Enter, Ziggy Stardust: David Bowie introduces his alien rock star in a rare 1972 radio int

We are dipping into the Far Out Magazine vault to look back at the ideas behind one of the Starman’s finest creations. When thinking about the legendary chameleon of rock and roll, David Bowie, it’s hard to think too far past the fire-haired alien rock and roll star, and one of Bowie’s most famous personas, Ziggy Stardust. In this rare 1972 radio interview, Bowie introduces the concept of the man and the myth that would cement his status as a rock icon.

The interview takes place with an unfortunately unknown interviewer on an American radio station back in 1972. During the interview, the pair discusses some of the songs on Bowie’s seminal album Hunky Dory and then the conversation turns to Bowie’s next big record: Ziggy Stardust and The Spider from Mars. They even go on to talk about the recording sessions for that LP including a word on the songs which were left on the cutting room floor—some of which would be picked up later.


“Could you explain a little more in-depth about the album that’s coming out—Ziggy?” the interviewer asks, likely thinking he would be given a fob-off response. But artists weren’t as media-trained back then and Bowie is happy to provide a preview of the star in waiting. “I’ll try very hard. It’s a little difficult,” began the singer, “but it originally started as a concept album, but it kind of got broken up, because I found other songs I wanted to put in the album which wouldn’t have fitted into the story of Ziggy, so at the moment it’s a little fractured and a little fragmented.”

“So anyway, what you have there on that album when it does finally come out,” he continues, laying out the blueprint for one of his most treasured creations, “is a story which doesn’t really take place, it’s just a few little scenes from the life of a band called Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, who could feasibly be the last band on Earth—it could be within the last five years of Earth.” Bowie is still bubbling with the creativity of the project and finds it somewhat difficult to piece it all together “I’m not at all sure. Because I wrote it in such a way that I just dropped the numbers into the album in any order that they cropped up. It depends in which state you listen to it in.

Thinking about the meaning behind the album and the songs on it, Bowie is again a little unwilling to commit to a certain understanding, instead, championing the individual’s interpretation of the record: “The times that I’ve listened to it, I’ve had a number of meanings out of the album, but I always do. Once I’ve written an album, my interpretations of the numbers in that album are totally different afterwards than the time when I wrote them and I find that I learn a lot from my own albums about me.”

At the time the new record from David Bowie, the now-iconic Ziggy Stardust and The Spider from Mars, was a band still firmly under final construction but with the foundations in place. It’s understandable then that Bowie seems a little taken aback by his interviewers knowledge of the album. However, the gentleman that he is, Bowie walks the interviewer through the concept of the record and Ziggy himself.