How David Bowie spoke for me
When David Bennun first heard “Ziggy Stardust”, he found it both alien and comforting
By David Bennun
Everybody has a Bowie story.
This is mine. I’m a child living in Nairobi, Kenya – a world away, in the days before the Internet, from the pop music that already fascinates me. A visitor from America brings me a C-90 cassette. On one side is “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars”, which I do not then know to be David Bowie’s 1972 breakthrough record. Ten years after an earlier generation’s collective jaw dropped when he played “Starman” on “Top of the Pops”, this is my own “Starman” moment.
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