The consensus opinion on 1979’s Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars is that it’s a mediocre document of a magnificent concert. Even its recent re-release was timed to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1973 London concert captured on film by D.A. Pennebaker, not the anniversary of the documentary. The newly expanded and remastered version of the film cleans up Pennebaker’s footage in digital 4K resolution and includes additional backstage & onstage tidbits “lost” in the original, 90min cut (including brief appearances from Jeff Beck and Ringo Starr). It was alternately referred to as Bowie ’73 in its original theatrical run, again stressing the importance of the event filmed rather than the film itself. By ’79, Bowie had evolved past the Ziggy Stardust glam rocker persona, moving onto more depressive, cerebral projects like his Low collaboration with Brian Eno and his Iggy Pop collab The Idiot. The Ziggy Stardust project was already a satellite broadcast from a distant past, and this 1973 concert was billed as the farewell to the persona and to David Bowie as the public knew him, with announcements on the PA declaring “For the last time, David Bowie . . .” So, the logic goes that it’s worth suffering through this shabby, low-lighting footage just so there was some remnant of the Ziggy Stardust band on the record before Bowie transformed into something else altogether.
I personally found the film much more substantial than that, at least in its new theatrical presentation. All of the imperfections audiences have cited over the years are still present—if not expanded—in this restoration. The 4:3 framing is frustratingly tight for a performer known for his galactic-scale glamour. The dim lighting of the venue makes the crowd shots borderline incompressible, which undercuts the pleasure of scanning the faces & fashions of the audience. The camera swings wildly around the room, finding a point of interest halfway into a shot instead of starting with a detail worth documenting. Some shots go entirely black, the audio reel continuing to record while the film cartridges are switched out. Maybe it’s my decades of being brainwashed by D.I.Y. punk aesthetics, but I found those grimy human fingerprints on Bowie’s pristine visual art to be a feature, not a distraction. Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars is a raw document of an immaculate art project, pulling great tension out of the disparate qualities of Bowie’s perfectionist songwriting and Pennebaker’s imperfect imagery. The live arrangements of the Ziggy Stardust songbook work the same way, with guitarist Mick Ronson unraveling tight, familiar pop tunes into abstract, psychedelic noise. The sweaty, sped-up performances of Bowie’s early bangers map out a solid bridge from glam to punk, which couldn’t be more direct by the time the band covers “White Light, White Heat” in raucous encore.
I suspect I had that rapturous, energizing experience with the Ziggy Stardust movie because of the newly restored sound mix. Listening to a digitally cleaned-up, surround sound presentation of this concert in a modern movie theater is easily the best sound quality I’ve ever heard in a David Bowie recording, which certainly elevated the images captured by Pennebaker’s cameras. This is the clearest case of “The work speaks for itself” that I can recall, given that a few minutes of Ziggy’s band performing “Moonage Daydream” in this shaky, cramped frame packs in more mystique & meaning than the entirety of the recent Brett Morgen documentary of the same name. You do not need to dress Bowie up in iTunes visualizer kaleidoscopes to make his words & sounds intriguing to a modern audience. He already dressed himself up in a slutty little kimono and put on a full show, so all Pennebaker had to do was show up with professional recording equipment, sit back, and gaze. The low lighting of the venue and the chaotic movements of the camera evoke UFO conspiracy footage, desperate to catch a glimpse of this glam rock clown from outer space before he disappears back into the night sky. Bowie often appears in orange monotone lighting against a black void, glowing as a strange visual object that just happens to produce beautiful music. The sight of him is arresting, and so long-familiar tracks like “Changes” & “Space Oddity” are captivating in a way they haven’t been since I first heard their proper studio recordings on my sub-par headphones in high school.
My only lingering disappointment with this film is that I couldn’t get a better look at the crowd. There’s enough strobe & disco ball lighting to catch glimpses of the queer nerds swooning in ecstasy over Bowie’s presence, but not enough to fully document their presence in the room. Bowie’s sassy, talkative performances of “Changes” and “Oh, You Pretty Things” slow the momentum of Ronson’s guitar licks down to draw attention to the lyrics, which celebrate the eternal passion & progression of Youth Culture in a way I found genuinely touching. So many of his early songs dwell on time, death, and impermanence that he comes across as a real Gloomy Gus, but he does take obvious solace in how those “changes” are a positive influence on the world from the perspective of youth. So, I found myself scanning the youth in the crowd for their real-time reactions to his art – whether they were gently moshing to manic performances of “Hang Onto Yourself” & “Suffragette City” or they were awestruck by his genderless supermodel posing in various Space Age onesies. It would’ve been nice to fully see those faces before the impermanence of time changed them into something unrecognizable, but there’s no way to fully go back and correct that mistake. What this restoration was able to excavate & accentuate in Pennebaker’s documentary is well worth experiencing big & loud with an enthusiastic crowd of fellow Bowie obsessives. Maybe the form doesn’t fully live up to the content, but in this case it’s difficult to imagine that any one movie ever could.
-Brandon Ledet
Swampflix 