To many, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars is the shining crown jewel of not only David Bowie but also of glam rock, concept albums, and 1972. But the crown jewel of the crown jewel? You don’t have to look much further than the album's opener, maybe Bowie’s best piece: Five Years.
Five Years opens you to the world that Ziggy will soon be a part of, it guides you through the winding roads of a dreary world, slowing briefly only to showcase small moments that highlight the disparity of the world at hand. It’s outshown by the albums bigger set pieces like Starman, Moonage Daydream, or even it’s similarly paced Rock and Roll Suicide but Five Years does what none of the others could: opens us up to how important Ziggy truly is to the world he’ll come to see.
We open in a market, where our narrator - a child of Earth - hears about the sad fate of the universe: there's only five years left. Bowie describes the people as dreary and done for with sparse descriptors, the sighing mother and crying newsman. There’s a great line about the newsman: News guy wept and told us, Earth was really dying - cried so much his face was wet /Then I knew he wasn't lying. It paints a picture that fleshes out the past of this world without wasting too much time: how things were so bad it was hard to find a bad or worse within the horror stories described. But this was real, this was bad, this was moving one to tears. Within this first song is the world building that sets the stage for a story about to transpire over the next 39 minutes, and subsequent two years of Bowie’s life. After the news is broken by the tearful reporter, the narrator begins to list the overwhelming barrage of sights and sounds filling the market after the horrifying news of Earth’s imminent demise: I heart telephones, opera house, favorite melodies / I saw boys, toys, electric irons and TVs / My brain hurts like a warehouse, it had no room to spare / I had to cram so many things to store everything in there. Once more, the worldbuilding and story set up are so well executed within these lines. You can sense the overstimulation of so many sights and sounds after the weight of the news just heard, the only news that felt real, and the song swirls around the narrator, Bowie’s singing becoming faster as the list goes on before he starts almost shouting the last line of the verse: I never thought I’d need so many people. The warehouse mind metaphor is one of best in popular song, it helps the visualization of the psyche of not only the narrator but the world at large during these turbulent years. Fate sets in at the end of the verse, the idea that if the world really was on its way to ending how many people would be missed, even the perpetually flawed people.
Verse two highlights these people, the music still swelling as the time goes on. For every good person the narrator sees, there’s two who have already fallen victim to the world. There’s a focus through the glass of an ice cream parlor, where the narrator views someone who has yet to be affected by the news of the world’s end, smiling and waving and looking so fine / I don’t think you knew you were in this song. There’s a bit of a fourth wall break here, how the unaffected would never know themselves to be caught in the same breath as those who had a closer relation or bigger reaction to the narrator. It’s a line that showcases the importance of simplicity that falls upon some in the face of adversity, that even a distant acquaintance or complete stranger could suddenly be the be all, end all of someone's faith or humanity. It was cold, and it rained, and I felt like an actor / and I thought of Ma and I wanted to get back there / Your face, your race, the way that you talk / I kiss you, you’re beautiful, I want you to walk are the last lines of the second and final verse, before the outro of desperate yelps and pleas of five years carries out the song. The first line could easily be another fourth wall break, referencing the actor Bowie was to become, the rainy alley of the album cover that showed the world the first glimpse of Ziggy Stardust, or could be a use of the pathetic fallacy, when a human’s emotions are determined or validated by the weather they find themselves caught in - both interpretations of the line make concrete sense, but neither are a definitive meaning. The narrator rambles into thoughts of their mother, that the first thing they longed for was the comfort of their mother after the life changing news they had received. The final line has no specific person it directs itself too, though the ice cream parlor patron would make the most sense. After their simplistic and unaffected state had already transfixed the narrator for a few moments, the lines seem to be the overwhelming surge of spilt over emotions. The subject is broken down to their most human features, things that make them so beautiful to the narrator. Their humanity is once more their drawing point, their source of beauty in a world soon to be lost.
Bowie’s writing also starts to become more rambling, instead of listing in an organized or precise manner, his lines become frantic, the ands overtake the verses as the audience grows to feel the unease the character was feeling. His writing puts the listener into the world in a very thoughtful way, a way that perfectly marks the descent into madness the world was already in and makes the arrival of Ziggy feel almost as fresh and needed as it is his universe. The instrumentation also swells up, it becomes almost impossible to not feel the doom overtaking the people and their last five years. Bowie resorts to screaming lines in the outro, pieces like what a surprise or my brain hurts a lot. He is not just belting, there’s genuine voice cracks and desperation coming from his delivery, his emotions almost completely wound around this character and universe in a way that makes the piece stand out like so many songs can’t. There’s a distinct cadence to Bowie’s voice when he sings, that makes his words seem prophetic despite the unorthodox and imperfect way he sings. He doesn’t have a perfect voice, yet it’ll always consistently rank with the best of the best due to the emotional delivery behind each word. Five Years could never work with Freddie Mercury or Frank Sinatra singing, it’s as great as it is because of Bowie’s distinct styling and emotions on the vocal front. That, and its superb lyrical and melodic feats. All of these factors are a given when it comes to a Bowie piece, but something about Five Years stands out. Maybe it rests with it’s place on side A as song one on what has become one of the most revered albums of all time, or maybe it just has that magic about it. Who knows?
David Bowie and his band performing Five Years on Old Grey Whistle Test in 1972
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