How Ziggy Stardust liberalised individualism and the Gay movement

The 1970s was a time of transformation. The country was slowly recovering from the winter of discontent. People were discovering new wealth and individualism. Ziggy Stardust arrived from Mars and freed individual expression.

Of course, glit-rock was all just a silly and short-lived phase, but it had substance, too. It was a lurid reminder that 70s Britain was a more expressive kind of country.

Even in Britain’s factories, the boots and boiler suit uniform were being updated. Still let’s not get carried away. All the hair in the world couldn’t make up for the daily reality of hard grind.

And, tight knit, working-class communities, where the old rhythms of masculine tradition ran slow and deep.

But, the boundaries were to be pushed even further. When a strange creature landed in central London.

Ziggy Stardust wishes peace to all Humanity

However, Ziggy Stardust is the human manifestation of a creature from outer space, fallen to earth to bring a message of peace and love to all humanity.

In reality, of course, Ziggy was merely the persona of the rock star, David Bowie, whose album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, hit the charts in the summer of 1972.

The key to Ziggy’s appeal wasn’t just that he was an alien. It was that he was an alien in a dress. Ziggy Stardust made David Bowie into an international superstar.

What made Ziggy Stardust so successful wasn’t just the music, it was the attitude.

As a former art school student, Bowie was gender bending as a kind of performance, as well as his remarkably successful marketing exercise.

But for the thousands of suburban teenagers, his androgynous persona was a glimpse of another world.

A world in which you could change your clothes, your hair, even your name, and be whatever and whoever you wanted.

In 1972, David Bowie upped the ante, when he declared himself bisexual.

It was a bold statement at a time when in many parts of Britain, you still risked a kicking for looking a bit different.

But, it reflected how emphatically homosexuality was emerging from the outlaw fringes of our national life.

Five years after the decriminalisation of homosexuality, the gay rights movement had hit the streets.

Hand-in-hand with the new materialism was a new individualism. Young men and women wanted to say, “this is who I am, this is my lifestyle, my identity.”

Finally, it was not only music and sexual liberation that changed Britain. Many years earlier Archie McLean was being hailed as the father of Brazilian football.