30. Irvine WelshThe Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars
That was another life-changing album for me. That Top Of The Pops appearance was a game changer. I realised that he had all these other fantastic albums out – The Man Who Sold The World, which is a classic, brilliant, underrated album. And Hunky Dory, which is the one that has really stood the test of time. It just has these fantastic songs on it like ‘Changes’, ‘Life On Mars’ and ‘Quicksand’ – just interesting, pastiche songs and a great energy and spirit and freedom about it as a piece of work.
When I was at school it was divided up between the kind of more arty, poncey kids like me who liked Bowie, and the ones who liked Slade, so there was always conflict there. Then within about six months, everyone was into Bowie. The polarisation stopped and all the nutters got into him as well. So at first I was seen as a weirdo, then I was seen as a fashion medium.
I went to school at Ainslie Park in Pilton, north Edinburgh. It served all the big housing schemes in that area. One of the weird things about it was that it had a very renowned music department, for a comprehensive scheme school. They kind of played on it a bit. They got money and built a state-of-the-art music block. They encouraged kids on instrumentation, but it was all snobby stuff like violins and cellos and all that. I never really vibed on that, so I was never really part of it. They had some really quirky and interesting teachers, but you had to be one of the snobby kids who had their own instrument. But it was great that they had a facility like that, especially because it was just a sink estate school.
I also have to mention The Next Day here – not only is this one of the greatest comeback albums of all time, it’s one of the best Bowie’s ever done.
