Album Review: David Bowie - The Rise & Fall Of Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars (40th Anniversary 2012 Remaster)

Ziggy, apparently, played guitar. But even forty years on, this album has a relevance as more than an artefact.

A couple of years before Springsteen got 'the past, present, and future of rock'n'roll' tag, this came at that whole idea differently. Superficially a fairly ropey concept album, this became a blueprint for a score that followed.

Bowie grabbed the old sci-fi theme of a world headed for Armageddon – as outlined in the opening use-by date of Five Years – added a pop-star-as-messiah element, who goes on to be consumed by the adoration, naturally. Although maybe Pete Townshend's Tommy had beaten him to that idea, it was about the artifice Bowie built around his creation. He became Ziggy. This alien idol motif still gets trotted out – Gaga among others still mining the vein.

The music, easily called glam, had other tangents to it: arty pretensions like the spoken-word melodrama of Rock N Roll Suicide clunked up against Mick Ronson's perfect trashy guitar as in the rattle of Suffragette City. And that five years later, as music got reborn, became punk – which took this record's nervous energy and disposable attitude as a touchstone.

Bowie also had consummate pop sense: Starman and the title track lighters-aloft anthems, Soul Love balladry with some swing, and the sort of sax solo which would become an obligatory evil a decade later. This new digital remix puts back the depth gone from my over-played vinyl copy, making that little note on the back cover 'To Be Played At Maximum Volume', mean something again.