Soul Love

The best rock and roll album of all time is not Exile on Main St., it’s not Revolver, not Highway 61 Revisited, and it’s not Zeppelin II, which are all fantastic and monumental works, revered, and rightly so, to say the least. The best rock and roll album of all time, in this dude’s humble opinion, is The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

With the release of his self-produced masterpiece in 1972, David Bowie made an irrefutable statement that music could be anything you made it to be, thereby reinforcing (in a roundabout way) the fact that art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

The album is a thematically ambitious venture based around the vague story of Ziggy Stardust, a space alien who comes to earth to liberate humankind from banality. Taking the concept a step further despite the fact that he tells the story from different perspectives, Bowie became Ziggy, messianic martian styling and all, and toured in support of the album. The character is the definitive rock star, focused almost entirely on sex, drugs and the rock and roll music that serves as the medium to tell the story.

Perhaps mirroring Bowie’s own rise to stardom, the album finds Ziggy dreaming of becoming a rock and roll star and attaining superstar status before being swallowed by the trappings of fame and ego-mania. The music rides a cascading torrent of feelings and emotions: optimism, unease, wanton greed, vanity and resignation before climaxing with the acquiescent (and triumphant) “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide.”

Displaying his influences (styles ranging from pop, rock and British music hall to jazz and classical) like a badge of honor, Bowie and the album influenced countless others, availing the glam sound and placing him at the forefront of the scene. Though he continued to reinvent his sound and image over the years, Ziggy Stardust remains the impetus for his cycle of change.

The tunes vary; some rock wildly, others are insistent, demanding attention with a contradictory undertone of ambivalent coolness and a ‘take it or leave it’ indifference. It’s like glam showmanship and sneering callousness rolled into one multi-faceted mirror ball of glorious majesty. Through it all, Bowie stays in character, howling and purring androgynously while Mick Ronson turns it up to eleven to unleash some severely piercing solos and crushing rhythm riffs that bassist Trevor Bolder and drummer Mick Woodmansey hold down.

There exist better musicians and better bands, even better songs, but as a singular piece of work, Ziggy Stardust is unmatched.