How would we respond to news that our planet could only support us for five more years? Dive headlong into a flashback of our life experiences? Spin out madly and attack small children? Or party like there's no tomorrow?
We'll find out soon enough, no doubt.
When David Bowie posed the question in 1972, he suggested we turn our faces skyward to await the arrival of the starman, knowing full well that any messiah would be made of the same stuff as the rest of us. In the meantime, instructions were to "let all the children boogie" as Bowie's alter ego Ziggy Stardust and his Spiders from Mars kept them distracted.
Escaping oblivion was never an option. The album of loosely connected songs that told Ziggy's story was entitled The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars, and there was no avoiding the fall. Ziggy himself was based on real-life space-cadet, rocker Vince Taylor, whose drug and alcohol problems ignited delusions of grandeur, and Bowie was both attracted and repelled by his story.
Beyond Ziggy's legacy as a freak of fashion and a cartoonish manifestation of everything our parents warned us about, his music remains as the definitive embodiment of glam rock with its implicit colour, theatrics, sexual heat and mystical overtones. The heaviest rock elements are tempered by piano, strings and the warm thrum of Bowie's acoustic guitar, the strangulated buzz of Mick Ronson's electric carrying a tension that never overpowers Bowie in his attempt at a nuanced delivery of the narrative (compare Bowie's version of the song Ziggy Stardust to Bauhaus' muscular 1982 take, and notice the change of focus).
In 2012, with the warned-of five years having spun out to 50, Ziggy is still very much alive in the hearts of many and oblivion is still just around the corner.
Spinning the record one more time might just further postpone the inevitable.
