{"id":513531,"date":"2025-10-20T04:31:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T04:31:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/513531\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T04:31:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T04:31:11","slug":"how-did-david-bowie-come-up-with-the-name-ziggy-stardust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/513531\/","title":{"rendered":"How did David Bowie come up with the name Ziggy Stardust?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"David<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n

Mon 20 October 2025 2:00, UK <\/p>\n

Ziggy Stardust \u2013 one of the most memorable and recognisable names in musical history. It perhaps only comes second to the name of his creator, David Bowie<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The impact of Ziggy Stardust is hard to even quantify. Before the moment Bowie first appeared on stage in a sparkly unitard with spiked red hair and futuristic makeup, he was doing okay riding the coat tales of \u2018Space Oddity\u2019. After that moment, he was a phenomenon. From that moment, he stayed that way. <\/p>\n

The launch of Ziggy came in January 1972<\/a>. \u201cDavid Bowie had brought theatre to a humble pub gig,\u201d the owner of the venue it all went down in said, \u201cI couldn\u2019t blink for fear of missing something\u2014nothing would ever be the same again.\u201d It happened with a flourish as Bowie clearly knew that this would be a historic moment. \u2018Ode To Joy\u2019, the Beethoven song revived by the Clockwork Orange soundtrack played, and Ziggy emerged. \u201cZiggy Stardust with his trademark red hair and The Spiders from Mars then took to the two-foot high stage. I had never seen or heard anything like it before,\u201d the owner and onlooker said.<\/p>\n

It was clear from the start that Bowie had a distinct vision for this chapter. He also seemed to know it would be something special as he warned, \u201cI\u2019m going to be huge,\u201d telling Melody Maker three weeks before the first performance, \u201cIt\u2019s quite frightening in a way because I know that when I reach my peak and it\u2019s time for me to be brought down it will be with a bump.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even that is setting the scene for this character of an alien crashing to earth, playing the role of a rockstar crashing from the dizzying heights of fame. The aesthetic was locked in, the story was ready to be told, the album was prepped for launch and Bowie was raring to go. <\/p>\n

But where did Ziggy Stardust the name come from? How do you even begin to find the right name for a project and a character so vivid and so fully formed in his mind?<\/p>\n

It started with one of the character\u2019s inspirations<\/a> \u2013 \u201cthe Legendary Stardust Cowboy,\u201d Bowie said to Paul Du Noyer. Legendary wasn\u2019t a descriptor Bowie added, that was his name. The artists were signed to the same label, Mercury Records, during Bowie\u2019s \u2018Space Oddity\u2019 days, so he was in his orbit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bowie was fascinated by him. \u201cHe was a kind of Wild Man Fischer character; he was on guitar and he had a one-legged trumpet player and in his biography he said, \u2018Mah only regret is that mah father never lived to see me become a success,\u2019\u201d he said, utterly baffled by this eclectic figure. He simply stole Stardust from that, stating, \u201cI just liked the Ziggy Stardust bit because it was so silly.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was the \u2018Ziggy\u2019 that was tricky. After having the story and the figure in his mind for so long, he was struggling to find a first name that felt right. Then it came to him where all good ideas seem to live \u2013 on the train. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Ziggy bit came from a tailor\u2019s that I passed on the train one day,\u201d he said, and it was as simple as just seeing it on a shop sign. It also seemed to make sense as it connected him back to Iggy Pop, who he\u2019d just met and was just becoming fast friends with<\/a>, stating, \u201cIt had that Iggy [as in Iggy Pop] connotation.\u201d But mostly, it was just a name from a shop, explaining, \u201cIt was a tailor\u2019s shop, and I thought, Well, this whole thing is gonna be about clothes, so it was my own little joke calling him Ziggy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nothing too deep, but historical all the same. They say what\u2019s in a name, but it\u2019s all in the weight it can come to hold.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy) Mon 20 October 2025 2:00, UK Ziggy Stardust \u2013 one of the most…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":513532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[4157,77,269,16,15,167828],"class_list":{"0":"post-513531","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-david-bowie","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-ziggy-stardust"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115404622026576605","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/513532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}