And so Evelyn Paget’s lost a stylist, the Spiders From Mars gained a full-time hair mistress and, in time, Ronno also gained a wife. More importantly, Ziggy Stardust had found the human torch to light his beacon of fire. His crimson halo. His secret weapon in the great cosmic messiah fight of 1972.
The red mullet from Mars.
THREE
THE IMAGE
ZIGGY’S NEW HAIR made its first public outing later that night at the Sombrero club. Jaws dropped, hearts popped and make-up caked cheeks flushed in fresh tides of envy. His friends danced and flapped around him like moths driven delirious by its scarlet glow. Ziggy gleamed fuzzy smiles back at them, not sure if he was drunk on the attention, the alcohol or maybe the dye seeping through his skull to soak his brain a dreamy cerebral shade of pink.
His eyes hazily scanned the pantomime before him like a slowly roving camera lens, developing a mental Polaroid of these lovely, ludicrous young creatures. The one they called Silly Billy. Dear funky little Freddie and Daniella. Their flatmate, Wendy, forever blind with mascara and dumb with lipstick. The dancefloor queens and wall-propping peacocks. The innocent and the vain who lived only for the here and now refusing to entertain any thought of tomorrow, old age or death. Sweet boogaloo dudes.
The scene was still scorched on Ziggy’s eyeballs when he awoke the next morning. A scene he wanted to shake out of his head and share with the universe. So he shook, and out fell a swarm of magic music and words. Words describing the dazzling and doomed Sombrero gang. The stars on Freddie’s face and Wendy shoplifting from Marks & Spencer; she’d be annoyed he didn’t make it Harrods but he preferred the phonetic ping of the nickname ‘Marks & Sparks’. Words describing how he felt being 25 years-old and fearing, like ‘Five Years’, that the end of the world was nigh. Words declaring it was time to finally close the lid on the yellow-edged 1960s of The Beatles and the Stones and embrace the glorious ‘now’ of being young, sexy, glamorous and alive in 1972. Words which in Ziggy’s romantic rapture even cocked a backhanded salute to Marc Bolan and T. Rex.
He called the song ‘All The Young Dudes’. It immediately eclipsed ‘Starman’ as the catchiest, most irresistible thing Ziggy had written yet. And, like a colossal cosmic dunce, he handed it on a silver salver to some hairy desperados he barely knew.
Ziggy had helplessly inherited David’s fondness for Mott The Hoople, a group of R&B heavies from Herefordshire who for the last three years had failed to translate a loyal live following into commercial success. On 26 March 1972, Mott spluttered to a dismal halt after an especially depressing show in Zurich, Switzerland, returning to London officially kaput. Not that Ziggy knew when he sent them a tape of his ‘Suffragette City’ in the enthusiastic hope they might want to record their own version. Mott’s bassist, Peter ‘Overend’ Watts, awkwardly informed him they didn’t need it since they’d just disbanded. Ziggy was horrified: so horrified he made the insanely generous offer of first refusal on the new song he’d written. Whatever it took to keep Mott The Hoople together.
Tony DeFries grabbed the reins, summoning the band to his Regent Street offices to discuss their future and the managerial role he intended to take in it. There they first met Ziggy who sat cross-legged with an acoustic guitar and sang them ‘All The Young Dudes’ from beginning to end. Mott singer Ian Hunter, a faceless pair of shades poking through a scribble of curls, was confused. Either he must be dreaming or DeFries and Ziggy were taking the piss. ‘Dudes’ was more than a song. It was the elixir of pop immortality. Anyone who’d write something so devastatingly obvious a hit only to surrender it in a selfless act of fandom had to be off their gourd. Or from outer space.
THE DEVASTATINGLY OBVIOUS hit called ‘Starman’ was finally released in late April. The first record by Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars. RCA 2199. On the B-side, the track he’d first offered Mott, ‘Suffragette City’.
The reviews were promising. ‘An elevating and energetic song with some super “teenage” lyrics,’ said the NME, even if Ziggy didn’t understand the derision about teeny-boppers; as far as he was concerned the mind was at its most active stage at the age of about 14. He was more gratified by the review in Disc by John Peel, Marc Bolan’s former champion, who deemed ‘Starman’ not merely ‘magnificent’ but ‘four minutes, ten seconds of major achievement’.
