Ziggy Played Guitar

Walked down Shaftesbury Avenue to Heddon Street, where the photograph was taken for one of the most important albums of the C20th (in my humble opinion): The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. In the ensuing forty-odd years a few things had changed in the street, architecturally, but the doorway is still the same (minus the lit 'K. West' sign above it, of course) and I still got a thrill of excitement to be in the actual place where that image was frozen in 1972. I bought the album when it first came out, as a fourteen-year-old gay kid, and it is no exaggeration to say that it changed my life: here for the first time was someone on my wavelength who was showing me that it was really quite ok to be who I was and that this should be something to celebrate and not bury away. 

I sat on the doorstep for fifteen minutes, where Bowie had stood in that iconic pose. Then I took some photographs of the site and waited for the Glam spirit to overtake me. It did. Thanks for everything, David! XX








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