Recording: Rock ‘N’ Roll Suicide, Starman, Suffragette City

David Bowie recorded three songs for The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars on 4 February 1972: ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll Suicide’, ‘Starman’, and ‘Suffragette City’.

When the album was turned in to RCA they apparently didn’t hear a single, so back in we went to cut ‘Starman’ at the beginning of January 1972. The song turned around quickly, I think a day to record the basics and most of the overdubs, a day to finish overdubs, including the strings, and another to mix.

‘Starman’ was recorded in eleven takes – an unusually high number for the normally prolific and efficient Bowie and the Spiders From Mars.

The bass line on ‘Starman’ was very simple, and we recorded it very quickly. Everything we did with David was, like, one take. He learned it and away we went, and that was the finished product. But it’s a pretty simple bass line to play. I just used to play whatever came into my head that felt good, really.

‘Suffragette City’ featured an ARP synthesizer, part of Trident’s arsenal of instruments, which was performed by Mick Ronson.

‘And David himself supplying those huge blaring baritone saxes’ according to American DJ Redbeard during a radio interview with David. Not exactly. We’d basically finished the song but it felt as if it needed something else, so I sent the assistant engineer upstairs to bring down the rather large ARP 2500 [synthesizer]. I messed around and came up with a sound, Ronno played the parts and there you have the blaring ARP synth.

Although the album version segues from ‘Ziggy Stardust’, the two pieces of music were recorded separately.

Unusually, the vocals for ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll Suicide’ were recorded in two discrete parts, allowing Bowie to begin quietly and intimately, before letting go for the finale.

The only track with a completely planned punch for David’s vocal. We needed two distinct vocal sounds for this song, very up close and controlled and then David blasting. We set the level for David to sing quietly and really close to the mic, then recorded the first take of the first three verses and stopped. David stepped back a little, I got a new level setting, we recorded until the song’s end and that’s the performance you hear.

Mick Ronson also arranged the string parts, as he did elsewhere on the Ziggy Stardust album.

The orchestra we used generally consisted of eight violins, four violas, and two cellos (or 8, 4, and 2 as we’d call it), with the violins divided into four first violins and four second violins. There were occasions Ronno would use a smaller string section but also times, as in ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll Suicide’, when he’d add double basses. He actually went all out on that particular track and added a brass section comprising two trumpets, two trombones, two tenor saxes, and a baritone sax. This was one of the few times that the saxes were session players as opposed to David playing them himself.