Such praise proved alarmingly ineffective. The public response to ‘Starman’ was sluggish. It especially irked Ziggy that, the same month, an old friend of David’s called Reg was taking up full-page adverts in the press to promote his new single dressed, quite literally, as a stardust cowboy. Reg had since changed his name to Elton John and had already enjoyed his first hit a year earlier with ‘Your Song’. His new one was called ‘Rocket Man’. The title alone was a bit too close to ‘Starman’ for Ziggy’s liking. The lyrics were a not unfamiliar story of a lonely astronaut longing for his wife as he drifted through the solar system. Uncannily, it also shared a producer with David’s ‘Space Oddity’, Gus Dudgeon.
By the middle of May, Reg’s ‘Rocket Man’ was in the top ten while Ziggy’s ‘Starman’ was nowhere to be seen. It was all Ziggy could do to highlight the irony when recording a new version of ‘Space Oddity’ for a BBC radio session, dropping in a bone-dry, bitchy ‘Oh, Mr Rocket Man!’ during the bridge.
‘Rocket Man’ would have made number one had it not been for the ever invincible Marc Bolan, keeping it at bay with T. Rex’s latest, the precious gold-plated panic called ‘Metal Guru’. For the moment Ziggy still posed no real threat to Marc, whose main competition now came from David Cassidy, squeaky clean singing star of American TV sitcom The Partridge Family. Such was the contest of oestrogenic lust that the breathless readers of Mirabelle were invited to vote for their favourite of the two. ‘Marc is sexy on stage,’ the polling form pondered, ‘but David is neat ’n’ dreamy.’ The result, announced later that summer, offered the first indication that the gas of T. Rexstasy might be starting to deflate: Cassidy’s fans outvoted Marc’s by nearly three to one. Soon Marc would have the unstoppable force of puppy-loving Donny Osmond to add to his woes, not to mention the greatest threat of all currently streaking through the provinces gathering new clans of glam.
The Spiders From Mars continued zigzagging a path of glory across the British Isles. In Manchester they were witnessed by a quiet 15-year-old boy from Macclesfield with sad oceans for eyes for whom ‘Rock ’n’ Roll Suicide’ became a design for life. At London’s Kingston Polytechnic, the blessed boogie children were queuing around the block hours before the doors had opened. Down on the coast in Worthing, Ziggy’s alien adrenalin propelled him to jump piggyback on Ronno’s shoulders, the pair of them cheered through the crowd in a spontaneous lap of honour, soon to become choreographed ritual. Even the T. Rex rhythm section couldn’t stay away when the Spiders returned home to play London’s Central Polytechnic, watching in awe if acutely aware not to rave about it to their paymaster. Bassist Steve Currie was naïve enough to think he could get himself a copycat Ziggy haircut: Marc, infuriated, demanded he shear it off.
Between gigs, when time allowed, Ziggy returned to the studio in his new role as star producer. He’d since committed himself to the full resurrection of Mott The Hoople by overseeing their next album, with help from Ronno as his angelic arranger. DeFries, now Mott’s de facto manager, had craftily negotiated a new deal for them with CBS Records. In return, Ian Hunter had craftily made sure neither himself nor the rest of the band signed the contracts DeFries had waved in their faces. Though wary of his manager, they were nevertheless still delirious with gratitude to be working with Ziggy, especially when they listened to the playback of ‘All The Young Dudes’ feeling like they’d died and been reborn a million times over. Ziggy himself sang harmonies, played saxophone and led the chorus of handclaps, including the thundery thwacks of his new Hull bodyguard, Ronno’s mate big Stuey. Privately, it also amused Ziggy that for the B-side of his salute to the glamour and gaiety of the Sombrero, Hunter picked a song
of their own, ‘One Of The Boys’, unknowingly creating one of the most riotously camp single couplings in the history of plastic.
Ziggy’s own plastic was still nowhere to be seen in the singles charts, but with the album release only weeks away, the media offensive intensified. More journalists were invited to the mothership of Haddon Hall where, over tea and cigarettes, they’d hear how Ziggy preferred street culture (‘I’m not ready to be an intellectual’), reckoned that if he wasn’t a pop star he’d be ‘in a nuthouse or in prison’ and spared some convincingly diplomatic praise for Marc Bolan. ‘I admire him,’ grinned Ziggy. ‘He’s a grafter.’
