It’s appropriate that “So Long 60s (San Francisco Hotel Recording)” opens Rock ‘n’ Roll Star!, the latest expansive David Bowie box set. The acoustic demo leans towards his folkie past while dropping hints of what would become signature pieces of the classic Ziggy era number, “Moonage Daydream.” This and the other 66 tracks – 29 unreleased — offer a gratifying peek into his creative process as well as a perfectly display how the Starman consistently shifted the material from one performance to another; sometimes drastically, sometimes with slight variations of lyrical and musical approach.

Rock ‘n’ Roll Star! includes 5CDs and 1Blu-Ray Audio with the 2012 remaster of the original Ziggy Stardust album and Waiting In The Sky (Before The Starman Came To Earth), which features an alternative running order and four songs that didn’t make it on the final album in 96kHz/24bit PCM stereo plus the album and additional mixes from 2003 in DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1.

Altogether, they chronicle the period from pre-Ziggy in February 1971 through the recording of The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars, and follows that with a worthwhile set of tunes from UK radio sessions and TV performances plus live tracks from the Ziggy and the Spiders’ Oct. 1, 1972 show at Boston Music Hall. It presents a mix of early songwriting demos, recordings from Bowie’s band, The Arnold Corns, rehearsals at Bowie’s Haddon Hall home, BBC sessions, singles plus outtakes and alternative versions from the original album recording sessions, which have been newly mixed by Ziggy producer Ken Scott.

Among the many highlights from this release are:

–A cover of the Velvet Underground’s “White Light/White Heat” on the May 16, 1972 “Sounds of the 70s: John Peel Session,” finds Bowie playfully improvising the lyrics — “white light make me sound like Lou Reed/white light gonna fill my every need/ white heat gonna fill me up with surprise/white light gonna kill me before your eyes.” From the same session, “Suffragette City” accentuates piano over its marvelously abrasive guitar riff until midway when Mick Ronson blasts his way on to the tune. 

–“Changes” and “Oh You Pretty Things” from the May 22, 1972 “Johnnie Walker Lunchtime Show” highlight the piano contributions of Mike Garson.

–“Hang On To Yourself,” early Ziggy Session Take on Disc 5 contains alternate lyrics and a different approach in the chorus versus the final, popular version. “Lady Stardust” Alternative Version Take 1 seems to find Bowie channeling Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline vocal style.

–The original version of “Shadow Man,” taken from the Ziggy sessions, which would be redone and released 30 years later when “Toy” was officially released.

–“It’s Gonna Rain Again” (Ziggy Sessions Outtake) is one of those long lost, never heard, much-discussed numbers that finds Bowie making a brief return to his folkier side.


Rock ‘n’ Roll Star! also contains two books – one with detailed liner notes, memorabilia, contemporary reviews and articles and rare photographs as well as brand-new notes and interviews with Ken Scott, Mark Carr Pritchett and Bowie’s plugger from the time, Anya Wilson, while the other book compiles and reproduces Bowie’s personal Ziggy Stardust-era notebooks.