Piano Wire on David Bowie's 'Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars'

One of the main reasons we started this zine is because we love hearing about other peoples favourite records, and so we decided to launch a sorta series in which we ask some of our favourite artists to talk about one of their favourite albums. In this edition Sean Duke of infectious London band Piano Wire talks David Bowie's 'Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars' 

A favourite album of ours has always been David Bowie’s “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars”.

Albeit clichéd and over played, that album is and always will be a classic that has stood the test of time, and I’m sure it will retain its longevity for many years to come. I can’t place the first time I heard the album. It was probably force fed to me at a young age along with many other great albums/ songs in our car on long journeys.

There is something instantly identifiable and interesting about Bowie’s lyrics that relates to adults and children alike; whether it was coming from another planet or our own it made sense to me. Rather than getting caught up in derivative love songs his writing was cryptic, intriguing, melancholic, and exciting all in the same breath.

The obvious track choices that some record exec would want the album to start with such as Starman or Ziggy Stardust are overlooked and instead the album begins with the powerfully epic Five Years, followed by Soul Love, and you’re eased into his world. As soon as I heard the first chord of Moonage Daydream I was gripped and it wouldn’t let me go. “Keep your electric eye on me, put your ray gun to my head”… you get the impression these words really mean something and at the same time mean nothing at all. It was rumored that one of Bowie’s songwriting methods was picking random words out of a hat and stringing them together, but far from losing their meaning he gives them new ones. Singing it with passionate resolve he sculpts a fantasy for you to wander in unlike anything you have experienced before.

Ziggy Stardust feels like it completes the album, catchy and filled with hooks, painted with accents of light and shade... but not before Suffragette City bursts from the speakers in a moment of rock roll ferocity. The album reaches its climax with the masterful Rock And Roll Suicide “You’re too old to lose it, to young to choose it, oh no you’re a rock and roll suicide” which feels like a real heartfelt statement to me of the hackneyed ironic pitfalls of being a musician.

When the album’s finished you feel as if you have been taken somewhere nostalgic and familiar. I think this is something us as a band and all musicians aspire to do with an album. Like a story it has to have a beginning, a middle and an end that makes sense, and also captures something uniquely compelling.