50 years since the release of David Bowie’s Starman (28th April 1972)
It’s 50 years since the release of David Bowie’s Starman as a 45 single. The B Side was Suffragette City. Both tracks were taken from the LP Ziggy Stardust released on 16th June 1972. It was Bowie’s performance of the song on Top of the Tops on 5th July 1972 that propelled it into the Top 10 and boosted the LP too:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starman_(song)
I doubt I would have noticed the release of single (the album I certainly would) as by 1972 most youthful lovers of what was often called ‘progressive’ music regarded the album as the legitimate form with the single not really representing serious artistic endeavour. It took us a few years to recover- until the release of New Rose by the Damned in fact.
Starman is not one of my favourite Bowie tracks (as often I seem to be in a minority) but the wider impact of glam rock of which Bowie was a leading figure among young people in North London(I’m well aware it was not the same everywhere else- combined and uneven development applied)was huge. I didn’t wear make-up, having an organic beard- but the idea that sexuality was not absolutely fixed combined with the rise of the women’s liberation movement and the early days of the Gay Liberation Front, raised many ideas and possibilities. When Bowie appeared on TOTP it was in effect legitimating some of that, a liberating experience, although probably not what we would have called it at the time.
Of course many from those days, including friends of mine, ended up in family relationships little different to their parents. But the idea was not to stop that but to open up possibilities. Pandora’s Box had been opened and the lid has never quite been put back in place.
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