‘The Spiders From Mars’ included guitarist Mick Ronson, who plays with a maverick flair on Suffragette City, Moonage Daydream, and Hang Onto Yourself, Trevor Bolder on bass, Mick ‘Woody’ Woodmansey on drums. To me three songs link together: Ziggy Stardust, Lady Stardust and Star, because they’re all about the same person – and after that, it’s just a bunch of songs that work together.’ However, Bowie was an arch-manipulator of press statements and engineer Ken Scott denies there was an all-encompassing concept as such, telling the NME: ‘I don’t see it. All The Young Dudes is a song about this news.‘ So Ziggy does this and there is terrible news. Ziggy’s adviser tells him to collect news and sing it, ’cause there is no news. Ziggy was in a rock and roll band and the kids no longer want rock and roll: there’s no electricity to play it. The older people have lost all touch with reality and the kids are left on their own to plunder anything. Ziggy is in a position where all the kids have access to things that they thought they wanted. It has been announced that the world will end because of a lack of natural resources. They had in fact been released as a single under the pseudonym The Arnold Corns, fronted by Bowie’s friend, clothes designer Freddie Burretti.Įxplaining the story of Ziggy, Bowie said: ‘The time is five years to go before the end of the earth. Two songs that were to be incorporated into the extremely loose narrative had been written at the time of the sessions for The Man Who Sold The World in 1970: Moonage Daydream and Hang On To Yourself. All The Young Dudes was of course to be recorded by Mott The Hoople and became their breakthrough recording. As well as the songs on the album, Bowie also intended songs such as All The Young Dudes, Rebel Rebel and Rock ‘n’ Roll With Me (the latter two later recorded for Diamond Dogs) for this realisation of the Ziggy story. The album was intended by Bowie to serve as the soundtrack and musical basis for a stage show or television production telling the story of Ziggy. He thought I would hate it, but I loved it!’ It’s gonna be much harder.’ I don’t know who he compared it to maybe it was Iggy. Engineer Ken Scott recalls, ‘I remember David coming to me, prior to doing the album, and saying, ‘You’re not going to like this album. Musical inspiration came from a trip to New York that Bowie had made earlier in 1971, when he decided he wanted to give his own take on the musical style of Iggy & The Stooges or The Velvet Underground, to whom he dedicated Queen Bitch on Hunky Dory. The Ziggy Stardust name came, partly from the Legendary Stardust Cowboy, and partly, as Bowie has stated because Ziggy was ‘one of the few Christian names I could find beginning with the letter Z’. Other influences included the Legendary Stardust Cowboy and Kansai Yamamoto, who designed the costumes Bowie wore during the tour. Ziggy is the definitive rock star: sexually promiscuous, wild in drug intake and with a message, ultimately, of peace and love but he is destroyed by his own excesses. Bowie based the clothes, hair, and makeup of Ziggy Stardust on the Malcolm McDowell character in A Clockwork Orange, and on William Burroughs’ book Wild Boys.