On 16 June 1972 David Bowie copper-fastened his status as a rock God with the release of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. It was somewhere between a concept album and a rock opera and it came with a persona on board, the eponymous Ziggy Stardust, the alien sent to earth to save us all who succumbs to his own ego and proves not to be quite up to the thankless task. In his annual 50th birthday special Tom Dunne tackles the making and breaking of the ‘leper messiah’ and offers yet another reminder of how the world has fallen apart since we lost Bowie.
