Monday, January 11, 2016

Ziggy Stardust and the Confused of Leeds

One afternoon after school as we wandered around Woolworth's record department, my mate Carl tried to explain to me how David Bowie had 'killed' Ziggy Stardust, but that it was OK because they were the same person. And that Ziggy Stardust wasn't real anyway. He then took me way out of my depth by saying that Ziggy was from Mars and bisexual. How could he be from Mars if he wasn't real? I asked, not unreasonably in my opinion; think I used my follow up question to ask what a bisexual was. Carl got annoyed at this point and I think either stormed off or hit me, possibly both. I wasn't a fan, you see (we didn't even have a record player at home) and some kids even had Aladdin Sane by then. He probably didn't know what a bisexual was either. After all, he had also said he knew what condoms were for, but this turned out not to be for contraceptive purposes, rather to prevent you from catching a scary sounding (but entirely made up) disease called Red Knob. Memories of that conversation still make me want to crack up with laughter, which isn't appropriate today of all days because, over the intervening years, I've learned that David Bowie was a great talent in music and art and that he'll be sadly missed. China Girl and Heroes are my favourites and will be played in tribute when I do the ironing later. But what happened to the Spiders from Mars? Were  they despatched  by a huge rolled up intergalactic newspaper or humanely removed by interstellar transport under a tumbler shaped starship with a heavy-duty detachable cardboard safety deck...?

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