David Bowie 1972-1973 Ziggy Stardust Tour

10 thoughts on “David Bowie 1972-1973 Ziggy Stardust Tour”

1. A cosmologist will tell you our universe is at least 13.787 billion years old and maybe a lot older. So my existence since the start of the universe is, by comparison, so vanishingly small as to be almost nothing. And yet, I was born and lived most of my life in the most interesting of times of political change and upheaval, of television, of computers and the Internet, and of music.

   Spring 1972 I shared a caravan in the garden of The Old Vicarage, Marshfield, near Cardiff, with my best friend, Richard. We had recently returned from our travels to Salisbury and lived there for a few weeks before returning home to Cardiff. We were ‘runaways’ but in truth, more teenage adventurers having dropped out of college, we had left home finding odd-paying jobs or claiming benefits. I was sixteen and Richard was just seventeen, and we were both unruly teenagers.

   A college friend, Ashley Martin, arranged with his aunt and grandmother for us to rent a caravan on the grounds of The Old Vicarage. Ashley’s aunt gave us a few things: blankets, a kettle, and a couple of other items, so we managed rather well and would take baths in the house a few times a week. Ashley’s grandmother was a whippet breeder known as ‘Poppy Martin’ in breeding circles. Whippets were everywhere around the house and grounds. It was here that I discovered whippets for the first time and fell in love with the breed. They rarely barked; they were friendly and loved playing or curling up and sleeping with you.

   The caravan was sparsely furnished and needed a good dusting and cleaning. We had sleeping bags, clothes, some cooking utensils, and a few decorative objects. I also retrieved some posters, an old mono Dansett Record Player, and about 100 or so records from my parents’ house in North Cardiff shortly after our return from Salisbury. My family was on holiday, and it seems strange to think about now, but we found a ladder from the garage and used it to access an open bedroom window at the front of the house. We would be in full sight of anyone who cared to look and could easily be mistaken for burglars. However, I retrieved the few things I wanted, and we went back to the caravan.

   So these were happy and carefree times for us both, filled with music, laughter, hashish smoking, and skulduggery. A record I owned from those times was David Bowie’s Hunky Dory. I bought it a year earlier, when Richard and I had spent a weekend in London, in the Portobello Road area. This was the start of an interest in David Bowie, which became a keystone in my friendship with Richard. We have shared our love of Bowie for almost fifty-five years, culminating in us listening to Blackstar together. Hunky Dory was played often and I had read in New Musical Express about a new release, a new David Bowie album, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. The review was so good that the following Saturday I went to Buffalo Records in Cardiff and bought a copy; this was the day after its UK release.

   I got back to the caravan by early afternoon. Richard and I had been told some friends of ours had ‘very special LSD tablets’ which were known as ‘Red Barrel’ acid tabs, and like the legendary ‘California Sunshine’ LSD, they were known for their purity and strength. So I took another bus into Cardiff to visit Walter’s flat in Roath. Richard kept his end of the deal, preparing something to eat.

   Arriving at the flat, a former school friend, Phil Cooper, opened the door. It was a relief, as I didn’t really know Walter that well. I always got along well with Phil, so meeting Walter went easily, and I bought three ‘Red Barrel’ LSD tablets. I scraped up a couple more quid and asked if he could sell me a two-pound lump of gold seal. It was very good black hashish. I felt embarrassed asking for less than a quarter ounce, but he had no problem doing it. After a quick smoke and chat with Walter and Phil, I noticed the time and was anxious to return to the caravan. I made my apologies and left.

   Returning back about six o’clock with my booty of LSD and hash, I found Richard finishing the cooking. He seemed delighted when I told him I also got some Gold Seal with my change, so we rolled up one before eating and played the new Bowie album. Ashley was at the Vicarage that weekend and popped in for a smoke; he was going ‘drinking’ in the Old Student Union in Cardiff for the night, so he left Richard and me. We took an LSD tablet each after he left, then smoked and played music, waiting for it to kick in. It was the first acid Richard had taken, and only my second time. I had sneakily taken a pink microdot a couple of months earlier and somehow disguised the fact from Richard, but that’s a whole other story.

