"So Long, '60s," David Bowie proclaims on the first track of the new 5CD/1BD Parlophone box set Rock 'N' Roll Star.  Strumming his 12-string at a San Francisco Holiday Inn, the future superstar was embracing the new decade and its immense possibilities: "I'll kick you in the ass, you rascal, you!"  Its verse melody and the barest wisp of the lyric ("keep your mouth shut!") would make it to a new composition, "Moonage Daydream," the third song on his fifth album.  That LP was The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, and it was one that would change the trajectory of the former David Jones' life and career.  Rock 'N' Roll Star, following 2019's Conversation Piece (which shed light on the 1968-1969 David Bowie/Space Oddity era) and 2022's Divine Symmetry (which chronicled the twelve months leading up to the December 1971 release of Hunky Dory), traces the journey to Bowie's discovery of "the nazz with God-given ass," or the glammed-up alien within.

As Ziggy has been reissued and expanded so many times before, the element of surprise that animated Conversation Piece and Divine Symmetry is absent from Rock 'N' Roll Star.  But in exhaustively exploring the album's story from every angle, the box set draws into clear focus how Bowie's career can be divided into "before Ziggy" and "after Ziggy."  This was the album in which he melted into an alter ego of his own creation for the first - but not the last time - and used that character to focus his own songwriting.  Edgy, paranoid, dark lyrics fleshed out the very loose "story" on this concept album; the pervading, sinister sense of dread and doom was both complemented and contrasted by the expansive, cinema-goes-metal sound.  The big pop hooks were matched by the outsized rock performances of The Spiders from Mars, the most sympathetic band with whom he'd ever played.  The theatricality that had always informed the young artist had come to the fore, making Ziggy a dramatic, richly musical tour de force that justly skyrocketed Bowie to superstardom.

Spanning February 1971 through October 1972 (months after Ziggy's June '72 release), the box boasts five CDs with more than two dozen previously unreleased cuts: demos, tracks recorded with the Arnold Corns band, home rehearsals, two full discs of radio and television performances, and single versions, plus session outtakes and alternate takes newly mixed by the original album's producer, Ken Scott.  Bowie's spare, folk-style demos, found on Disc One, are both captivating and illuminating.  Tapes have happily survived from the unlikeliest of places; in addition to that Holiday Inn, there's an early stab at "Hang On to Yourself" recorded at the California home of RCA honcho Tom Ayers.  Some of these demos are fully-formed ("Lady Stardust" with piano accompaniment, "Ziggy" with its now-famous riff already there) while others ("Star," soon to become "Stars" with a significantly altered lyric; an embryonic "Starman," written to sate RCA's desire for an obvious single) are still clearly works-in-progress.  Bowie knew what he wanted; following the acoustic "Soul Love" demo, he lays out his instructions for Mick Ronson to follow when Ronson orchestrates the melody.

Bowie's career is peppered with curiosities; among them is the "Moonage Daydream" b/w "Hang On to Yourself" single performed by a restless Bowie and The Arnold Corns, a band he rechristened from "Rungk."  One of the tracks which premieres here is a version of "Looking for a Friend" intended for the Arnold Corns but actually performed by Bowie with Spiders Mick Ronson, Trevor Bolder, and Woody Woodmansey (their very first studio recording together) on guitar, bass, and drums, respectively.  Bowie kept his tape recorder running while and the Spiders rehearsed in the basement of his Haddon Hall residence for the Ziggy album sessions; the November '71 rehearsals are a raw, rough-and-tumble fly-on-the-wall experience.  Among the songs tried out was the raucous "Sweet Head," which RCA rejected for its off-color lyrical content.  (The studio version is present on the box set, too.)

Recording for Ziggy primarily took place at London's Trident Studios between November 1971 and February 1972 (one track, "It Ain't Easy," was pulled from a July 1971 Hunky Dory session).  Before recording had concluded, though, Bowie was already previewing his new songs on the BBC.  Discs 2 and 3 of Rock 'N' Roll Star draw on BBC recordings largely spanning January through May 1972.  He previewed "Ziggy Stardust," "Lady Stardust," "Five Years," "Moonage Daydream," "Hang On to Yourself," and "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide" for such DJs as John Peel and Bob Harris.  (Eighteen of the 26 tracks on these two discs first appeared on the 2000 release of Bowie at the Beeb.)

