It is 1972. The tinderbox of economic failure and right wing political, England was overflowing into the streets with rage and desire. Into this dropped a starman. A traveller called Ziggy. This outrageous being was a character, whose genesis is something of legend. In the cold, wet streets of Bromley, a young man called David Jones was trudging back from another gig he and his band had performed in. Then as now, those streets are seperate from the capital by class and money. Joy and decline. Jones became Ziggy. Ziggy Stardust. A rock’n’roll messiah for the age of electronic voices, cushioned by guitars and drums. Many a middle aged man and woman cried on the news of his passing. Recalling the magic his voice cast on them. The joy mixed with aspiration it craved of them. Reinhard Kleist possibly was one such person. You feel this because he seems entralled by the starman. The stardust must still tickle his nose. He captures some of the elemental force at play then, The rise and fall of the cosmic entity. His record is semi factually true. But his adulation of a biography of the rock adonis, is more personal. More problematic. Bowie’s hapless efforts in the London music scene are here but his problems of position and his admiration of Nazis (though this was a little context, later in his work and manipulated by film director now, journo then Cameron Crowe). Ziggy was a hero and so heroes are often given attachments they do and dont deserve. Where Kleist work is inquesative is in how Bowie  struggled with his own creation at the height of his fame. A monster that propelled can also be a myth needing to be dispelled. As Bowie transforms himself, ever more frenetically, into the egocentric rock star he first conceived, the extravagant lifestyle he had only ever imagined threatens to engulf him. Possibly why his dictatorial image was driven home.

Now the press art suggests its mostly glaring colour bases and screaming neon reflection. This is not so. STARMAN :BOWIE STARDUST YEARS is a series of highs and lows. Kleist spends time placing Bowie and his Ziggy on to a planet in the solar system. Declaring his potency for magical excess in the frames of a piece that both feels super human and ordinary in relation to a man who we viewed as a god. HADDON HALL, released a few years back now by Selfmadehero, has already explore much of Bowie to Ziggy. It did it with an apt sense of the man as an ethereal dream. STARMAN :BOWIE STARDUST YEARS is better at finding the man, myth and what was behind ziggy. However it doesnt sing as well as the former. It is lumpy and leads a comprehensive account that is not always needed. I recalled Bowie at a later junction. He was reviving a career that needed no resurrection. Trying to fit in to a world of breaks and beats, when he needed not to. This is the problem for almost anyone. Segmenting our own rememberance of that immortal human alien is hard. His films, his music, his harder parts. The things said and then unsaid. Instead Kleist is focusing on Bowie at this point and before, moving on to beyond. Through sex and the politics of the music business. Fair enough….

https://selfmadehero.com/books/starman-bowie-s-stardust-years