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Jun 14, 2024In recent years boxed sets have basically evolved into source material for people’s own playlists, and that’s the best use for this fascinating and presumably definitive set. But for anyone who’s wondered about the origin story of Ziggy Stardust, it’s got everything you could want that’s actually worth hearing.
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Jun 14, 2024Ultimately still mesmerising, enhanced by photos and memorabilia-stacked book plus 36-page reproduction of Bowie’s notebooks, the box set provides a suitably chaotic time capsule of a magical period now bathed in extraordinary poignancy. [Summer 2024, p.82]
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Jun 14, 2024Discs 2 and 3 are essential if familiar, given they document sessions taped for the BBC, from an unreleased January 1972 Peel session to the version of Starman taped for Top Of The Pops in July. .... By contrast, everything on Disc 5 is fresh to this box. [Jul 2024, p.96]
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Jun 14, 2024The preponderance of previous Ziggy Stardust reissues and Bowie at the Beeb collections does rob this set of some of its surprise because so much of this music has been in circulation. That said, this set does indeed contain some excavated rarities, highlighted by "So Long 60s" -- Bowie would rewrite this folky number into the bracingly modernist "Moonage Daydream" -- and two unheard songs from the album's early days.
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Jun 14, 2024In showing the workings behind the most important transformation of his career, Rock’n’Roll Star! underscores just what a remarkable thing Bowie achieved: this is the mortal man behind the extraterrestrial dressing, and it’s no less compelling for that.
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Jun 14, 2024The Hunky Dory box set Divine Symmetry, which came out a few years ago, had better curiosities, since there were more outtakes, but Rock ‘n’ Roll Star! gives a sharper look at how Bowie made love to his ego and created something bigger than himself.