Human fingers were finally able to caress copies of The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars on 6 June 1972. Appropriately, inevitably, a Tuesday, day of Mars. The front and reverse cover were the two clicks of raw genius from Brian’s Heddon Street session: on the front, Ziggy beamed to Earth under the door of K. West furriers; on the back, making a collect call to the cosmos in a K2 telephone box. Both had been hand-tinted, a Technicolor hue administered by Terry Pastor, a partner in Main Artery, the Covent Garden design studio set up by David’s best friend, George. The inside sleeve carried the lyrics beside the Spiders’ individual droog portraits; Ronno’s luxurious lashes and Greatfield glower taking the prize for the most Alex-like. Ziggy had also added his own explicit instruction to the listener on the back cover. In capital letters: ‘TO BE PLAYED AT MAXIMUM VOLUME’.
The day of the album’s release, fate had thrown its creator back up to Yorkshire where the local Bradford Telegraph & Argus were more than willing to buy into the alien fantasy – ‘ZIGGY’S ALTER EGO PROVING HE’S REALLY THE STARMAN’. Others in the town were much less hospitable. After their soundcheck at St George’s Hall, Ziggy and the band went for something to eat in a nearby restaurant only to be refused entry. Evidently Bradford’s racial diversity hadn’t yet stretched to extraterrestrials. It astonished Ziggy, that mere make-up and fabric could be so divisive. Yet it also reminded him of something he’d read in that week’s Mirabelle. Something in its ‘Pop Gossip’ column which had made him laugh, loud and hard.
‘Isn’t David Bowie going a bit too far with his image these days?’
‘AN IMAGE IS one thing and a human being is another.’
The voice, a Southern slur peppered with the frequent respectful ‘sir’ and the flirtatious ‘honey’, hadn’t much altered in the sixteen years since its owner changed the world. Nor had the billion-dollar, lip-curling smile. The eyes still shone, though now with a medicated glaze which hadn’t been there back in 1956. The hair, too, was thicker and swarthier, as was the face it framed in dense, carpet-strip sideburns. But underneath the black cape and the powder blue suit, which made him look like Nashville’s Count Dracula, he was still, just about, Elvis Presley. He was still The King.
On Friday 9 June 1972, the world’s press had crammed into the Mercury Ballroom of New York’s Hilton, summoned for a special audience with the 37-year-old ‘King Of Rock ’n’ Roll’ ahead of the first of four sold-out concerts at Madison Square Garden. Incredibly, it seemed, though he’d conquered America from the New York television stage, he’d never actually played a concert in the city. Elvis joked he’d been waiting all this time ‘to find the right building’. The press asked him how he’d managed to survive so long in the business. He told them, ‘Vitamin E.’ Then they asked about his image.
‘Well, uh,’ he hesitated, ‘it gets kind of hard to live up to an image.’
Nobody knew more than Elvis Presley how insufferably hard it was to live up to an image. In the decade and a half since he recorded ‘Hound Dog’ – the song that first branded nine-year-old David Jones a Starman – Elvis and his image had been inflated, punctured, destroyed, rebuilt, comprehensively neutered and meticulously rewired. Destiny, not vitamin E, had reeled him through army life, the death of his mother and a Hollywood career (which at times felt like a slow, sustained form of rock ’n’ roll suicide). He’d latterly hauled himself back from the brink with his 1968 TV ‘comeback special’, a black-leather phoenix reborn from the ashes of one too many Harum Scarums. Its success had catapulted him to Las Vegas, where his first season at the International Hotel broke all attendance records. The owners rewarded him with a special commemorative golden belt with silver links. A belt he still wore on this day in New York because, God forbid anyone should think otherwise, he was still The King.
He surrendered his mood to the chemistry of an unbreakable prescription-drug habit. A doped-up Captain Marvel, draping friends, lovers and his ‘Memphis Mafia’ drudges in his own specially designed ‘TCB’ jewellery – ‘Takin’ Care of Business’ – with its trademark zigzag lightning-flash insignia. He carried as many guns as he could stuff around his body, living in increasing fear that he might be assassinated live on stage because all kings have their enemies. In his case, John Lennon and The Beatles and all other bands responsible for the corruption of American youth, as he’d tell President Nixon and the FBI when volunteering himself as their rock ’n’ roll supergrass. But should one of his Memphis Mafiosi find him standing alone outside in the dark, staring at the stars, looking for flying saucers or praying to God, weeping aloud how ‘I’m so sick of being Elvis Presley’ they were never to tell anyone else about it. Because he was still Elvis Presley. He was still The King.
Not just a king, but ‘a prince from another planet’ according to the New York Times’ review of the opening Friday night at Madison Square Garden. It described Elvis standing at the end, ‘his arms stretched out, the great gold cloak giving him wings, a champion, the only one in his class’. The only one in his class. Indisputable proof, in black and white, he was still The King.
