1972年初，David把自己变成了Ziggy Stardust，这个只存在了短短两年的“太空”幻想生物，成为David一生中最为重要的形象。《The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars》是公认的，David最出色的专辑之一，而且，可以说，此后David再也没有如Ziggy时代一样的出色——虽然也许比Ziggy时代更成功。David开始改变了，无论是音乐还是造型，Ziggy名字的来源取自一个同名裁缝店，这是个近乎玩笑的随意名字，David自己说用了这个名字的原因仅仅因为“Ziggy”要换很多套衣服。 　　《The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars》是一张折衷性的专辑，有讨好听众的一面，然而，前几张专辑中始终贯穿的死亡与梦幻的歌词本质却没有变，Ziggy依然是沉浸在飘渺和不满中的遁世者，面对现实无能为力，寂寞地消失湮没。专辑在滚石杂志选出的500张历代最强专辑中排名第35位。 　　Borrowing heavily from Marc Bolan's glam rock and the future shock of A Clockwork Orange, David Bowie reached back to the heavy rock of The Man Who Sold the World for The Rise & Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Constructed as a loose concept album about an androgynous alien rock star named Ziggy Stardust, the story falls apart quickly, yet Bowie's fractured, paranoid lyrics are evocative of a decadent, decaying future, and the music echoes an apocalyptic, nuclear dread. Fleshing out the off-kilter metallic mix with fatter guitars, genuine pop songs, string sections, keyboards, and a cinematic flourish, Ziggy Stardust is a glitzy array of riffs, hooks, melodrama, and style and the logical culmination of glam. Mick Ronson plays with a maverick flair that invigorates rockers like "Suffragette City," "Moonage Daydream," and "Hang Onto Yourself," while "Lady Stardust," "Five Years," and "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide" have a grand sense of staged drama previously unheard of in rock & roll. And that self-conscious sense of theater is part of the reason why Ziggy Stardust sounds so foreign. Bowie succeeds not in spite of his pretensions but because of them, and Ziggy Stardust -- familiar in structure, but alien in performance -- is the first time his vision and execution met in such a grand, sweeping fashion.