   This was no Aldous Huxley ‘Doors of Perception’ controlled experiment; it was two teenagers taking a mind-expanding drug at a very influential age. Thirty minutes in, we were grinning like idiots. We started to ride a high, the likes of which we had never experienced. What struck me first were the time dilation and the incredible acoustics of the music coming from my old Dansett as we got higher. I saw patterns in everything, even the cover of the record Cosmic Wheels by Donovan. It had a black and white drawing in the centrefold, and written beneath was ‘Get out your cosmic crayons, kids, and colour in’. When I looked at it now, the whole image was in glorious colour. I immediately understood the cryptic message. The sound was also as if from some mystical but glorious hi-fi system. The lyrics being sung made stories in my mind, and the musicians were telling them directly to us. It was a shared experience like no other, and the music drew me in as images started to appear—visual echoes, hallucinations of a sort. Through it all, I was conscious that it was not real in the normal sense, but the lacy pattern that was imprinted on everything made my world look so different. I wondered if this was what it truly looked like.

   What seemed like several hours later were actually about nine thirty in the evening, so it could only have been two hours later at most. We needed cigarettes, so we quickly decided to visit the local pub. We wanted to get some cider and chocolate, as we had discovered on a previous visit that chocolates were sold there. It was about a ten-minute walk, but the time passed rapidly. We entered the quiet pub, which was more like a scene from a horror film. To us, it was as if the pub fell silent as we entered. In actuality, it probably didn’t; just the sound of a momentary drop in the chatter as we entered, amplified by the LSD high, paranoia kicked in. The hubbub resumed as we stood like frightened mice at the bar; it was full of people trying to buy their last orders. Shadows and lights tricked my eyes into seeing things; a vine appeared to grow slowly across the bar, and the jukebox in the corner was playing Grovin’ by the Rascals.

   I was suddenly woken out of our stupor, and the barman asked for our order. Richard mumbled about flagons of cider, cigarettes, and chocolate bars as I focused my gaze across the room. The two flagons of cider, chocolate raspberry ruffles, and Players Number 6 cigarettes we ordered arrived. I was feeling quite self-conscious as Richard was fumbling for a five-pound note to pay the barman; we were both getting higher by the minute and now desperate to get outside as quickly as we could. Outside, we laughed, exclaiming, ‘What the fuck!’ as we reviewed what had happened. Opening the raspberry ruffles, we started to eat the sickly sweet treats; they were like eating the nectar of the gods.

   Arriving back at the caravan, we started reaching the height of the ‘trip’ and poured out glasses of cider, smoked more hash, and listened to Ziggy Stardust. As we listened and got drawn into the ‘Ziggy’ rock opera, it was as if Bowie himself was talking right at us. Richard experienced the same thing—a shared experience. ‘Five Years’ played, and I was almost convinced it was ‘The Starman’ warning us the world was about to end. It got freaky as we created a story based on what we were hearing in our minds. It became mixed up with tracks from ‘Hunky Dory’ like ‘The Bewley Brothers’ and ‘Life on Mars’.

   Not long after, there was a loud bang at the caravan door: ‘You fuckers are trippin’ then. Ashley shouted, drunk on Guinness from a night in town. In our drugged state, we had forgotten about him for a while, so let him in. Excitedly, he told us about his evening as we played more music and talked. I remember some of the titles we played that evening: Savoy Brown, ‘Raw Sienna’, Donovan, Sergeant Pepper, The White Album, and of course David Bowie. Ashley decided to take the remaining LSD tablet; he was soon as high on LSD as Richard and I. The new Bowie album played almost constantly, and we all shared the experience. We analysed the cover and the inner sleeves, looking for clues to the story our minds had invented. Richard and Ashley were then drawing with pens on the same pad of paper; the image that appeared was a fist clenching a torch with flames licking upwards like the hand of the Statue of Liberty. They kept repeating the same phrase, ‘I’m a gunna!’ finally titling the piece, ‘I’m a gunna’. So much seemed to be happening; our heightened senses took us on a rollercoaster ride, so by the time we came down from the ‘Trip’, the effects were imprinted on our young minds.

   The following week, we bought the latest copy of the NME (New Musical Express), as was customary for us. It was on sale every Thursday, and I spotted an advertisement towards the back. David Bowie was touring the UK and would be at Croydon Greyhound on Sunday, June 25, 1972, the following weekend. After the crazy experiences of the weekend, Richard and I wanted to go. Ashley was doing something else but was able to help us. He had a friend from the Student Union who had a mother living in Croydon, a car, and was going home that very weekend to visit his girlfriend.

   So this began an almost unbelievable set of coincidences, putting us in front of a stage in Croydon on June 25 to watch a performance that became legendary and was the now famous Ziggy Stardust Tour. We agreed that we would stay at his mother’s house over the weekend, and we met Chris at the Student Union. Though he was staying in Croydon, he was only at his mother’s house Saturday night, leaving Sunday morning to stay with his girlfriend. We would have to hitch back after the show, which was no real hardship for us. I don’t remember how we afforded the weekend, but I was working at a petrol station at that time, so somehow we had enough.

