She took him to Harlem, and gave him a crucial introduction to black music he gave her a shot at stardom. As backing singer on his Young Americans album, she had a great voice, and striking looks - a black woman with short hair dyed peroxide blond. The giant riffs on Ziggy by his first great guitarist, Mick Ronson, will always sound momentous. Bowie liked to remark that he didn't make rock records, that he just used rock to express ideas. The coolest song on it was the title track. Plus there was genuine speculation he really had come from outer space. He'd made two okay records before releasing the Ziggy Stardust album and no one knew what to make of it it was baffling and amazing, possibly even profound. In his lifetime, his greatest records were the shock of the new. It didn't take long for the worst room in the world - the comments section at YouTube - to fill up with haters ('Bowie was just a fag', etc), but the first response from everyone else, everyone of sane mind, was disbelief. Young and old felt the same shock this week at his death. One of the few advantages of old age is that I was around when ancient history was being made, when it was new, sensational, dazzling - it was like that with The Beatles and it was like that with Bowie. Steve Braunias looks at the back story of five songs from David Bowie's rich catalogue.
