Bowie at 65: The Thin White Duke’s 5 Greatest Guitar Moments

“The Man Who Sold The World” may have born clear Beatles’ influences, but this was distinctively Bowie. Returning to the “Space Oddity” template with two characters exchanging dialogue; the track was deep, smoky, and full of unsettling twisting clicking noises. Bowie was turning the screw on the Psychedelic 60s, ushering in a bleaker era with a chilling vocal and one of the most iconic winding riffs in rock history.

Kurt Cobain would give the track a new kind of soul in 1993, but nothing could be more unsettling than Bowie’s ode to a lost age of innocence and hope. You can practically hear the futurist optimism of the 60s fading to black in Bowie’s withering paranoid croon.

The story of Ziggy Stardust may only last three minutes and thirteen seconds, but that’s all the time Bowie and Ronson needed to steep this timeless classic in heady drama. The portentous lead riff demands your undivided attention, playful and almost ironically mammoth, the towering sweeps of Ronson’s guitar set the stage for Bowie’s slyly cool tale of self-destructive rock star solipsism.

Bowie owned glam; T. Rex’s Electric Warrior may have been a purer statement, but The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust was the most ambitious and important album the genre ever spawned. Bowie’s star man fallen to earth narrative captured the world’s imagination. He used the raunchy sex appeal of glam, its androgyny, and ironic flair for melodrama to create one of the greatest pieces of rock theatre ever penned. Unkempt indulgence may have driven Ziggy Stardust to a miserable end, but it freed Bowie’s imagination as he cast off any remaining inhibitions and set about reimagining rock ‘n’ roll.

Back in 1971 David Bowie had transitioned from hard rock to camp pop and was flirting with a full on glam conversion. He wasn’t quiet ready to make the leap, but by paying tribute to two of his great heroes Bowie found his new sound.

Bowie paid tribute to Lou Reed (a star whose career he’d later rejuvenate on Transformer) and the Velvet Underground with a laid back but driving narrative while Mick Ronson slyly pinched the acoustic punch of Eddie Cochran’s “Three Steps To Heaven”.

By overlaying acoustic guitar stomp with the thrashy flourishes of the electric lead, Bowie and Ronson created an irresistible march that felt like Reed’s “Sweet Jane” on steroids. Eminently danceable “Queen Bitch” was more than a tribute or pastiche; it became the most important breakthrough of Bowie’s career, the track that set the template for Ziggy Stardust and world domination.

Unlike his pop peers Bowie was never afraid to beef up his sound in the live arena. When it came time to tour the brilliant Station To Station in 1976 The Thin White Duke rebuilt his sound from the ground up. Gone were the haunting saws and minimalist paranoia of the studio version and in their place stood a squealing mass of guitar noise, wild licks and killer solos. Bowie kept his cool as the arrangement became increasingly ragged and wild replacing cold paranoia with wild-eyed desperation and unhinged exhilaration.

Not bad for a man so consumed by cocaine that he’d shed a truly unhealthy number of pounds consuming only pepper and milk. Still it could be worse, Bowie’s protégé Iggy Pop was so far gone that he thought his girlfriend had been eaten by his TV in an incident that would inspire Bowie’s barmy hit “TVC15”.

Station To Station, the album and the subsequent tour are often overshadowed by Bowie’s pre-release antics and the Berlin trilogy that would immediately follow its release. But make no mistake, this was the moment when Bowie recaptured the zeitgeist and hit his stride. Station To Station deserves to stand shoulder to shoulder with Bowie’s undisputed classics Low, Heroes, Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust.