And after that sacrifice, he would be creatively born again many times. The mask had begun to stick, so Bowie cast it off. But that’s how it is: at the end of the post-modern show, the exit is always through the gift shop. The spiritual rebirth from Ziggy’s sacrificial death came with a price. ‘We heard those words’, recalls Critchley, ‘and were astonished at being forgiven.
That night in Hammer- smith, Ziggy, as he sacrificed himself on stage, revealed himself as outlier, pointing the way – the Deleuzian line of flight for others to take from the spiritual lockdown of suburbia to the stars, propelled by the revolutionary force of desire-production. Leafy Letchworth, like Bowie’s Beckenham, might have seemed arboreal, rooted, stuck. Teenage Simon was just such a mini-Hamlet, dreaming of a life beyond his native Letchworth Garden City. In the anti-Oedipal terms of Deleuze and Guattari, Bowie de-territorialised himself in becoming the androgynous star- man, quitting the cul-de-sac of suburbia for the gender-bending, omnisexual fantasy realm of outer space.Īt the end of ‘Rock ’n’ Roll Suicide’, Bowie was reaching out to his target demographic, whom Critchley describes as ‘millions of self-conscious mini-Hamlets, living out their loveless hells in scattered, sundry hamlets, towns’. Trevor Bolder is reputed to have mouthed to drummer Mick ‘Woody’ Woodmansey, ‘He’s fucking sacked us!’ And then, fittingly, the band launched into their last number, ‘Rock ’n’ Roll Suicide’, sacrificing Ziggy to the crowd, with whom Bowie symbolically merged as he sang the song’s last line: ‘Gimme your hands, ’cause you’re wonderful.’īowie-as-Ziggy, argues fan-turned-philosopher Simon Critchley, captivated his fans because his persona refused the dominant norms of society – boy/girl, human/alien, gay/straight. But he didn’t tell the bassist and drummer before making his on-stage announcement. On that night in west London, Bowie killed Ziggy and broke up the band. On his hit album of the previous year, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Bowie had sung what in hindsight became the chronicle of a death foretold.
Thank you.’Īt the time Bowie was incarnating Ziggy Stardust, a space-age pop-star character whose androgynous allure made him a simulacrum of other real-life glam-rock stars, such as Marc Bolan. On 3 July 1973, at London’s Hammersmith Odeon, David Bowie told the crowd: ‘Not only is this the last show of the tour, but it’s the last show we’ll ever do.
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