From Ziggy to Aladdin

Back in 2022, for the 50th anniversary of David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, I started a time machine project over on Twitter called “From Ziggy to Aladdin.” I described it as “a real-time trip across a duo of iconic albums—from Ziggy Stardust’s debut to Aladdin Sane’s final bow—as it happened in the public eye 50 years ago.” My aim was to document every news item, every concert, every appearance, whatever I could find, and post it 50 years to the day after it occurred.

Only I didn’t quite make it to the momentous July 1973 concert where Bowie retired the Ziggy Stardust persona. Because back in the present day of 2023 Elon Musk was slashing and burning Twitter, and users were abandoning the site—pretty much wiping out the meager response I’d had for the project up to that point. (I didn’t get a lot of followers, but one of them was longtime Bowie pianist Mike Garson, so I really can’t complain.)

Even though it’s been defunct for quite a while, it was a good bit of work and I wanted it to exist somewhere. So I downloaded the entire archive off Twitter, and tried pushing it to a Bluesky profile, except all the timestamps broke—not great for a project that’s date-dependent!—and also I can’t say I’m particularly excited about putting any work into a social platform again. So I decided I’d try and re-home that timeline here.

After some tinkering, I was able to get the entire feed to appear with all the original links, images, and videos—though I also decided to backdate everything by 50 years—below. (Finally, social media I can edit.) At some point I may try to fill in those four missing months. But for now, this is what a social timeline for a David Bowie diehard might have looked like between May 1972 and February 1973.