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Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture (1983)

Where the lyrics of Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture take you, and where it was really made.

The concert was recorded in 1973, but RCA held the tapes back until 1983.

Key places

Final Ziggy Stardust tour show at the Hammersmith Odeon (1973)

Live show Wild Bunch Studios (London) — The concert took place on 3 July 1973 at the Hammersmith Odeon in London and is the basis of this album. The point is placed at city-centre coordinates, so the exact building position is not fixed. Google Maps · Apple Maps

How to get there: See the map for directions.

Album story

Overview

• Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture is a live album by English musician David Bowie
• Released in October 1983 together with the film of the same name
• Recorded during the Ziggy Stardust Tour at the Hammersmith Odeon, London, on 3 July 1973
• RCA Records did not issue the album until 1983
• Before 1983, the sessions circulated as bootlegs titled His Masters Voice – Bowie and the Spiders From Mars' Last Stand
• The album documents the final show of the Ziggy Stardust tour
• It marks the last live-in-concert performance by Bowie as the Ziggy Stardust/Aladdin Sane persona
• It was not the final Ziggy performance, which came three months later during the recording of the 1980 Floor Show
• Before the final song, Bowie told the audience this was the last show the band would ever do
• Many in the audience believed Bowie himself was retiring

Background

• D. A. Pennebaker filmed the concert
• RCA recorded the show with the intention of releasing a live album
• The project was shelved for several reasons, rumoured to include Bowie's wish to leave Ziggy behind and the poor quality of the recordings
• Reasoning that RCA would most likely issue the material sooner or later, Bowie and producer Tony Visconti mixed the recordings in 1981
• The album came out in October 1983 as a double LP soundtrack to Pennebaker's documentary
• Partly because of LP format limits, the release omitted, shortened or reordered several items from the original tapes

Recording

• The concert tapes were made by RCA in 1973
• David Bowie and Mike Moran are credited with live recording production and mixing
• Ken Scott is credited as recording engineer
• Bowie, Tony Visconti and Bruce Tergeson handled the 2003 remixing
• Visconti later described the 1981 mix as more of a salvage job than an artistic endeavor, given the state of the source material

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

Tracklist

Sources: musicbrainz.org

Artist

Early life

• Born David Robert Jones on 8 January 1947 in Brixton, London.
• Studied art, music and design; took up saxophone in 1961.
• Adopted the stage name David Bowie in 1966 to avoid confusion with Davy Jones of the Monkees.

Career

• Breakthrough with "Space Oddity" in 1969, reaching the UK top five.
• Glam rock success in 1972 with the Ziggy Stardust persona and album.
• Berlin Trilogy (Low, "Heroes", Lodger) with Brian Eno and Tony Visconti in the late 1970s.
• Greatest commercial success with Let's Dance in 1983.
• Fronted the hard rock band Tin Machine from 1988 to 1992 before resuming a solo career.
• Final studio album Blackstar was released two days before his death in 2016.

Legacy

• Sold over 100 million records worldwide.
• Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.
• Widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

Reception

At release

• The 1981 mix by Bowie and Tony Visconti was heavily criticised
• Visconti described the mix as more of a salvage job than an artistic endeavor, considering the state of the source material
• The album was released in October 1983 as a double LP soundtrack to Pennebaker's documentary
• LP format limits led the release to omit, shorten or reorder several items from the original tapes
• The single White Light/White Heat was issued in November 1983

Reappraisal

• The 2003 30th Anniversary 2-CD Set was remixed by Visconti
• It was considered a significant improvement on the original
• The set added material including introductions, spoken passages and the complete version of The Width of a Circle
• Changes was placed in its correct position in the original concert running order, following Moonage Daydream
• The Jean Genie/Love Me Do and the Round and Round encore with Jeff Beck were still omitted in that edition
• The continued absence of Beck's sequence has been attributed to a royalties issue, or to the guitarist feeling that he didn't fit in the film, in Visconti's words
• The two omissions were included in the 50th-anniversary edition, released in August 2023

Records

• First CD release: 7 August 1992 by Rykodisc
• April 2003: 30th Anniversary 2-CD Set released by EMI/Virgin with copy control
• August 2023: 50th Anniversary Edition released
• The album has been released on CD three times

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

Trivia

• The sessions circulated as bootlegs before 1983 under the title His Masters Voice – Bowie and the Spiders From Mars' Last Stand.
• Bowie told the audience before the final song that this was the last show of the tour and the last show the band would ever do, and many believed he was retiring.
• Visconti said Beck 'didn't fit in the film', one explanation given for why the Jeff Beck sequence stayed out of the 2003 edition.
• The two omitted Beck items were finally included in the 50th-anniversary edition released in August 2023.
• The single White Light/White Heat came out in November 1983, a month after the album.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

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