Artists
Musicians featured in this piece are:
David Bowie – lead vocals
Mick Ronson – electric guitar
Trevor Bolder – bass guitar
Woody Woodmansey – drums
Written by David Bowie. Produced by David Bowie & Ken Scott, recorded at Trident Studios, London, 1972.
The title track tells the story of Ziggy Stardust, the bisexual alien rock star persona Bowie created as a messenger for extraterrestrial beings, and the song is sung from the perspective of someone recalling the character after his downfall. A demo version, recorded before the final Spiders from Mars take, later surfaced as a bonus track on the 1990 Rykodisc reissue and again on the 2002 30th-anniversary edition. David Bowie performed the song regularly across the Ziggy Stardust Tour, the 1978 Stage tour, and again during his tours in the 2000s, and it remains one of the most enduring songs of his career, later covered live by artists from Bauhaus to Nirvana.
David Bowie – Ziggy Stardust Lyrics
Now Ziggy played guitar
Jamming good with Weird and Gilly
And The Spiders from Mars
He played it left hand
But made it too far
Became the special man
Then we were Ziggy’s Band
Ziggy really sang
Screwed-up eyes and screwed-down hairdo
Like some cat from Japan
He could lick ’em by smiling
He could leave ’em to hang
He came on so loaded, man,
Well-hung, snow-white tan
So where were the spiders
While the fly tried to break our balls?
Just the beer light to guide us
So we bitched about his fans
And should we crush his sweet hands?
Oh yeah
Ziggy played for time
Jiving us that we were Voodoo
The kids was just crass
He was the naz
With God-given ass
He took it all too far
But boy, could he play guitar
Making love with his ego
Ziggy sucked up into his mind (ah)
Like a leper messiah
When the kids had killed a man
I had to break up the band
Ziggy played guitar
To listen to other songs from the Teleskop 18 program and the full program, click here.