– David Bowie – In Session for John Peel BBC Radio 1 – January 28, 1972 – BBC Radio 1 –
The dawn of Glam tonight. A session from David Bowie, recorded on January 28, 1972 for John Peel at the BBC. The Spiders From Mars period. Ziggy Stardust. The androgynous period – just before the Thin White Duke.
Having gone through a number of phases in his career, the period of the early 70s was probably the most dramatic and certainly the most wildly successful. Bowie hit on something that hadn’t been done before. And it created an avalanche of bands following suit. Suddenly, everyone was wearing mascara and lipstick and talking about being bisexual. It put the phrase gender-bender on the map and turned Pop Music inside out.
Glam didn’t have a long lifespan; a few years at most. But it morphed into a number of other genres, including Heavy Metal and Hard Rock. The arrival of Punk changed all that – but from 1972 to 1975, the world was awash with glitter and David Bowie was leading the way.
As a reminder of the early days of Glam, just as Ziggy Stardust was issued, here is that David Bowie session from 1972.
Dig out those platforms, if you can find them, and tune up the air-guitar.
Okay – now for the begging and pleading part:
You know we’ve been weathering storms, hysteria, lock-outs, shutdowns and malfunctions since 2012 and in all that time we’ve never stopped making Past Daily a place where you come and discover things – old things and new things you may have missed. Past Daily is a huge endeavor and it normally would take a bunch of people handling different chores to pull off the day-to-day that we do. But it’s just me and my archive – this batch of sounds that I refer to every day is what I do because I don’t want to be part of the problem. Knowing things, especially History makes you an informed person – someone who can look at the world objectively and make up your own mind. We don’t do click-bait, come-ons, phishing expeditions or thirst traps – what you see is what you get – and hopefully what you get is a different perspective on things that can only help and not hurt you.
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Now back to our program.