The Peel session of January 11, 1972 was sourced from an off-air recording as the original analogue source no longer exists; the rough quality doesn't diminish the forceful, tight playing of The Spiders in their first BBC date together.  The January sessions with both Peel and Harris (January 18) feature renditions of Lou Reed's "Waiting for the Man" and Hunky Dory track "Queen Bitch."  While "Hang On to Yourself" was the opening number on both dates, its Peel performance no longer exists.  Even without the visual component of Bowie's transformation into the alluring and mysterious Ziggy, his new persona is evident through his swaggering delivery of these harder-rocking songs.  Mick Ronson's searing guitar almost becomes an extension of that persona - or perhaps a driver of it.  Audio is preserved on CD 2 from a February 7 appearance on BBC-2's television show Old Grey Whistle Test which introduced British viewers to Ziggy and the Spiders.

Bowie took the stage at Friars, Aylesbury on January 29 where he debuted Ziggy opener "Five Years" to the public; although no audio from that show is extant, the all-encompassing nature of the Rock 'n' Roll Star box sees to it that the show is documented via memorabilia (posters, ticket stubs) and striking photos of the singer within the comprehensive, 112-page hardcover book.  A Disc and Music Echo review reprinted in the book describes him as "a very distracting young man with a penchant for blouses, super hairdos, and just the right amount of makeup...a slick and professional showman."  The critic notes the "Clockwork Orange bovver spacesuits" worn by the Spiders and Bowie's change late into the evening into "something slinkier - a creamy blouse and sequined trousers."  The photos reveal the artist in his tight jumpsuit with a megawatt smile and a command of the stage that would only grow.

CD 3's BBC appearances with Peel, Harris, and Johnnie Walker are from just a few months following those on CD 2, but much had changed: Bowie and the band were roughly two-thirds of the way through a U.K. tour, and the "Starman" single had been released by RCA.  Pianist Nicky Graham joined the Spiders for these three May '72 sessions; the Bob Harris Sounds of the '70s show recorded on May 23 would be Bowie's final BBC radio appearance until almost twenty years later with Tin Machine.  Lou Reed's "White Light/White Heat" is played for Peel and Harris instead of "Waiting for the Man," and Harris' show closed with the only session performance of "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide." The Johnnie Walker show is of interest, too, for its compelling reprises of older material, i.e. "Space Oddity" and "Changes," alongside "Starman" and Hunky's "Oh! You Pretty Things."  (A couple of minutes into "Space Oddity," DB calls out Elton John's "Rocket Man," then sitting on the U.K. Singles Chart at No. 5.  Both songs were produced by Gus Dudgeon.)  The third disc closes with Bowie's July 5 Top of the Pops performance of "Starman" supported by the orchestra of Johnny Pearson.  He was singing live to a pre-recorded backing track, but no matter: the performance electrified audiences nonetheless.

A clutch of singles and related material opens the fourth disc of the set, including the non-LP B-side rendition of Chuck Berry's "Round and Round," Ziggy session versions of "The Supermen," "Holy Holy," and "Velvet Goldmine," and "John, I'm Only Dancing."  (Alternative, new mixes of these tracks are also present on CD 5.)  "John...," described by Bowie as a "bisexual anthem," initially wasn't released in the U.S. due to its controversial lyrics.  The disc concludes with five songs from his Boston Music Hall performance of October 1, 1972, one track of which (a suitably dramatic version of Jacques Brel's "My Death") is previously unreleased.  Other cuts from the concert premiered on EMI's 2003 expanded edition of Aladdin Sane.  The notes indicate that evidence points to the entire performance (the first stop on Bowie's U.S. tour) being recorded by RCA for a live album, but these five songs are all that survive.  "David Bowie - Homo Superior?" asked a rather cringeworthy review of the Boston gig in which the author states the artist "comes off like a proselytizer for gayness, intentional or otherwise."

