Classic Bolan at His Best. There would of been No Ziggy Stardust, and The Spiders From Mars without Bolan.
Sad also to see the legendary Mick Ronson, platinum hair and all, tour with Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue, only to die of Liver Cancer at 46, I believe he was.......
Glam Rock Historical Review- Courtesy of:
http://www.allmusic.com/album/the-r...ardust-and-the-spiders-from-mars-mw0000626129
Bowie reached back to the heavy rock of
The Man Who Sold the World for
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Constructed as a loose concept album about an androgynous alien rock star named Ziggy Stardust, the story falls apart quickly, yet
Bowie's fractured, paranoid lyrics are evocative of a decadent, decaying future, and the music echoes an apocalyptic, nuclear dread. Fleshing out the off-kilter metallic mix with fatter guitars, genuine pop songs, string sections, keyboards, and a cinematic flourish,
Ziggy Stardust is a glitzy array of riffs, hooks, melodrama, and style and the logical culmination of glam.
Mick Ronson plays with a maverick flair that invigorates rockers like "Suffragette City," "Moonage Daydream," and "Hang Onto Yourself," while "Lady Stardust," "Five Years," and "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide" have a grand sense of staged drama previously unheard of in rock & roll. And that self-conscious sense of theater is part of the reason why
Ziggy Stardust sounds so foreign.
Bowie succeeds not in spite of his pretensions but because of them, and
Ziggy Stardust -- familiar in structure, but alien in performance -- is the first time his vision and execution met in such a grand, sweeping fashion.
Ronson had the sweetest new Les Paul Sound of a prominent front man, for Bowie; who had the Glam Rock moves, and Crazy PR approach, which drove parents nuts, but gave young guys like us, a voice of not rebellion, but a platform for change in Music Culture, and the rest is all History. With Bolan leading the charges by 1970-76, Bolan, Bowie, Mott The Hoople, and many other Brit Bands, gave our voices a clear resounding: "time for a change",
those Andy Williams, Perry Como records, as well as Art Linkletter Sunday Night TV shows, as boring and stale as they were.......
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mick_Ronson