Alright, you mascara-smeared ghouls, gather 'round for a tale of musical necromancy. Back in '82, when hairspray was a religion and eyeliner was a battle cry, Bauhaus, those masters of macabre rock, decided to exhume the corpse of Ziggy Stardust and give it a jolt of their own gothic electricity.
Now, David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust was already a legend, a glam rock messiah who burned bright and then flamed out in a blaze of glitter and excess. But Bauhaus wasn't content to just pay tribute to the Thin White Duke. They wanted to dissect his alien carcass, rearrange his musical DNA, and create a monster that was both familiar and utterly terrifying.
Their weapon of choice? A 7" single featuring two tracks: a cover of "Ziggy Stardust" and an original tune called "Third Uncle." The result was a collision of glam rock theatricality and gothic rock darkness, a Frankenstein's monster of sound that was both exhilarating and unsettling.
"Ziggy Stardust" gets the Bauhaus treatment, stripped of its glam sheen and injected with a dose of post-punk venom. Peter Murphy's vocals are a chilling incantation, his baritone croon dripping with menace and longing. The guitars slash and churn, creating a sonic landscape that's both claustrophobic and expansive. It's a song about fame, alienation, and the seductive power of the spotlight, and Bauhaus makes it their own twisted anthem.
On the flip side, "Third Uncle" is a dark, brooding instrumental that sounds like a soundtrack to a vampire's fever dream. It's a hypnotic, repetitive groove that builds in intensity, driven by Daniel Ash's swirling guitar lines and Kevin Haskins's tribal drumming. It's a song that gets under your skin, burrowing into your subconscious and leaving you with a sense of unease.
This 7" single is a testament to Bauhaus's audacity and their ability to transform other artists' material into something uniquely their own. They didn't just cover "Ziggy Stardust," they resurrected it, breathed new life into it, and made it a creature of the night.