   On Saturday evening, the day before the Bowie concert, we found another local show featuring Amon Dull, a German electronic group, and another band called Jericho. Chris, his girlfriend, Richard, and I all went along. It was an interesting enough show, but we were so hyped up for the Bowie show that ‘Kraut Rock’ was kind of lost on us. This, it turned out, was another coincidence, as Bowie would later take a sojourn to Berlin, where he created a new persona.

   On Sunday, it was just Richard and I killing time until the show began. The Croydon Greyhounds Hall was a 15-minute walk from Chris’s mother’s house. We said our goodbyes to his mother and walked to the hall carrying bags with our overnight things for the weekend. As we arrived, a long line was forming outside, going around the block. We joined it, placed our bags on the floor, and shuffled them along with our feet as the queue got ever closer to the door. An even longer queue was forming behind us; it looked like a hundred or so people, but we later discovered it was about a thousand people. We finally reached the ticket counter and paid for our entry. We were stamped on the wrists as proof of payment, and the marks glowed in the ultraviolet light above the doorway. I think one other couple was admitted behind us; all the rest were turned away. It was an extraordinary stroke of luck, as had we left just two minutes later, we would have been too far back to get in. The capacity of the hall was only 200 people, which we had been unaware of, but we made it into the number.

   We stowed our bags in a discreet corner and wandered through the standing room-only hall. Even at capacity, there was sufficient room to move close to the stage, and we could almost touch the performers on stage; we were so close. Roxy Music started the show with their very English progressive rock sound. Brian Eno, looking quite the glam rocker at the time, was so bright, and mercurial was the ‘keyboard wizard’ with long blond hair and a short fringe. Brian Ferry had a strange voice that soared above the music, and the entire band was dressed in a style that became known as Glam Rock. We listened to Ladytron, Virginia Plain, and most of the first album, plus a couple of new tracks that later appeared on For Your Pleasure. Brian Eno was in his golden jump suit dancing at the keyboards, and Phil Manzenera had strange fly-like eyewear and an unusual-looking guitar. Their set created the mood for more, and the best was yet to come. The excitement levels built in the audience. At the interval, roadies change over equipment and set up amplification, doing sound checks. We bought a couple of ciders from the bar and discussed the group we’d seen. There were no drugs and just one pint of cider each, due in part to our meagre funds.

   When the lighting eventually dropped, the ‘Spiders from Mars’ took to the stage. Finally, Bowie ran to the central microphone and shouted something like, ‘Hello, Croydon!’ They immediately dropped into a hard rocker I think was ‘Queen Bitch’. It’s hard to remember the playing order now, but we saw Bowie go through some of the Ziggy album. ‘Starman’ followed as Bowie bent over and used his teeth on Mick Ronson’s guitar, the now-famous Guitar Fellatio. At this point, no one really knew who David Bowie was; he had hardly been on television, so his stage antics were both shocking and exhilarating. What then followed were Suffragette City and White Light/White Heat. These were performed with a heavy strobe effect and a nod to the Velvet Underground. He left the stage for a costume change as Mick Ronson played ‘I Feel Free’, with heavy strobe lighting reflected brightly on his silver glitter jacket. When he returned to stage, there was an aborted attempt at ‘Space Oddity’, a tape recording whose space sound effects weren’t working. Bowie apologised and said he would come back to it, and it was played a bit later in the set list with a working tape machine. As for the band, they indeed did ‘Move like tigers on Vaseline’ and with such a small audience, we could hardly be closer to the stage. He almost touched them as he performed for us, messing with our young minds. At the end came a couple more songs and they left the stage. Someone on stage announced the album had reached number 17 on the UK album charts, then also said a thousand people had been left outside. They finally came back to the stage after huge cheers to perform Rock n Roll Suicide at the finish.

   It was an early tour show, and with a band building a reputation, it was shocking in the way ‘Rock N Roll’ must have seemed in the fifties. They were unknowingly creating the myth that was David Bowie. We had actually witnessed, from a matter of only a few feet away, a superstar in the making that night. This low-budget presentation in a small hall in a London suburb led to The Spiders from Mars being invited onto Top of the Pop’s to perform Starman. Bowie had charisma in spades; the band was now becoming so tight that they faithfully reproduced what we heard on the records. In that small, sweaty hall, they were raw with soul and passion, playing some of the most exciting rock music any of us had heard. When the show ended, we felt almost bereft, as if we were missing something. It had changed us more than we realised, and we ambled out of the hall with a few fans still calling for more and headed to Turnham Green to hitch back home. That is a whole other story I will save for another time, as this is about Bowie and his influence on me and my friend.

