David Bowie - "Ziggy Stardust"
From the album
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust
and the Spiders From Mars
(June 6, 1972)
OK, first there was Jesus Christ the Nazarene. Then about 1950 years later there was a beatnik comedian named Lord Buckley, who shortened the epithet of that "coolest, grooviest, swingin'est, wailin'est, strongest, swingin'est cat" to "The Nazz."
Then The Yardbirds let Jeff Beck sing a song they'd written called "The Nazz are Blue." The Nazz here might be the British police, or they might be a group of hipsters who simply know the whereabouts of Jeff's girl (who was BTW named Mary Hughes).
And then there came Todd Rundgren who one day in 1968 Philadelphia started a psychedelic garage power pop band and called it "Nazz" surely after the Yardbird song, and just 'cause it rolled more smoothly off the tongue, Nazz got called The Nazz.
And then all of it culminated when David Bowie called Ziggy The Nazz, and somehow all the antecedent references are rolled into it as he sings. Ziggy Stardust was Jesus Messiah, and the coolest and the grooviest, and a guitar virtuoso, and most definitely a wizard, a true star.
And he had God-given ass, too, whatever that means.
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