The next day Elvis played an afternoon matinée, taking a few hours’ rest before returning at 8.30 p.m. for his second evening show. After the past few seasons in Vegas his act was now tiger-slick and sabre-sharp. The opening paid homage to one of his favourite films, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, his band recreating the biblical fanfare of Strauss’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, the audience’s mania-inciting cue that the original monolith of rock ’n’ roll had landed. It would segue straight into a frenzy of brass and galloping drums chasing the loose tune of his Sun Records’ debut ‘That’s All Right’. Elvis walked out on the stage spotlit in the shiniest of white rhinestone jumpsuits with cape. As flashlights blinked in the arena around him he looked like a distant star glittering in his own private patch of the cosmos. He trembled a knee. A wild symphony of screeches. He still had it. He was still The King.
The second song was ‘Proud Mary’, the recent Creedence Clearwater Revival hit, its soulful country swagger a perfect fit for Elvis. He looked out over the first dozen or so rows, seeking out any pretty young faces to send backstage, girls he could pep up with a Ritalin and maybe end up filming with his cine camera as they wrestled on his bed in nothing but their panties. Maybe her. Maybe that dark one, if she could lose her mom. Maybe … huh?
Something had caught Elvis’s eye. Some ‘thing’ with bright red hair, spiked on top, wearing what looked like a padded spacesuit and enormous red boots with black platform soles. It was strolling closer, down the aisle, its teeth flashing an awkward, demonic grin as it clumsily found its seat on what looked like an elite row next to company executives from Elvis’s label, RCA. He continued singing, eyes fixed on the grotesque latecomer, brain trying to fathom what he was looking at.
‘Proud Mary, keep on burnin’ …’
It looked a real proud Mary too.
‘Rollin’ …’
Maybe more like a Mary from Mars.
‘Rollin’ …’
A princess from another planet.
‘Rollin’ down a river.’
Neither man nor woman. Not human. Just image.
IT WASN’T LIKE Ziggy to be easily embarrassed, but inside he could detect the faint pulse of David Jones, secretly mortified that finally given the chance to see Elvis Presley in the flesh he’d ar
rived so conspicuously late.
Along with Angie and DeFries, he’d flown in the day before, a weekend’s window in Ziggy’s tour allowing a quick jaunt to New York as a guest of RCA to toast the album’s release and drum up some American press interest. DeFries had kept close contact with their friends from Warhol’s Pork, Tony Zee, Leee Black Childers and the vivacious Wayne County, entrusting them with advance copies of Ziggy’s LP to filter to whatever influential contacts they could. He also floated an idea – just an idea, mind – that if the words ‘Ziggy Rules!’ suddenly began appearing graffitied around the streets and subways of Manhattan that would be no bad thing either. In return, DeFries promised them work when he finally got around to setting up a New York office for the breakaway management company he was now scheming.
DeFries was just as excited about the prospect of seeing Elvis. He was fascinated by Elvis’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker. The bloody-minded control over his ‘boy’. The boastful hucksterism. And the shamelessly opportunistic marketing brain. Everything DeFries wanted for his Starman: Ziggy lunchboxes, Ziggy sheets and pillows, Ziggy dolls with spiky red hair, interchangeable clothes and ripcords that made a cry of, ‘Wham, bam, thank you, Mam!’ when pulled. Even Angie couldn’t help but encourage him, suggesting maybe an inflatable Ziggy sex doll. ‘That moves and grooves you.’
That Saturday night they’d been late leaving the Park Lane Hotel and late arriving at Madison Square Garden. Ziggy knew, absolutely, that Elvis must have seen him, that if only for a glare, the two eighth of January birthday boys had shared some tiny sliver of eye contact under the same roof. When Elvis later sang ‘Hound Dog’, Ziggy thought back to a winter’s night in Bromley watching cousin Kristina spontaneously combusting in Plaistow Grove. But his favourite moment came towards the end when Elvis sang his new Mickey Newbury cover, the Civil War medley ‘An American Trilogy’. It was The King’s ‘Rock ’n’ Roll Suicide’, a holy rite of self-crucifixion, telling the audience he was going to die just moments before all that wild hallelujah, the music roaring like a stellar hearse dragging his body back up to the stars where it belonged. Now that, thought Ziggy, was how to put on a show. He’d definitely be borrowing some of those ‘glory, glory’ death vibes for himself. And, Freddie willing, maybe a white rhinestone jumpsuit with tassels while he was at it.