"Weird" in Ziggy Stardust & All Those Years Ago

[madtitan125]

I was putting some George Harrison tunes into my son's iPod today and noticed something.

In the song "All Those Years Ago", George's tribute to John Lennon, George's lyric reads:

"You were the one that they said was so weird"

It has been theorized that the lyrics to Ziggy Stardust
refer to Paul and his replacement.

Ziggy Stardust lyrics:

Ziggy played guitar, jamming good with Wierd (John) and Gilly (George), The Spiders from Mars.

He played it left hand (Paul) , but made it too far,
Became the special man, then we were Ziggy's (Faul's)Band.

Ziggy really sang, screwed up eyes and screwed down hairdo

* Reference to Faul's numerous eye surgeries & contacts? Reference to Faul's numerous wigs?
I think so.

Seems that Bowie was referring to John as Wierd
in this tune. George must have been Gilly.

Another interesting note is that Bowie during this era
was somewhat of a protege of Lennon's. Later they worked together on the song "Fame".

Seems to me that John intimated the details of the replacement saga. Heck, seems like almost everyone knew. Everyone in the rock industry, anyway.

Another example of one class of people being illuminated, and us being kept in the dark.

[lili]

That is so true. I have been a big Bowie fan since I was a teen. That song always bothered me. I never really knew why. Now I know

[DarkHorse]

Makes sense. Weird and Gilly are two good words for John and George.

[plastic paul]

Check out the lyrics to the song "All the young dudes" by "Mott the Hoople"

I've been shot down when mentioning it before elsewhere, but to me it says a lot!

[LOVELYRITA]

The Nurk twins....

[madtitan125]

Just wanted to jump in and agree with Plastic Paul. That song definitely seems to be
all about the replacement saga. The powers that be have been scoffing us the whole time.

[plastic paul]

Cheers titan!

Perhaps it may grab others attention if i mention that it was written by none other than DAVID BOWIE!!!!

[lili]

Yes it was. And Bowie also recorded it. He was very good friends with both John & Bill.

David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust Lyrics
Ziggy played guitar, jammin' good with Weird and Gilly,
The spiders from Mars, he played it left hand
But made it too far
Became the special man, then we were Ziggy's band
Ziggy really sang, screwed up eyes and screwed down hairdo
Like some cat from Japan, he could lick 'em by smiling
He could leave 'em to hang
Came on so loaded man, well hung and snow white tan
So where were the spiders while the fly tried th break our balls
Just a beer light to guide us
So we bitched about his fans and should we crush his sweet
hands?
Ziggy played for time, jiving us that we was voodoo
The kids was just crass. He was the nazz
With God given ass
He took it all too far, but boy could he play guitar
Making love with his ego, Ziggy sucked up into his mind
Like a leper messiah
When the kids had killed the man I had to break up the band
Ziggy Played Guitar

All The Young Dudes

Now billy rapped all night ’bout his suicide
Kick it in the head when he was 25
All that speed jive
Don’t wanna stay alive when you’re 25

Lucy’s stealing clothes from unlocked cars
Freddy’s got zits from picking off the stars from his face
Funky little boat race
Oh the television man is crazy
Saying we’re juvenile delinquent wrecks
Oh man I need tv when I got t. rex
Brother you guessed
I’m a dude yeah

All the young dudes
Carry the news
Boogaloo dudes
Carry the news

All the young dudes
Carry the news
Boogaloo dudes
Carry the news

Now jimmy looks sweet ’cause he dresses like a queen
But he can kick like a mule
It’s a real mean team
We can love
Oh yes, we can love
Brother’s back at home
With his beatles and his stones
We never got if off on that revolution stuff
It was such a drag
Too many snags
Well I drunk a lot of wine
And I’m feeling fine
Gonna race some cat to bed
Is there concrete all around
Or is it in my head
Brother you guessed
Well I’m a dude yeah

All the young dudes
Carry the news
Boogaloo dudes
Carry the news

All the young dudes
Carry the news
Boogaloo dudes
Carry the news

[noodles]

I always thought Ziggy Stardust was about Hendrix. Still do to be honest. Ziggy, Weird and Gilly match the three members of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Ringo is missing if this song is about Paul. The 'snow white tan' bit doesn't fit though but the rest does.

"Ziggy played guitar, jammin' good with Weird and Gilly,
The spiders from Mars, he played it left hand
But made it too far
Became the special man, then we were Ziggy's band

Ziggy really sang, screwed up eyes and screwed down hairdo
Like some cat from Japan, he could lick 'em by smiling
He could leave 'em to hang
Came on so loaded man, well hung and snow white tan

So where were the spiders while the fly tried th break our balls
Just a beer light to guide us
So we bitched about his fans and should we crush his sweet
hands?

Ziggy played for time, jiving us that we was voodoo
The kids was just crass. He was the nazz
With God given ass
He took it all too far, but boy could he play guitar

Making love with his ego, Ziggy sucked up into his mind
Like a leper messiah
When the kids had killed the man I had to break up the band
Ziggy Played Guitar"

[lili]

Snow white tan is Bowie's reference to himself. He's also known as the Thin White Duke. I guess you have to be a bit of a Bowie FANATIC to know this stuff
My age is showing

[noodles]

Of course. I won't comment on the well 'hung part' although I'm fairly sure he gets his tadger out in 'The Man Who Fell To Earth'. ;D

[lili]

Actually, in The Man Who Fell to Earth, they did it very tastefully. You can see Candy Clark in all of her glory, but Bowie is somewhat more discreet. He is supposed to be alien, so he's wearing this skin tight suit, & this goop is coming out of his palms. That's how they make love on his planet ;D
I own it, as well as The Hunger & Serious Moonlight, and a few other Bowie video collections.
BTW, he is excellent in The Hunger.
Considering his reputation & his prowess, I would also venture to guess that he is "well hung" indeed

[JoJo]

Been reading the "Alien Rock" book, and there is a bit about Ziggy and of course Bowie and his interest in Aliens.. Here is what it says about the origin of "Ziggy".

