Theaters of Authenticity
Ana Roberts, December 3, 2024
David Bowie released his first album in 1967 to little acclaim or success, and there are many who say it rightly deserved neither. A peculiar blend of psychedelic rock, folk and whimsical music hall acts, the album is incompatible with the rest of his career. It is a combination of twee songs of pastoral England, saccharine love songs and quaint lyrics that seem to come from an oral tradition of medieval story telling. It is an album mostly not worth talking about, save for a single track ‘We Are Hungry Men’ undoubtedly amongst the few embarrassing moments in Bowies career. It is a muddled song telling a rather shallow story, feeling halfway between a radio play and a song, with an undeniably catchy chorus, yet in it Bowie plays the part of a Messiah, come to earth to warn of overpopulation. The lyrics read like a pulp science-fiction novel of the 50s, a known influence on Bowie, but it is not ludicrous to suggest that Bowie had seen how Dylan had created himself as a prophet and began flirting with the idea. In fact some four years later, on Hunky Dory, he paid direct homage to his influence on ‘Song for Bob Dylan’, illustrating how deeply he understood the power of Dylan’s creation, ‘You sat behind a million pair of eyes / And told them how they saw’. Bowie understood the power of Dylan’s ability to transplant his truth on others, rather than make any claims for himself but more importantly, he understood that Dylan was playing a character, addressing him by his given name and referring to Dylan as a separate entity entirely; ‘Now, hear this, Robert Zimmerman / Though I don’t suppose we’ll meet / Ask your good friend Dylan / If he’d gaze on down the street’.
Bowie saw that Dylan was a created character, and that his mythology as a prophet was a tool of genius, but even on ‘We Are The Hungry Men’ Bowie took this tool far further than Dylan ever did, on this very first outing he presents himself directly as a prophet, something Dylan never dared to do throughout his career. In a mostly forgettable album, this single moment shows that Bowie, so early in his career, is already comfortable with playing characters, willingly inauthentic at his very origin and entirely aware of how Dylan has created himself, and dealt with his own problem of authenticity. It would be another five years until the Bowie’s journey of the created prophet would reach it’s origin with The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars.
“Bowie created a prophet, and created for him a prophecy he knew would come true. While Dylan ensured that his work could not be falsifiable, Bowie ensured that his was able to be proven true.”
Fans waiting outside the concert in D.A. Pennebacker’s ‘Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars’, 1979.
In the D.A. Pennebacker, who had made the Bob Dylan film ‘Dont Look Back’ some 6 years earlier, concert film of Ziggy’s last performance we open with glimpses of a crowd waiting outside. One by one, boys and girls alike, are seen in makeup, in crimson hair, dressed as mime artists, as aliens, as the lost population of Ziggy’s world. These are not just fans, they are inhabitants, they are part of the performance, they are the disciples of Ziggy who have followed him from outer space to earth to revel in his glory, in his sex, in his pure rock’n’roll. This is the genius of Ziggy and the genius of Bowie; it is in this that he is able to become entirely authentic through playing a created character. Bowie does not have to comment on or confront whether he is authentic because through creating the character of Ziggy Stardust, he has created a theater. His understanding of mime and comedia dell’arte, studied in the interim years between his first album and this, he was able to create a world through himself alone. The reduction of comedia dell’arte into purest forms of emotion to convey character allowed him to forget about the particulars. It is why Ziggy Stardust doesn’t tell a cohesive story and still creates a world. It is a masterpiece of maximalist reductionism. Bowie did not create a glass onion, he created an alien, and presented him openly for the world to see. He created a singular narrative, rejecting the need for a continuous one. Though his albums before all built up to this, they have no relation to it. David Bowie needs to be authentic, needs to create a glass onion, but Ziggy Stardust has no such requirements. Watching the opening minutes of the concert film, with a gaggle of kids dressed up as freaks, it is clear that this is true. The audience believes in the world, and they believe in Ziggy, so they become part of the world. They no longer question whether he is being authentic, because they have authentically inhabited the same created world as him. It is easier to create worlds than to change them.
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars ends as promised, with a fall. ‘Ziggy Stardust’ offers the most cohesive chronicling of the events of the album so far, and, sung from the perspective of one of the spiders, it describes his death, ‘Like a leper messiah / When the kids had killed the man / I had to break up the band’. It offers a parable of fame and success, the overcoming of an ego that leads to destruction. Yet, it is not the last song on the album. Instead, it precedes ‘Suffragette City’ and the album finishes with ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide’. The live show too, while it differed in track listing from the album, always finished with this track. In Pennebackers documentary of this final performance, at the end of the show, stripped of costumes, wearing just a sheer black top, Bowie delivers a speech before he begins, announcing the end of Ziggy Stardust that this is to be ‘the last show we’ll ever do’. He turns, as the opening piano chords begin and circles the stage, stopping in the middle to sing, delicately, ‘Time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth’. The song matches the tone of the opener, ‘Five Years’, both feeling more like ‘avante-garde show song than straight rock songs’, biographer David Buckley suggests. The repeated refrain of the song, sung with unbridled passion and emotion by Bowie at the final show, ‘You’re not alone’ feels like a message to his fans, written in the knowledge he would kill Ziggy. Bowie created Ziggy with the intention of him to die, ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide’ is the final prophecy, fulfilled 18 months after it’s release. It is this track that is perhaps the ultimate stroke of genius in creating Ziggy. Bowie created a prophet, and created for him a prophecy he knew would come true. While Dylan ensured that his work could not be falsifiable, Bowie ensured that his was able to be proven true.
Ziggy Stardust had truth embedded in him at the moment of his creation, to be ultimately revealed at the moment of his death. Bowie knew too, that in order for Ziggy to be authentic he had to die. Not just in the grand tradition of dead rock stars but more potently in the tradition of theater, where no piece of art can last forever, and they are imbued with truth because of it. Bowie employed mime in every aspect of Ziggy’s creation, and it is because of this that he was able to create authenticity. He undermined himself, acknowledged that he could never be authentic and so instead created someone who was. ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide’ speaks as directly about Bowie as it does to Ziggy. Bowie had to commit suicide of the self, suicide of his rock n roll dreams in order to create Ziggy and reach authenticity and communicate truth. It would not be the first time such a suicide was performed. ‘You’re not alone’ is as much words of comfort for the freaks in Ziggy’s world as it is to Bowie himself, his repeatedly fracturing personalities ensuring that it would be nearly a decade before he performed as himself, alone. Bowie confronted authenticity as directly as The Monkees did, but where Head was a critique of their own inauthenticity, Ziggy Stardust was a celebration of it. Embedded within Ziggy is knowledge that Bowie had in his first record, we are never ourselves, never for ourselves and we are all the more powerful because of it.
Ana Roberts is a writer, musician, and cultural critic.