The Ziggy session material (and more rarities, such as a "Starman" backing track with some unique instrumental flourishes recorded for Top of the Pops) gets rounded up on CD 5 with original album producer Ken Scott's new mixes of almost every track including "Looking for a Friend" in the recording intended for the Arnold Corns.  Fourteen of the sixteen performances are new to CD, with the crisp, clear mixes accenting various elements of each track - whether the backgrounds on "Star," the tight interplay of the rhythm section on the unadorned "Lady Stardust" with Ronson on majestic piano, or the guitars on "The Supermen."  The Arnold Corns "Friend" shines in a mix with a pronounced stereo spread while the faster, even more muscular Ziggy session version - which also premieres here - sounds fresh and vibrant, anchored by Woodmansey's driving drums.

Both "Hang On to Yourself" and "Star" have different lyrics to those on which Bowie finally settled.  "Shadow Man," destined for inclusion on the long-shelved Toy, finally gets aired in its original Ziggy version.  There's a hint of Bowie's onetime hero Anthony Newley in the lyrics which can recall Newley and Leslie Bricusse's "The Joker" ("There's always a joker in the pack..." vs. "There's a man back aways who believes at where he is... and "The Joker is me" vs. "The Shadow Man is really you").  The Spiders' arrangement is taut but the melody isn't dynamic enough to take flight.  For Toy, Bowie elegantly crooned it over tinkling piano and an otherworldly soundscape - very Scott Walker - while this original version is in a more straightforward rock vein.  (A demo can be heard on Divine Symmetry while various later recordings and mixes are included on Toy.)

Perhaps the most anticipated item on this set is "It's Gonna Rain Again," a newly-unearthed outtake from the Ziggy sessions.  The familiar Bo Diddley beat drives the lyrically-slight tune.  Bowie correctly decided that this '50s throwback would have felt out of place on the original album; nonetheless, one is glad to finally have it here in stellar sound.  A recently discovered, energetic run through The Who's "I Can't Explain," predating the Pin-Ups recording, rounds out this treasure chest of session material.

Though The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars isn't included on CD within the set, it is available on the Blu-ray Audio disc in its 2012 stereo master (96/24 PCM Stereo) and 5.1 surround mix (DTS-HD Master Audio). The Blu-ray also contains the contents of CD 5 and the single versions of "Starman" and "John, I'm Only Dancing" in PCM Stereo.  Finally, this year's Record Store Day release of Waiting in the Sky (Before the Starman Came to Earth), an early assembly of Ziggy with such songs as "Amsterdam," "Round and Round," "Velvet Goldmine," and "Holy Holy" still in the mix, is exclusive to the Blu-ray.

Typical of these sets, the lavish 112-page hardcover, coffee table-style book contained within the silver metallic slipcase is key to enjoyment and full understanding of the audio.  Among the fascinating material reprinted is a 1972 NME interview with Charles Shaar Murray in which Bowie sounds off on camp ("I don't think I'm camper than any other person who felt at home on stage..."), Jerry Garcia ("He's a musician and I'm not a musician...I'm not into music on that level"), The Velvet Underground ("...that's my biggest influence in rock 'n' roll"), and Frank Zappa ("I don't understand Zappa and I'm not that intrigued by him to try to unwrap his problems or try to find out why").  Ron Ross' lengthy piece from Phonograph Record opines on Bowie's originality, noting that "it's been a very good year for The Beatles (in the form of Todd Rundgren, Badfinger, and Nilsson), and the Stones (in the form of a monster tour, Alice Cooper, The Flamin' Groovies, The New York Dolls, and other phenomena still on a subterranean level") and that Bowie combined "some of their best energies" into something new and yet still familiar.  In addition to the various articles, track-by-track annotations, and essays, there are numerous color photos of the artist at his most striking.  Tape box scans and memorabilia are among the images as well.  The discs themselves are housed in individual sleeves and slotted in the book.  Also included in the slipcase is a replica of one of Bowie's notebooks with his handwritten lyrics, notes, doodles, touring schedule, and more.

John Webber has mastered the audio on Rock 'N' Roll Star at AIR Studios while Scott Marshall has beautifully designed the set.  As the companion volume to Bowie's signature album, the comprehensive Rock 'N' Roll Star is another essential entry in the archival series of this singular star.  Make way for the homo superior...

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