Bowie based his Ziggy Stardust character on Vince Taylor, an unbelievably eccentric rock star with a heavy messiah complex and a love for Elvis Presley, whom Bowie encountered at the Gionconda cafe on Tottenham Court Road in London in 1966. Taylor's best-known work was his 1959 single, "Brand New Cadillac", which was covered by The Clash on their London Calling album in 1977. The Clash's Joe Strummer said, "Vince was the beginning of British rock 'n' roll. Before him there was nothing. He was a miracle."

[JoJo]

lili said:

Actually, in The Man Who Fell to Earth, they did it very tastefully. You can see Candy Clark in all of her glory, but Bowie is somewhat more discreet. He is supposed to be alien, so he's wearing this skin tight suit, & this goop is coming out of his palms. That's how they make love on his planet ;D

Who knows of course, but my guess about his origin was not another planet but.. earth in the future. A clue: He is riding in a car, and he sees a scene through the glass (that no one else sees) of a farm in the distant past, judging from the clothing. Even stranger, the people from the past see him, much to their horror.

Could have just been a device to reveal some alien power of his, but it may have been saying the distance he traversed was not one of space, but of time.

[lili]

I never thought of that before. If he's from our future, our planet is in for a major change in the environment !
I still feel that he's supposed to be from a different planet. Most of the movie points us in that direction.

Some images from The Man Who Fell to Earth:

Bowie & Kelly Clark:








Bowie, taking out the covers that make his eyes look "human":



Alien Bowie with his wife & family:





How they make love on his planet:

[luvleerita]

While I'm not too familiar with all of Bowie's material, I am familiar with the song "Is there life on Mars?" Which gives me the association with Bill's "Venus and Mars".

The song "American Pie" has the lyrics "...A generation lost in space...."

Age of Aquarius....When Jupiter aligns with Mars.....then peace will guide the planets, and love will steer the stars....the utopian New Age that many are waiting for....their Lord Maitreya....
Is this this Biblical Antichrist?

[beatlies]

In The Man Who Fell to Earth the Bowie alien character, "Newton," communicates back to his home planet by releasing record albums with encoded messages on them that presumably get transmitted through space via radio waves.

Bowie-Newton is also described as suspected of being a "fraud," which in fact, he is because the technology patents that make him powerful on Earth come from his alien society, and are not the original inventions of his own mind. Kind of like Faul songs, or many Beatles songs?

The Bowie character is like a combination of Thomas Edison, Einstein and Bill Gates.

[tomdrums]

they really made an "across the universe" cover...qwith John on bground vocals! And in "Life on Mars!" he says "'cos Lennon's on sale again"---

[eddy]

I think it's 'Lenin's on sale again'

Here is a scenario
The date, 1969 or 1970
The place- a party, Bowie meets Faul


We passed upon the stair, we spoke of was and when
Although I wasn't there, he said I was his friend
Which came as some surprise, I spoke into his eyes
I thought you died alone, a long long time ago

Oh no, not me
I never lost control
You're face to face
With the man who sold the world

I laughed and shook his hand, and made my way back home
I searched for form and land, for years and years I roamed
I gazed a gazely stare at all the millions here
We must have died alone, a long long time ago

Who knows? Not me
We never lost control
You're face to face
With the man who sold the world

Who knows? Not me
We never lost control
You're face to face
With the man who sold the world

[B]

Thanks for resuscitating this thread, eddy; I was going to refer to it in a future post!
It's "Lennon's on sale again" btw, imo. That's what the lyrics to Bowie's "Is there life
on Mars?" show, and it makes more sense anyway.
Below are the videos for "The Man Who Sold the World", which you have quoted.

David Bowie - The Man Who Sold The World
www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n0pf7anLa4


Nirvana - The Man Who Sold The World
www.youtube.com/watch?v=fregObNcHC8


(Wouldn't the man who sold the world be Adam? )

Here are videos for the song "Ziggy Stardust", the topic of this thread:

David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust (From The Motion Picture)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8sdsW93ThQ


David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust
www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXq5VvYAI1Q


"screwed up eyes and screwed down hairdo" fits Paul pretty well. I'll try to find
the video here of Paul flinging his hair, and appearing somewhat bald in the front.
Vision issues may have been an inspiration for the eye-themed REVOLVER cover,



and lyrics like "Nowhere man can you see me at all?" Iampretty sure about that.

"But made it too far
Became the special man, then we were Ziggy's band" covers a lot of ground here.


Spiders/Beatles - it's all the same.
"Switch on the TV; we may pick him up on channel 2:

David Bowie- Starman
www.youtube.com/watch?v=muMcWMKPEWQ

[eddy]

thanks for the correction about Lenin
I always thought that the bridge 'oh no, not me' with the ascending major scale guitar, sounded very 'Beatles', maybe Pepperish

So, just as Mr Kite 'challenged the world', FAUL 'sold the world', or 'put them on'
-
and then there is this, maybe this guy hadn't noticed that the light had changed, i love the last words-

Every chance, every chance that I take
I take it on the road
Those kilometers and the red lights
I was always looking left and right
Oh, but I'm always crashing in the same car

Jasmine, I saw you peeping
As I pushed my foot down to the floor
I was going round and round the hotel garage
Must have been touching close to 94
Oh, but I'm always crashing in the same car

Yeah yeah yeah yeah