Rock History Week! 1972

Why did this cause a stir to British music fans in July 1972?



Born in 1947, David Jones (later Bowie) had tried verything he could think of to be famous. Throughout the 1960s he'd been a mod, a failed hippy and by the 1970s the times were changing again and Bowie decided to change with them. The 60's were a decade of rapid social change in Britain, attitudes towards gender, sexuality and appearance had been very conservative at the start of the decade, but by 1969 had begun to be challenged. In the 1970s these social changes continued.

The early 1970s reflected this with a pop fad known as glam. Performers like David Bowie, Mark Bolan and Roxy Music experimented with 'glamorous' stage personas, Bowie reinvented himeself as Ziggy Stardust, an alien who visits a dying earth and who is greeted as a rock messiah but ultimately undone by a people unworthy of him. When this performance of Starman from the Ziggy Stardust Album was broadcast in 1972, Bowie went from a figure on the fringes of avante garde pop music to a household name, he was shocking to some as he wore makeup and had his arm draped over guitarist Mick Ronson (just showing us how our attitudes towards intimac and personal space have changed since 1972, if nothing else) but to millions of teenagers up and down the land he was something else, captivating, exciting and subversive.

Here is another interview with Bowie in 1964 where the contentious issue of long hair and its socially subversive connotations are discussed