Classic Album Covers- The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars

Lets head back to June 6^th, 1972. It’s almost summer time. You brought the boat out to Sylvan Beach already and your ready to have a party at your parents camp. Your brother was the smart one bringing the music. He was also smart enough to make a trip to Sangertown and pick up the new David Bowie album, or should we say Ziggy Stardust.

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars was a concept album based on a story of a fictional rock star named Ziggy Stardust. It peaked at number five in the United Kingdom and number 75 in the United States on the Billboard Music Charts.

Ziggy is the human manifestation of an alien being who is attempting to present humanity with a message of hope in the last five years of its existence. Ziggy Stardust is the definitive rock star: sexually promiscuous, wild in drug intake and with a message, ultimately, of peace and love; but he is destroyed both by his own excesses of drugs and sex, and by the fans he inspired.

In a Rolling Stone interview with William S. Burroughs, Bowie lets you in on the 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...."

Track Listing

Side One

No.      Title

1.         "Five Years"

2.         "Soul Love"

3.         "Moonage Daydream"

4.         "Starman"

5.         "It Ain't Easy"

Side Two

No.      Title

6.         "Lady Stardust"

7.         "Star"

8.         "Hang On to Yourself"

9.         "Ziggy Stardust"

10.       "Suffragette City"

11.       "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide"

[via Wikipedia]