Engineering The Sound: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars

David Bowie is one of the most iconic cultural figures of the 21st century. His unique voice, distinctive lyrics and endless sonic craftsmanship was witnessed during a fantastic career spanning over 50 years. He gave us many characters, the Thin White Duke, Major Tom, and Aladdin Sane, just to name a few.

Although his alter egos were, at times, extremely outlandish, they never retracted from Bowie’s artistry and musicianship. He released 25 studio albums, 10 live albums, 51 compilation albums, 8 EPs, and 128 singles spanning a multitude of aesthetic subjects, sonic motifs and emotional atmospheres.

But of all his characters, the most memorable portrayal would have to be Ziggy Stardust.

Ziggy came into full fruition on Bowie’s fifth album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. It was recorded in Trident Studios in London, and released in June 1972, making it to number 5 on the UK Album Charts. Although released in 1972, Bowie said he had recorded “about half of the Ziggy album” before his fourth studio album, Hunky Dory (released in December 1971), in an interview in 1990.

Sessions at Trident in November 1971 produced seven of the eleven tracks on the album. After recording some of the new songs for radio presenter Bob Harris in January 1972, the band returned to Trident in early February to record the final master takes of Starman, Suffragette City and Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide.

According to engineer Ken Scott, who helped produced four of Bowie’s studio albums, a speedy recording process was the norm for them:

“We recorded quickly, just as we always did. We generally worked Monday through Saturday, 2:00 p.m. until we finished, generally midnightish – not much later, eat when we felt like there was a natural break, and spent 2 to 3 weeks recording and 2 weeks mixing.”

The concept for the album was, and still is, remarkably original, which only adds to its timelessness. The loose plot revolves around humanity in it’s last five years of existence, and the central character Ziggy, who is despatched to offer a “message of hope.”

Bowie explained to William S. Burroughs in a Rolling Stone interview:

“Ziggy is advised in a dream by the infinites to write the coming of a starman … this amazing spaceman who will be coming down to save the Earth. Ziggy starts to believe in all this himself and thinks himself a prophet of the future starmen. He takes himself up to the incredible spiritual heights and is kept alive by his disciples. When the infinites arrive, they take bits of Ziggy to make themselves real, because in their original state they are anti-matter and cannot exist on our world. And they tear him to pieces onstage during the song ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide.’”

Bowie took some of the influence for Ziggy from Vince Taylor, an English singer who took the ‘rock star’ persona to the extreme. He also based the clothes, hair, and makeup of on two famous books, A Clockwork Orange, and Wild Boys. But it was so much more than its aesthetic edge that made The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust one of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll records of all time.

Consistency and The Spiders From Mars

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars could be described as a minimalistic concept album: it isn’t as theatrical as Jethro Tull’s Thick as a Brick, nor does it have the extensively story-driven production value of Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Rather, it sits comfortably in the middle.

Consistency is what keeps the album from drowning in excess; specifically, the rock-solid instrumentation. As Scott remembers, “On Ziggy Stardust, the basics were virtually the same for all the tracks. It was only the nuances in each song that would vary.” Mick Ronson (electric guitar, backing vocals, keyboard, piano), Trevor Bolder (bass, trumpet), and Mick Woodmansey (drums), are the Spiders from Mars; the musicians responsible for this wonderful synergy.

Scott had a very basic set-up at Trident to capture this magic and work with Bowie’s ideas, “The tracks were recorded on a Trident A Range, the very first one,” he remembers, “and upstairs in the mix room we mixed on the Sound Techniques board. The monitor speakers at that time were Lockwood cabinets with Tannoys in them.”

“There weren’t even pan pots on each channel on the console. I always had it set up so you could switch the signal to go left, center or right. I then had two of the pan pots set for half left and half right, and the third one was just in case I wanted to move anything around.”

Woodmansey’s Drum Sound

The drum sound that is heard on Ziggy Stardust is vastly different from anything captured on Bowie’s previous albums. And it’s this new groove that establishes the atmosphere for the entire album: the crisp snap of a snare on Five Years.

As documented by Rick Clark, Scott recalls:

“Woody didn’t much like the drum sound on Hunky Dory. He thought it was too dead. That same sound on Ziggy wouldn’t have worked because Ziggy is edgier and it is a bit livelier. The change in sound is probably a combination of Woody and myself — just less dampening and me changing it slightly upstairs. We wanted it more rock ‘n’ roll.

Woodmansey remembers working with Scott to produce that unique drum sound, “Ken would sometimes get me tuning a tom-tom for an hour, so that when it came up through the desk, it was right.”

He elaborates, “on some tracks, he would have the snare tuned so flat and dead that it was like hitting a potato chip bag. It was just soggy and the sound in the drum booth was horrible. But what Ken was able to do with it when he brought it up through the desk, you thought, ‘That sounds like a really neat sound!’ And we hadn’t really experimented on that side of things until then.”

Scott’s mixing also went a long way in forging this timbre. He deliberately downplayed the cymbals in the mix, encouraging less cymbal work from Woodmansey’s playing. It was a sparse approach, as Woodmansey explains:

“We all got into streamlining what we played, so that what you played meant something. Getting it all down to the feel, not superfluous things going on. I also think David really did the same on the song side of it.”

