Clint Planet
Utter Cad.
Or, "Ziggy II: A Technicolor Drug-Fuelled Limo Chase through America, 1973"
With Bowie, Ziggy and Low are probably the benchmarks (for startlingly contrasting reasons) but Aladdin Sane has always had a special place in my heart, not least for its being a bigger, brasher, even more lurid version of Ziggy Stardust. If his previous LP's music seemed to fit the rainy backstreet London artwork of its sleeve then Aladdin Sane's cover suggested a bolder, brighter - more American - turn on the androgynous alien/rock star messiah, and oh how the music lived up to it.
He was so stunningly prolific in the seventies - (probably, only the Beatles [1962-70] and possibly Bob Dylan [1963-67] can claim to have turned out so many seminal records in such a short period of time) - that it's easy to become blasé about just how much sensational music he produced and about just how ahead of the game each and every record was in that period. He had the old greys whistling his tunes and the hipsters hanging onto his every move, like some leper messiah.
And then there was Ronno and the boys! This was the end of the line for the Spiders From Mars, even if they didn't realise it at the time - Bowie, restless as ever, was about to jettison his own band and take a new direction that woukd soon lead him back to Europe and personally-imposed rehab. In the meantime, there was this gargantuan, flamboyant boa-bedecked record to feed the faithful's needs.
Outrageous and magnificent. They just don't make them like this any more.
