David Bowie speaks about Ziggy

David Bowie speaks about his other persona and about narratives in his songs.
'With Ziggy, I wanted to define the archetype of the messiah rock star, and I used the trappings of Kabuki theater, Mime technique, fringe New York music, like my references were velvet underground, I wanted that energy value, a British view of American street energy. So Ziggy was for me a very simplistic thing, it was what it seemed to be, an alien rock star and for performance value, I dressed him and acted him out, I left it at that, but other people reread him and contributed more information about Ziggy than I put into him; then I put 3 viewpoints into the album, from 3 different areas maybe the character himself would appear, and then there would be 2 other statements, maybe 2 other people, all in one album, which was kind of confusing, but it was the way an author would write a book, it hasn’t been utilized that much in record, this is a theater piece that despite it didn’t really exist, that it only existed for the length and the duration of that character’s life, now I’m stuck with him for a long time, it took a long time to shake him off, after I’ve finished working with him, because people would relate to him more than david bowie at the time. It was still very hard for anyone to realize that a rock star can go on stage and be a different person every time he goes on stage. Nobody was doing that. You don’t have to be the same personality every time you go on stage.'