David Bowie Ziggy Stardust and Spiders From Mars LP VG First Press RCA LSP4702

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The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (often shortened to Ziggy Stardust) is the fifth studio album by English musician David Bowie. It is a concept album telling the story of a fictional rock star named Ziggy Stardust.

It peaked at No. 5 in the United Kingdom and No. 75 in the United States on the Billboard Music Charts. The album tells the story of Bowie's alter ego Ziggy Stardust, a rock star who acts as a messenger for extraterrestrial beings. Bowie created Ziggy Stardust while in New York City promoting Hunky Dory and performed as him on a tour of the United Kingdom, Japan and North America. The album, and the character of Ziggy Stardust, was known for its glam rock influences and themes of sexual exploration and social commentary. These factors, coupled with the ambiguity surrounding Bowie's sexuality and fuelled by a ground-breaking performance of "Starman" on Top of the Pops, led to the album being met with controversy and since hailed as a seminal work.

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust is about a bisexual alien rock superstar; the concept album sheds a light on the artificiality of rock music in general, discussing issues of politics, drug use, and sexual orientation.

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars has been consistently considered one of the greatest albums of all time, with Rolling Stone magazine ranking it the 35th greatest ever. It was ranked the 20th greatest album ever in a 1997 British survey, the 24th greatest of all time by Q magazine and one of the 100 greatest releases ever by Time magazine. A concert film of the same name, directed by D.A. Pennebaker, was recorded in 1973 and released a decade later in 1983. 

Ziggy Stardust story

The album was intended by Bowie to serve as the soundtrack and musical basis for a stage show and/or television production telling the story of Ziggy Stardust. 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.

In a Rolling Stone interview with William S. Burroughs, Bowie expanded on the Ziggy Stardust story:

The time is five years to go before the end of the earth. It has been announced that the world will end because of lack of natural resources. Ziggy is in a position where all the kids have access to things that they thought they wanted. The older people have lost all touch with reality and the kids are left on their own to plunder anything. Ziggy was in a rock-and-roll band and the kids no longer want rock-and-roll. There's no electricity to play it. Ziggy's adviser tells him to collect news and sing it, 'cause there is no news. So Ziggy does this and there is terrible news. 'All the young dudes' is a song about this news. It's no hymn to the youth as people thought. It is completely the opposite. […]

The end comes when the infinites arrive. They really are a black hole, but I've made them people because it would be very hard to explain a black hole on stage. […]

Ziggy is advised in a dream by the infinites to write the coming of a Starman, so he writes 'Starman', which is the first news of hope that the people have heard. So they latch onto it immediately...The starmen that he is talking about are called the infinites, and they are black-hole jumpers. Ziggy has been talking about this amazing spaceman who will be coming down to save the earth. They arrive somewhere in Greenwich Village. They don't have a care in the world and are of no possible use to us. They just happened to stumble into our universe by black hole jumping. Their whole life is travelling from universe to universe. In the stage show, one of them resembles Brando, another one is a Black New Yorker. I even have one called Queenie, the Infinite Fox...Now Ziggy starts to believe in all this himself and thinks himself a prophet of the future starmen. He takes himself up to the incredible spiritual heights and is kept alive by his disciples. When the infinites arrive, they take bits of Ziggy to make them real because in their original state they are anti-matter and cannot exist in our world. And they tear him to pieces on stage during the song 'Rock 'n' roll suicide'. As soon as Ziggy dies on stage the infinites take his elements and make themselves visible.

Track listing

All songs written and composed by David Bowie, except where noted. 

Personnel

• David Bowie – vocals, acoustic guitar, saxophone, piano, arrangements
• Mick Ronson – electric guitar, backing vocals, keyboards, piano
• Trevor Bolder – bass, trumpet
• Mick Woodmansey – drums

• Dana Gillespie – backing vocals on "It Ain't Easy"
• Rick Wakeman – harpsichord on "It Ain't Easy"

• Ken Scott – producer, recording engineer, mixing engineer
• David Bowie – producer

Album vinyl and sound playback is pretty good with some slight surface noise. There is a scratch on side two producing a slight noticeable tick. Cover is good w/ fade, ring wear and masking tape around the edges. Original inner sleeve has masking tape on the bottom and there are slight tears on the side edges. See listing pix for details.

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