David Bowie performing 'Starman' on Top of the Pops
(6 July 1972): click here to watch on YouTube
There's a starman waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us
But he thinks he'd blow our minds
Blow our minds: isn't that precisely what Bowie did with his seductively camp performance of 'Starman' on Top of the Pops on July 6th, 1972?
But not only did he blow our minds, he also blew away the past and announced the coming of an alien future in which binary oppositions would become increasingly difficult to enforce and seem not just ever more untenable but artificial and restrictive [1].
And it's for this reason that Bowie's performance has to be included in any short series of posts on great moments in rock 'n' roll history that, crucially, also happened to be televised and thereby becoming fixed in the cultural imagination.
For whilst the song, 'Starman', would still be an excellent track with a catchy chorus even if you only ever heard it on the radio [2], it was seeing Bowie on TV looking like the most beautiful man on the planet in his brightly-coloured jumpsuit, spiky red-hair, and painted fingernails, that's key.
Bowie perfectly captures the look of music and the sound of fashion, as Malcolm McLaren would say, and his appearance on Top of the Pops is - just like Elvis's second appearance on The Milton Berle Show in June 1956 - a genuine event (i.e. something that comes unexpectedly from the outside and changes everything).
But whereas Elvis, however, marks the point at which white popular culture becomes black, Bowie signifies the queering of popular culture.
Appearing confident and playful, Bowie drapes his arm around the
shoulder of guitarist Mick Ronson and, famously, points
directly into the camera lens at one point, not merely engaging
with his television audience directly, but seeming to address each one
of them individually.
Although Bowie had been on the music scene for a number of years, experimenting with different sounds and different looks, it was this performance that made him a star and a seminal figure for many of those watching him that evening who would later go on to have careers in pop music themselves [3].
Notes
[1] Bowie doesn't just challenge sexual and gender binaries; he also, for example, curdles the division between American and British English by using slang terms from the former sung with a London accent. And he makes us think about questions of authenticity and artifice; is he a genuine rock star, or an actor merely playing the role?
[2] 'Starman' was released as a single in April 1972, taken from the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (RCA Records, 1972). The song, which delivers a message of alien salvation to the world's youth, was partly inspired by 'Over the Rainbow' as sung by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz (1939).
Upon release 'Starman' sold reasonably well and earned some positive reviews, though many thought it simply a space-age novelty record. It was only after Bowie performed it on Top of the Pops that it became a top ten hit and helped propel the album up the charts also. Today, of course, the song is regarded by critics as one of Bowie's greatest.
[3] Amongst the many viewers sat at home watching Bowie on Top of the Pops that evening were Adam Ant, Boy George, Gary Numan, Pete Murphy, Ian McCulloch, Morrissey, Robert Smith, and Siouxsie Sioux. They were all immediately placed under his spell and would often recall in later years how this performance was a major turning point in their lives.
For another great moment in rock 'n' roll history as seen on TV - Elvis's performance of 'Hound Dog' on The Milton Berle Show (5 June 1956) - click here.
