On January 13, 1972, David Bowie and his band, The Spiders from Mars, were wrapping up a photo shoot for David’s recently finished album in a first-floor studio in a quiet backstreet off Regent Street. The light was fading and the photographer, Brian Ward, suggested a few last shots outside. The late afternoon’s persistent drizzle was off-putting for the three Spiders and only David braved the weather, grabbing a Les Paul guitar on his way out.
Dressed as a space Droog in a boiler-suit he’d had stitched together after seeing the newly released A Clockwork Orange, David threw shapes in and around the small street’s phone box and, most famously, among the discarded boxes and rubbish beneath the sign of a furrier’s, K West. The shots would become not just one of the most celebrated album covers of all time, but would place Heddon Street on the map of London’s iconographic places.
Terry Pastor’s hand-tinting enhanced the photos’ theatricality, giving this rather uninteresting little street of offices, studios and small factories the quality of a film noir stage set. Most of all, his choice of colouring David’s mousey-brown hair surfer blond added a Midwich Cuckoo-like otherworldliness to Ziggy Stardust. Was that a guitar, or a ray gun?
The album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, would change Bowie’s life for ever. It would also affect a generation of adolescents looking for an escape from the ennui of existence. The album’s protagonist was a metaphor for the ultimate messianic rock star, and Bowie successfully blurred the lines not just between boy and girl, but himself and his creation. Bowie was Ziggy come to save us — and I bought him hook, eyeliner and haircut.
It wasn’t long before we’d found out where this space invader had been snapped, and any visit to W1 would involve a pilgrimage to Heddon Street, felt-tip pen in hand. We’d stare at the phone box that Ziggy had obviously teleported himself into, and then try to fathom the meaning behind the K West sign. Kwest? Yes, Quest! It all made sense back then.
But Ziggy Stardust was a cockney — recorded, photographed and last sighted in W1. Even his costume was stitched from cloth bought in Liberty’s — and today he has become one of London’s great fictional characters. He stands alongside Dorian Gray and the Artful Dodger, as well as other antiheroes such as Gormenghast’s Steerpike and Clockwork’s Alex.
The Crown Estate, which owns Heddon Street, was keen to commemorate the seminal album that launched Ziggy Stardust. It has created the first Crown Estate plaque, placing it where the furrier’s sign once hung, between two of the street’s now numerous alfresco restaurants.
This year’s 40th anniversary was the perfect time: today I have the honour and privilege of unveiling what is London’s second-only plaque to a fictional character, the other one displayed at 221b Baker Street. It seems right that it should be the job of a fan; after all, Ziggy is no longer with us, killed off in 1973 by his creator, who is now nurturing his well-earned enigma in New York.
In any case, as Ziggy once sang: “He’d like to come and meet us, but he thinks he’ll blow our minds.” Probably right.
garykemp.com
