Release Date: June 1972. Label: RCA (reissue available on EMI). Producer: David Bowie and Ken Scott. Running Time: 39 mins

By the time he came to make Ziggy Stardust David Bowie's career was in a most peculiar state.

Although he'd been hovering around the fringes of the UK music scene since 1964, had a top 5 hit in 1969 with 'Space Oddity' and released the acclaimed collections The Man Who Sold The World and Hunky Dory the previous year he'd hardly had a hit album worthy of the name, in fact Hunky Dory's showing at #93 in the US listings two months before this epochal outing was Bowie's first album chart entry anywhere in the world.