With Bowie’s record label also convinced, the Ziggy Stardust album was complete. And yet, in the weeks immediately following its release as a single, on 28 April, Starman flew closer to the ground than anticipated.
The challenge: “David could be very controversial… and people were fearful”
Speaking for the liner notes to the Ziggy-era box set, Rock’n’Roll Star!, Anya Wilson, a record plugger who worked Bowie’s releases in the early to mid-70s, recalled the efforts Bowie’s team had been making to get him media exposure. BBC radio had become a home of sorts for Bowie throughout the first half of 1972, while a pre-recorded performance of Starman aired on ITV on 21 June during an episode of Lift Off With Ayshea, as hosted by actress Ayshea Hague. But the BBC’s Top Of The Pops was the coveted booking, despite hesitation from the show’s producers.
“David could be very controversial in press interviews, very ‘gender bending’, and people were fearful,” Wilson explained. But serendipity stepped in, and Bowie was called up at short notice: “There was a cancellation, they needed an act, and so yes, they put him on.”
On Wednesday, 5 July 1972, Bowie and The Spiders From Mars entered Studio 8 at BBC Television Centre, in White City, London, to record the performance that would change his career forever.
The ‘Top Of The Pops’ Starman performance: “That ambiguous sexuality was so bold and futuristic”
Musicians’ Union regulations stipulated that any Top Of The Pops performance had to be mimed to a newly recorded backing track, allowing only for lead vocals to be sung live during the show’s taping. To comply, a whole new version of Starman, complete with strings and backing vocals, had been laid down at Trident Studios on 29 June, and, with The Spiders From Mars – augmented by pianist Nicky Graham – miming beside him, Bowie sang along in the BBC studio, writing himself into rock history as he did so.
Right from the off, Bowie’s debut Top Of The Pops performance was different from anything that had come before: even the black-and-white TVs of the era would have registered the Technicolor explosion of his red, blue and gold quilted jumpsuit, his burnt-orange spiky mullet, and his cherry-red boots. Flanking him, in peroxide-dyed hairdos and shiny satin catsuits that shimmered under the studio lights, The Spiders looked every bit the intergalactic infantry to Bowie’s otherworldly space invader. But it was Bowie’s singular presence that drew the cameras – and the eyes of thousands watching when the performance was aired the day after filming, on 6 July 1972.
Tossing his head to the side, smiling as if he had a secret the audience simply needed to know, Bowie strummed his bright-blue guitar as he set the scene: “Didn’t know what time it was, and the lights were low-ho-ho…” With a nod to his glam-rock rival Marc Bolan, whose T.Rex song Get It On had become an anthem for the glitter children (“Some cat was laying down some get-it-on rock’n’roll”), Bowie claimed the pop crown for himself as he casually draped an arm around the shoulder of guitarist Mick Ronson during Starman’s chorus, his white-painted fingernails on full display. Securing his ascent to the throne, he pointed to the camera – and out into homes across the UK – as if singling out every individual adolescent watching beside their perplexed, even flatly outraged, parents: “I had to phone someone, so I picked on you-oo-oo.” A generation of transfixed adolescents eagerly received the call.
