Aladdin Sane and David Bowie's Break from Ziggy Stardust

I always marveled at people who could tear a tablecloth off without upsetting all the dishes on the table. I never understood it. Well, I suppose I understood it, but I just knew I would never be able to do it if I tried. David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane feels like an attempt to pull the tablecloth from the table set by the previous year’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars. Throughout the course of its 42 minutes, Aladdin Sane sets up and tears downs its own motifs and sounds. The result is often incongruent. It is also perhaps the most intriguing record of Bowie’s entire career.

On The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars, each song felt connected. Ken Scott, the record’s producer, has stated that they didn’t set out to create a concept record when recording the album. However, that doesn’t mean it didn’t naturally happen. The songs, both lyrically and sonically felt intertwined with each other. They played with different sounds from hard rock to blues rock and even early rock ‘n’ roll to craft something entirely different. What would become the pinnacle of glam rock built a sound that has only been emulated since. Where Ziggy integrates older or contemporary sounds, Aladdin Sane turns them into a hall of mirrors. Take the album’s title track, “Aladdin Sane.” The entire track lives and dies on Mike Garson’s piano work. It starts out mostly gentle, evocative of a piano lounge tune and not dissimilar to a vocal jazz you may have heard years earlier. Then, right about the 2-minute mark of the song, Garson takes off. The piano solo (aided by a faint saxophone and Trevor Bolder’s bass keeping beat) evolves into this wild ride that actually does start to feel like the experience of walking into a hall of mirrors. The bass never changes, but Garson’s piano goes nuts. It is simultaneously a mixture of a psychotic break and romantic intoxication. After more than a minute of Garson taking over the song, Bowie snaps back into the chorus and picks up the tempo. Then Garson comes back for more. Coming from the ornate, spacey infusions of Ziggy, the title track here feels overwhelming. As you settle into where you think the song is going, Bowie refuses to let that comfort last. That sentiment can be applied to the whole of Aladdin Sane.

The hall of mirrors analogy wasn’t totally misplaced either, especially as you come to “Time” a few tracks later. It starts with another distant piano riff (coming in just from the right if you’re listening to the stereo version) from Garson. It sounds like a tune from an old west saloon. It’s just soft enough to lure you in. Bowie starts to sing much more intimately. Then comes Mick Ronson to blow your ear drums out with some gnarly lead guitar over (my personal favorite) the lyrics:

“Time…in Quaaludes and red wine.”

Bowie’s vocal performance all over this track is as theatrical and dramatic as ever. He drags out syllables even when it doesn’t totally make sense to do it. The wonderfully infectious ‘li li li li li li li’ he does on Ziggy’s “Soul Love” is back, and the vocal performance sometimes feels detached from the song itself. He even slips in and out of voices he crafted on Ziggy. Right about halfway through this song, it hits a lull. Enough of a lull that makes you think the track is over. Bowie starts singing again, except it’s more like talking. Then it escalates to what I can only describe as a carnival barker on acid. If you listen closely, you can even hear him take a few breaths before the music comes back in. And it comes back in strong. Mick Ronson starts wailing on the lead guitar on the backhalf of the song. If all of this sounds like an intense experience, that’s the intended effect. It’s also the song on the record that I find myself reevaluating with each listen. I didn’t pay it much mind (other than that frenetic rush I got) on the first listen years ago. Now it’s one of my favorites on the record. With each listen, it becomes less overwhelming and more exhilarating. I start to match it pace for pace. By the time Mick Ronson’s guitar is soaring over the tail end of the track, so am I. That’s the beauty of Aladdin Sane though.

Similar to Ziggy, Aladdin Sane is centered around a character. The character of Aladdin Sane (A Lad Insane) is largely inspired by Bowie’s brother’s struggles with schizophrenia. There is little narrative cohesion from track-to-track like on Ziggy. However, where all of Ziggy coalesces sonically, Aladdin Sane embraces discordance even within the structure of the same song. it embraces the chaotic nature of its own lyrics throughout. The imagery in “Panic in Detroit” stems from Iggy Pop’s recollection of the riots in Detroit in 1967. Ronson’s guitar work on the song mimic those lyrics. Even Mick Woodmansey’s hand drums generate the rhythm of marching feet on the track. "Panic in Detroit" is aptly scorched around the edges and the best that the entire album has to offer.

For all the talk about discordance and incongruity though, nothing on Aladdin Sane feels purposeless. It’s driven in large part by the character himself. The sound itself doesn’t always feel divorced from what started with Ziggy. It’s glam rock at its core. But the album is also bursting at the seams to get away from what Bowie established on Ziggy. Aladdin Sane is Bowie tearing himself away from Ziggy Stardust. It wasn’t a rejection of Ziggy Stardust or the songs that came along with that record, but the embrace of a need to grow and change. If The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars catapulted Bowie out among the stars, Aladdin Sane is a trip through the mind of a man among those very stars trying not to lose his grip on reality.

Favorite Songs:

1. Panic in Detroit

2. Drive-In Saturday

3. Time

4. Cracked Actor

5. The Jean Genie