Bowie: A Biography - JFK247

“David sensed there was something there,” says
Tony Zanetta. “There was something attractive about
being a sexual outlaw. And he definitely absorbed
that into his Ziggy Stardust character, because Ziggy
Stardust was a very sensual presentation. It was like
the ultimate alien, but there was something very
beautiful and desirable about Ziggy Stardust. So that
all the little alienated kids all over the world, like the
fat girls and the gay boys that didn’t fit in, were
attracted to this kind of alien-ness. And yes, he did
use it.”
With Ziggy Stardust, Bowie was no longer a joiner,
he was finally a leader, and he was just starting to
get an idea of the responsibility therein. Like Bob
Dylan before him and Kurt Cobain, Ice Cube and
Eminem after him, David wasn’t exactly comfortable
with it. While genuinely happy that his public
announcement may have had a liberating effect on
heretofore-closeted people, he knew that he was an
artist, not a spokesman.
“I was quite proud that I did it,” Bowie told the
great music journalist Robert Palmer in 1983. “On
the other hand, I didn’t want to carry a banner for any
group of people and I was as worried about that as
the aftermath. Being approached by organizations. I
didn’t want that. I didn’t feel like part of a group. I
didn’t like that aspect of it: this is going to start
overshadowing my writing and everything else that I
do. But there you go.”