10 Bands That Have Musical Alter Egos
3. Ziggy Stardust - David Bowie
Every single project that David Bowie made was based on a risk. Even if not every single genre clashing panned out for him in the long run, there was never a moment where Bowie didn’t put out something that was authentically true to what he was feeling in the moment. Sometimes you need to do more than just express yourself…you have to recreate your own inner rock star.
As Bowie’s style started to get more lighthearted and rock tinged on Hunky Dory, he started to plant the seeds of Ziggy Stardust, who finally made his descent down to Earth on the next album. Modeling himself after the kind of pin up rock and roll stars coming out of the glam rock scene, Ziggy was Bowie’s creation of the ideal rock and roll hero, the starman sent down from the cosmos to blow our minds and reshape the rock scene as we know it. Ziggy’s tenure doesn’t last forever throughout the album though, wrestling with his desire to become a star until finally breaking up the band and having to bring the curtain down on himself for his own Rock and Roll Suicide.
The time in the sun may have come to an end for Ziggy the character, but this was just a small chapter in the millions of other personas that Bowie had in the pipeline, as he worked in genres like krautrock and post rock. These might have seemed more adventurous, but Ziggy walked so Aladdin Sane and the Thin White Duke could run.