4. David BowieZiggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars
We played at the Freddie Mercury tribute at Wembley in 1992. The best part was doing ‘All The Young Dudes’ with Bowie and Mick Ronson and Brian May. That was the best three minutes – musically – of my career, from an emotional point of view. It was the last time Mick Ronson played on stage and it was celebrating the life of a phenomenal musician that we all miss to this day. Brian May is a career long friend of mine. I remember Phil Collen (guitar) was really nervous. I said to him: ‘You’re bloody doing it. You’ll regret it you’re entire life if you don’t’ I literally had to drag him on stage by the collar. We were looking across and there was Ronson and Bowie and May. And it’s my glam anthem, you know? It’s my funeral tune and there we were doing it with everyone who ever meant anything to me all on one stage. Bolan would have made it even better I suppose, but he was dead. But this record Ziggy Stardust? The way I see it is this: what other record could have influenced, say, me, Boy George and Morrissey in the same way, you know? We don’t have much in common but we all saw that same thing…. we saw Bowie with his arm around Ronson on Top Of The Pops and it was like ‘well, that’s what I’m going to do for the rest of my life’. Seeing it on colour TV as well: it looked amazing. To see Slade; The Sweet; Bolan – all of them with the purples, greens, oranges, reds and silvers – it was bonkers. Even Gary Glitter covered in bloody Bacofoil. To come from black and white to that! Bowie oozed class. I got the Ziggy album when I was 12-years-old. You’re full of shit at that age but you’re also a sponge. And I was listening to things like ‘Rock n Roll Suicide’ and I’d think: ‘I wonder if we really are all going to be over and done with by 1977’. It was a great story. [sings] ‘Pushing through the market square…’ Brilliant vocal delivery which was a) listenable b) commercial and c) totally accessible to anybody, from hardcore Bowie fans to little girls who were probably enamoured of David Cassidy. I was listening in awe. He had it all.