2. Would love to know why the Dallas, TX date at The Majestic Theater was cancelled. It’s easy for me to envision that show in that venue & it would’ve been legendary. I was 2 so I would not have been there, but my aunt who introduced me to him would have been there with glitter bells on.

3. I went the Liverpool show on the 4th of September, 1972.
   First time I can recall getting really dressed up for a show, and the first time I ever wore makeup.
   A very small venue and we could dance right up close to the stage.
   TOTALLY AMAZING show; I’ll never forget it!

4. Hi David ,
   Thank you for your story , unfortunately I never got to attend a ziggy concert , but what I hear from you is a loss

   Greeting Diedrich

5. My first concert Ever – Free trade Hall Manchester 7th June 5.30 show. I was 13 years old – I’m 61 now and still haven’t gotten over it!
   Never even seen a strobe light before so when Bowie and the Spiders came on in darkness then strobe the effect was truly shattering! Hang on to Yourself in Black and Silver striped Kansaii jump suit – ripped off for Ziggy Stardust – UNBELIEVABLE! When later in show David sang Space Oddity under a glitterball…. it really was like falling through space!
   This is the concert against which all the concerts I have been to in my life since (a lot) – are measured against – some have come near but nothing has ever topped this pure Rock n roll theatre!
   I was in school uniform with a girl mate from school – no hyperbole but if there was one day in my life I could go back in a time machine to – it would be this one! I’m just so glad I was clued up enough at that tender age to have got my (£1.25 + 10p booking fee!) ticket…
   .After July 3rd there was no opportunity to ever see this show live in the flesh again

6. Leeds Uni gig cancelled supposedly due that Bowie said the stage wasn’t large enough. rescheduled Leeds rollerrena which I attended

7. I was in the front row , no seats we sat on the floor , at the gig on 12th May 1972 at the Poly of Central London.I was 20 years old and had come back from an overland trip to India the previous October
   The stage was only about 5 foot away and quite low only about 3or 4 foot high. We were mostly students and a few freaks as longhair smokers were known back then. I was one of the latter , my then girlfriend who was a student in jewelery making
   had got the tickets. I think that there were about a few hundred people at the gig, they were all behind me.
   At that stage I was a big fan of the LP Hunky Dory which I had bought around December 1971 .It was an exciting new discovery for freaks who up to then had been listening to Santana Beatles, Traffic . CSN, Astral Weeks, Grateful DEad etc. and when I went to visit peoples houses I usually brought the record with me . Once my friends heard the album they wanted to hold on to it and I think I ended up eventually buying 4 different copies . I still have that actual LP in my collection as well as a newer version .
   The reason I mention this is because at that stage nobody had heard the Ziggy Stardust album as it hadnt been released then and we were expecting to hear songs from Hunky Dory. What a shock we got …who were these glammed up people?. Which one was Bowie ? . Both he and Mick Ronson had long blond hair and seemed like androgenous twins dressed in sparkly jumpsuits. The loudness of Mick`s Les Paul was tremendous while Bowie played an acoustic at least some of the time.
   None of the material was familiar to us except Queen Bitch so it was a bit disconcerting and I have to admit I was disappointed . However the dynamics and the interaction between David and Mick was challenging to say the least especially the fellatio with the guitar and the energy and loudness from the stage was incredible but not what I expected .

   Since then I have learned to love Ziggy Stardust and consider it to be probably my favourite album of all time. There are a few other contenders. I didnt become a Bowie fan though and never went to another gig of his .While I bought most of his albums up to Scary Monsters I still appreciate Hunky Dory and also The Man Who Sold the World as seminal works.

8. HELP! Does anyone know why a last leg of The Ziggy tour was canceled? I have an unused ticket stub from 9/22/1973 in Chicago at the Auditorium Theatre. Any info appreciated!

9. I saw Bowie for the 1st time in Phoenix, AZ in November of 1972. It was an absolutely amazing show with the Spider From Mars backing Bowie. No one had ever heard such a talent with such energy. The songs were incredible then, as they still are now. Unbelievable is a word used too many times, but Bowie was that and more. The crowd that was lucky enough to have been there was spell bound and went crazy for this man with such indisputable talent. Beyond this, I saw Bowie 3 more times. It was always a different show, with a different line-up, but David Bowie was always on his game with an undeniable connection to his audience and his songs.

10. Good God – 155 shows around the world in 18 months, often with numerous back-to-back stretches of shows and even an 11-day stretch with a show each night. That had to be absolutely grueling considering how much energy these guys put into each performance. They were all superhuman. Then again – they were from Mars.