The fourth in an ongoing series of box sets chronicling the creation of a classic
David Bowie album,
Rock 'n' Roll Star! documents the making of the most celebrated
Bowie album, 1972's
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Like the
Conversation Piece and
Divine Symmetry sets before it,
Rock 'n' Roll Star! doesn't contain the parent album among its CDs;
Ziggy is relegated to the Blu-ray, where it sits in a high-res stereo version and 5.1 mix alongside singles and
Waiting in the Sky (Before the Starman Came to Earth), an early version of the album that was released separately on Record Store Day 2014. That leaves the five CDs to gather various demos, outtakes, stray songs, and especially, live performances recorded around the whirlwind of
Ziggy Stardust.
The five discs roughly break down into a disc of early demos, augmented by recordings from
Bowie's short-lived group
the Arnold Corns and a clutch of rehearsals from Haddon Hall; two discs of BBC performances, including sessions hosted by
John Peel and
Bob Harris as well as a spot on The Old Grey Whistle Test; a disc of well-known
Ziggy outtakes ("Round and Round," "Velvet Goldmine," the original single version of "John, I'm Only Dancing") plus live recordings from Boston in October 1972; finally, a collection of stray songs that features a number of new mixes. The preponderance of previous
Ziggy Stardust reissues and
Bowie at the Beeb collections does rob this set of some of its surprise because so much of this music has been in circulation. That said, this set does indeed contain some excavated rarities, highlighted by "So Long 60s" --
Bowie would rewrite this folky number into the bracingly modernist "Moonage Daydream" -- and two unheard songs from the album's early days. "Shadow Man," which
Bowie would later revisit for
Toy, is an acoustic dirge that threatens to achieve liftoff, while the sprightly "It's Gonna Rain Again" veers toward the sunnier side of
Hunky Dory ("Only One Paper Left," another known
Bowie tune of this era, remains undiscovered).
Ultimately, that handful of genuine rarities function as attractive accents on what's a familiar story -- namely, how the conception of the
Ziggy Stardust character helped focus
Bowie, letting him lean into the roar of guitarist
Mick Ronson, drummer
Mick Woodmansey, and bassist
Trevor Bolder. All three were present in
the Arnold Corns but as the
Spiders from Mars they sounded seductive, sinewy, and sometimes sinister, a chemistry that's as palpable on
Rock 'n' Roll Star! as it is on the proper
Ziggy Stardust album itself. That energy, undiminished by either the passage of time or repetition, is reason enough for an immersion into this box set. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine
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