We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly brought you the ori­gin sto­ry of Zig­gy Star­dust, David Bowie’s first and most flam­boy­ant rock & roll char­ac­ter, as well as his lat­er rec­ol­lec­tions of those times in a 1977 inter­view on Cana­di­an tele­vi­sion. Above, see the doc­u­men­tary that marked the end of that piv­otal era, D.A. Pennebaker’s Zig­gy Star­dust and the Spi­ders from Mars, a con­cert film of Bowie’s last show as the glam rock kabu­ki space alien. (Part 1 can be found above, remain­ing parts reside here.) Bowie had grown tired of the char­ac­ter, feel­ing forced by his man­ag­er Tony DeFries to put on big­ger, more elab­o­rate stage shows (though there is spec­u­la­tion that record com­pa­ny RCA refused to finance planned US and Cana­di­an sta­di­um shows). In a lat­er rec­ol­lec­tion, Bowie stat­ed he was ready to move on:

I want­ed the whole Main­Man thing away from me. It was cir­cusy. I was nev­er much of an entourage per­son — I hat­ed all of that. It’s a relief for all these years … not have a con­stant stream of peo­ple fol­low­ing me around to the point where, when I sat down, fif­teen oth­er peo­ple sat down. It was unbear­able. I think Tony [DeFries] saw him­self as a Sven­gali type, but I think I would have done okay any­way. Now, I look back on it with amuse­ment more than any­thing else.

Along with broth­ers Albert and David Maysles, who made Gimme Shel­ter, Pen­nebak­er had an uncan­ny knack for being in the right place at exact­ly the right time in music his­to­ry. His Dont Look Back defined Bob Dylan for a gen­er­a­tion and launched the much-imi­tat­ed pro­to-music video with cue cards for “Sub­ter­ranean Home­sick Blues.”

The epony­mous Mon­terey Pop doc­u­ment­ed the explo­sive 1967 fes­ti­val that “crystallize[d] the ener­gy of a coun­ter­cul­ture that by then seemed both bless­ed­ly inevitable and dan­ger­ous­ly embat­tled,” accord­ing to Robert Christ­gau. In 1973, Pen­nebak­er found him­self again posi­tioned per­fect­ly to doc­u­ment a piv­otal moment—the end of Bowie’s Zig­gy Star­dust per­sona at London’s Ham­mer­smith Odeon in what became known as “The Retire­ment Gig.”

Pen­nebak­er, who’d only just signed on dur­ing the final Lon­don leg of the tour to make a full-length film and who knew lit­tle of Bowie’s music, was as sur­prised as any­one when Bowie announced Ziggy’s retire­ment by say­ing “this show will stay the longest in our mem­o­ries, not just because it is the end of the tour but because it is the last show we’ll ever do.” No one knew at the time that Bowie would return, trans­formed into Aladdin Sane in an album of the same name that year (with the same band—watch them do a ver­sion of Lou Reed’s “White Light/White Heat” above at 1:18:10, a track record­ed for, but cut from, 1973 cov­ers album Pin Ups). The farewell con­cert opened with a med­ley of Bowie songs on solo piano per­formed by Mike Gar­son, who called the show “phe­nom­e­nal” (hear Garson’s med­ley above, begin­ning at 2:30, after the intro­duc­tion).

The retire­ment gig was the 60th of 40 tour dates on the third Zig­gy UK tour and was, in fact, a replace­ment for a can­celled gig at Earl’s Court. Find a full list of the set here. Bowie and the Spi­ders were joined onstage by Jeff Beck for two songs before Bowie’s farewell speech, but Beck lat­er had him­self cut from Pennebaker’s film, unhap­py with his solos, and per­haps his wardrobe. Though Beck was Bowie gui­tarist Mick Ronson’s hero, Ron­son remem­bers being too dis­tract­ed to be over­whelmed: “I was too busy look­ing at his flares. Even by our stan­dards, those trousers were exces­sive!” See grainy boot­leg footage from the show of Beck and his trousers in “Jean Genie,” and a snip­pet of “Love Me Do” (above), and Chuck Berry’s “Round and Round” (below).

via Net­work Awe­some

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of Zig­gy Star­dust: How David Bowie Cre­at­ed the Char­ac­ter that Made Him Famous

David Bowie Recalls the Strange Expe­ri­ence of Invent­ing the Char­ac­ter Zig­gy Star­dust (1977)

Lego Video Shows How David Bowie Almost Became “Cob­bler Bob,” Not “Aladdin Sane”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Quentin Taran­ti­no cares about music, as you can tell from watch­ing any of his films, from his max­i­mal­ly dis­com­fit­ing use of Steal­ers Wheel’s “Stuck in the Mid­dle with You” in Reser­voir Dogs on out. A Tele­graph arti­cle on that song’s writer Ger­ry Raf­fer­ty describes it as “writ­ten as a par­o­dy of Bob Dylan’s para­noia,” “lit­tle more than a joke but with a catchy pop arrange­ment” that unex­pect­ed­ly sold more than a mil­lion copies. If Taran­ti­no has a fas­ci­na­tion with Dylan par­o­dies, then he has an even deep­er fas­ci­na­tion with the real thing, as revealed in a post on his ten favorite records from Uncut’s Michael Bon­ner. He pulled Taran­ti­no’s selec­tions and com­ments from an inter­view he con­duct­ed with the direc­tor back around the time of Pulp Fic­tion. Above, you can watch Dylan play “Tan­gled Up in Blue,” which Taran­ti­no calls his “all-time favorite song,” “one of those songs where the lyrics are ambigu­ous you can actu­al­ly write the song your­self.” (Hear the orig­i­nal record­ing here.)

Just above, we have Fre­da Payne per­form­ing “Band of Gold,” anoth­er of Taran­ti­no’s choice cuts, on Soul Train in 1970. “This is just so cool,” he says. “It’s a com­bi­na­tion of the way it’s pro­duced, the cool pop/R&B sound, and Freda’s voice. Its kin­da kitschy in a way – y’know, it’s got a real­ly up-tem­po tune – and, the first few times I heard it, I was, like, total­ly into the cool­ness of the song. It was only on the third or fourth lis­ten I realised the lyrics were so fuck­ing heart­break­ing.” Below you’ll find a cut from Phil Ochs’ I Ain’t March­ing Any­more, which Taran­ti­no calls “one of my favorite protest/folk albums. While Dylan was a poet Ochs was a musi­cal jour­nal­ist: he was a chron­i­cler of his time, filled with humor and com­pas­sion. He’d write songs which would seem very black and white, and then, in the last verse, he’d say some­thing which, like, com­plete­ly shat­tered you.” This par­tic­u­lar song, “Here’s To The State of Mis­sis­sip­pi,” he con­sid­ers “every­thing the movie Mis­sis­sip­pi Burn­ing should have been.”

In Bon­ner’s Uncut post, you can read Taran­ti­no’s fur­ther thoughts on Bob Dylan, his dec­la­ra­tion of Elvis’ finest era, and his film scores of choice. And speak­ing of things cin­e­mat­ic, see also our lists of Taran­ti­no’s favorite films since 1992, his ten favorite films of last year, and what he deems the twelve great­est films of all time.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Imper­son­ates His Idol, Elvis Pres­ley

Jim Jar­musch: The Art of the Music in His Films

The Rolling Stones at 50: Mick, Kei­th, Char­lie & Ron­nie Revis­it Their Favorite Songs

Mick Jones Plays Three Favorite Songs by The Clash at the Library

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.