a one hit musician to a superstar.
Rock and Roll Star is the dream that sets Ziggy off on his tragic journey, the dream of becoming a rock and roll star so that he can sleep at night and fall in love alright. It ends "Just watch me now," and we are captured by the fantasy.
Ziggy Stardust
Ziggy himself is a rock star who played guitar left handed, like Hendrix, but made it too far. Hendrix called himself a Voodoo child" in the song of that name. The snow white tan and other elements remind of Iggy Pop, especially the "like a leper…" He became the special man, and then they, the Spiders, became Ziggy's band. Pegg relates various elements of Ziggy to the various rock stars, and writes: "The point is not who he is, but the fact that he is a construct of rock's archetypes." He "played for time," and would jive them that they were voodoo, or, he developed a spiritual teaching according to which they were not real, or illusory. Does "play for time" mean that he is teaching illusions in order to extend his run as the Nazz, though this cannot last? The kids, their fans, he would disdain as crass, while:
…He was the Nazz, with god given ass.
He took it all too far
But boy could he play guitar.
The Nazz, as Oliver Trager relates, is a word for hipster from a novel by Lord Buckley, and the name of the band of Todd Rundgren from 67-69. There may be some connection in the origin of the word to the Nazarene, Jesus. And where were the spiders while the fly tried to break their balls? With just the beer light to guide them, they could only bitch about his fans and consider maiming his special ass hands. And Bowie's psychological account of the rock star syndrome:
Making love with his ego, Ziggy sucked up into his mind
Like a leper Messiah
When the kids would kill the man, I had to break up the band.
The patient of Jung who dreamed of a spider in his attic was in danger of a "pathological inflation," unable to distinguish, in one of Jung's books, between the ego and the self, the latter referring to the "supra-ordinate totality" of conscious and unconscious. This is an attempt to get at and avoid the tragedy of the rock star. What occurs is unfortunate, because while the rock star is not what he thinks he is, he is something special that might have been developed had he been able to hang on to himself. Jung thinks a Jewel is hidden in the symbol of the spider in the attic, though it is unlikely that the content will reach consciousness.
Suffragette City
The Suffragettes were women who demonstrated for the vote around the 1920's. In our school days, many fine ladies were advocates of these ladies things. The whole band comes apart when Ziggy falls in love with a liberated woman, somewhat as if she could be his "Yoko Ono." The scene, as Ziggy clears out the droogies (A term for comrades, from A Clockwork Orange) is like the way a man clears out his friends when he falls in love. Like the friends of Romeo, they feel slighted, but give way. But is not "Wham, Bam, Thank you ma'am" a playful dig at the feminists, or is he not being playful with one? The attitude of a man who might master one? (We'd call 'em chicks, and like it when it pissed them off, more mod than liberal! Gulls is gulls, a bird a bird!) This means that the story of Ziggy ends without a rock catastrophe, as occurred in many actual cases. The tragedy is replaced by Suffragette city and then Rock and Roll suicide.
Rock and Roll Suicide
The song begins with a man like Aqualung, an old decrepit man who was once a rock and roll person.
As the poem finds him, he slowly lights a cigarette, then almost gets hit by a Chevy as he crosses the road, stumbling home near dawn. He has no appetite, because he has lived too long. It is to him first, since he thinks he has reached the end alone, but also and especially the music listeners who heard the starman on the radio, that he sings the farewell stanza:
Oh no, love, your not alone
You've got your head all tangled up, but if I could only make you care
Oh no love, your not alone, no matter what or who you've been
No matter where nor where you've seen
All the knives seem to lacerate your brain
I've had my share, I'll help you with the pain
Your not alone.
Just turn on with me
And your not alone
Let's turn on and be wonderful
Give me your hands
Cause your wonderful
Oh give me your hands
One thinks back to when Bowie saw him, as his star was rising, and "smiled sadly" for a love he could not obey." Now he is there, like a presence at the end of his life, his Aqualung moment, to tell him he is not alone, no matter what or who he has been. The forgiveness of Bowie is holy, and turns out to be related to his avaunt guard acceptance of the strange. He can reach anyone where they are most alone because he has made freakishness open fashion. A similar intention to reach the lost is behind the Pink Floyd song "Hey You." His androgynous persona is central to this openness. This is somehow one of the great suicide prevention songs, a genre of its own, with REM's "Hold On." The message touches everyone in despair. The great compassion of Bowie demonstrates that, what ever his noted contact with things "occult," he is a spirit that is quite good. His great love for the people whose lives he touches, as well as the playful heart of Bowie shown in a song like "Kooks," show him to be an extraordinary sprite. One effect of the androgen y and Campy stuff is to open forgiveness: "No matter what or who you've been," "Your not alone." Just turn on with me, and your…wonderful," and then like a dramatists at the end of a play, asks give me your hands." One suspects that here the spaceman, in some eight lines, has used his "stardom" to enter into the souls of millions, and prevented thousands of actual suicides. From the heights that concluded the first side, he has reached deep into the human world, under the rooftops. And from the apocalyptic background that set off the significance of human love from low to high, ascending, and launched the star man, he has returned to earth in something like the recognition that if we did get the word that we had five years left, what we do is the same: comfort those in despair, whether we are able to reach thousands or only our own love.
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