Creating An Atmosphere

Despite the limited gear avaliable at Trident, Scott was able to create a great deal of movement and atmosphere on Ziggy Stardust. One would suggest that panning was involved, but it was created by pulling the reverb on the sides across the stereo spread. As he states,

“I think what you’re hearing is more the spreading, because the reverb comes up much louder, so that would tend to pull it to the sides more. When I pulled the guitar up and the reverb down, then it would come more centre.”

To create this He used two plates and a bunch of Studer tape machines, “It would all have been done by changing the times on two plates and various tape machines for the delays.”

In terms of arranging pre-production, Ronson was a substantial contributor. Ronson’s arrangements also featured on Bustin’ Out by Pure Prairie League and Transformer by Lou Reed. Even though he came up with great arrangements for Scott to work with post-production, he reminiscences on his tardiness:

“[Ronno] was always late with his arrangements. We would discuss what the arrangements were going to be and that would all be taken care of. But he wouldn’t actually finish the arrangement until the session date. He would be working on them the night before and probably fall asleep, or something like that. The next morning, he’d make a beeline for the bathroom at Trident and finish up there. We’d all be sort of standing there, hanging around 15 minutes into the session, and then he’d come out and say, ‘I got them finished. Here they are.’ It worked every time.”

The arrangement during the middle of Moonage Daydream is no different to the quality arrangements Ronson wrote. The doubling of this beautifully simple riff by the trumpet, electric guitar, and flute, all blend together to form an eerie ambience.
This eeriness is gradually built upon, hitting it’s biggest crescendo during Ronson’s solo. Ronson characterised a “scooped-out” electric guitar sound for the album’s entirety, and during this solo. As Scott states, “he always used a 100-watt Marshall, and he would go through a wah-wah pedal. He’d find the sound we liked and then just leave the wah-wah pedal there.” He would then use the wah pedal as a tone control.

To add some character to this tone creation, David would give Ronson feedback on what he wanted in a very interesting way:

“I would also literally draw out on paper with a crayon or felt tip pen the shape of a solo, the one in ‘Moonage Daydream’ for instance started as a flat line that became a fat megaphone type shape and ended as sprays of disassociated and broken lines. I’d read somewhere that Frank Zappa used a series of drawn symbols to explain to his musicians how he wanted the shape of a composition to sound. Mick could take something like that and actually bloody play it, bring it to life. Very impressive.” – Bowie (2002)

Bowie-esque Rock

When this album was released, it was during the time where Glam Rock was really coming into it’s own, and Punk was beginning to emerge. Bowie was able to explore various sub-genres of Rock present at the time, and blend it into the album. Songs like Hang On To Yourself and Ziggy Stardust really capture this idea.

Hang On To Yourself displays various punk elements – distorted guitars, spoken like vocals, and a fast-paced tempo. It comes as no surprise that The Stooges actually provided inspiration behind the whole album. Bowie wanted to do his own take on their style of music. As Scott recalls:

“I remember David coming to me, prior to doing the album, and saying, ‘You’re not going to like this album. It’s gonna be much harder.’ I don’t know who he compared it to; maybe it was Iggy. He thought I would hate it, but I loved it!”

That true Bowie-esque Rock becomes a lot more prevalent in the song Ziggy Stardust. We still have those distorted guitars much like The Stooges, but they’re a bit more refined and laid back. Bowie’s vocals are a lot harsher in the chorus of this song when compared to other songs. There is almost no reverb when it comes to the chorus, and these sharp nuances in Bowie’s voice begin to appear. This is something that was very common in Punk.

It’s this widespread incorporation of different genres that makes the album what is it. Even though these elements are there, the sound is still, essentially, Bowie.

Vocal Treatment

Capturing Bowie’s voice is a massive factor of this album. His voice is so unique, which can cause some difficulties when recording. His range is so expansive. His volume can go from warm and soft lows, to soaring and powerful highs. Being able to manage levels and avoid peaking is something that Scott really had to focus on. Bowie’s vocal mic was a Neumann U67 run through a Trident mic pre-amp and compressed through an LA-2A. Scott placed UREI compressors over the overall mix.

Rock ’N’ Roll Suicide is not only a fantastic track to end the album on, but it is very much an analogy for Bowie’s extensive range and dynamics. The song starts off with clean vocals, with very little to no effects placed on it. But as the song progresses, Bowie’s vocals begin to crescendo with the song, and this is where the trouble of capturing the performance comes into play. Scott explains exactly what he had to do to fully capture and enhance such expressive vocals on this track:

“As I said before, David is an amazing singer, and 95% of his vocals on Ziggy and every other album I recorded with him were done in a single take. There was one completely calculated exception however. In the first part of the song “Rock And Roll Suicide” David sings very quietly, and so in order to optimise the sound quality, I had to crank the level of the mic preamp. He eventually becomes a power house and his vocal range was quite different for the latter part of the song, so I had to readjust the levels to compensate for that, hence the vocal for that song was recorded in two parts – each part a first take of course. I learned not to expect anything different.”

This wonderfully crafted album is the representation of Bowie and this fascinating character of Ziggy Stardust. It is truly a masterpiece that needs to be listened from start to finish. Everyone added their own creativity to produce an album that will always signify the genius of Bowie and this team of amazing musicians.

Inspired by the wild creativity behind The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust? If you’re ready to experiment with your own sound and dive deep into sonic possibilities, come visit the studio and get hands-on with our gear. Got questions or want to book a walkthrough? Reach out to Radi at radi@noisemachines.studio or call 0405 709 131. Let’s bring your ideas to life.

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