David Bowie‘s first ever televised appearance as his creative alias, Ziggy Stardust, could see the light of day for the first time in decades in the near future. According to reports, Bowie’s June 15th, 1972 appearance on a British television show, Lift Off with Ayshea, alongside his backing band, The Spiders from Mars, has resurfaced, and could be available for replay pending the film’s ongoing restoration process.
The actual videotape from the forgotten 1972 broadcast was thought to be lost with history, but a member of the public recently came forward with a copy of the episode they had recorded onto a computer tape. The quality of the tape has degraded over time to the point where it’s no longer able to play. Experts are currently working on saving any playable video footage by incubating the computer tape 130 degrees in hopes of extracting the decades worth of moisture that has built up on the film. As of today, the only visual evidence of Bowie’s 1972 appearance as Stardust on Lift Off is that of still photographs, like the one seen above.
Filmmaker Francis Whately is hoping the restoration process is effectively completed by the time his forthcoming Bowie documentary, David Bowie: Finding Fame, arrives on the BBC next month.
“For fans, it is something of a Holy Grail,” Whately said in a recent interview. “[The tape] would fall apart if we played it, so it’s had to be very carefully restored. It will be a real coup if it comes off.”
Bowie’s appearance on the show may not seem like a big deal today, but it had a long-lasting influence on young British music fans similar to The Beatles‘ 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show back when it initially aired.
“He was a phenomenon, in the same way the Sex Pistols were a few years later,” Duran Duran keyboardist Nick Rhodes said of the 1972 performance in a 2017 Bowie biography. “At school the next day, nobody talked about anything else.”
Earlier this year, the world’s first ever statue of Bowie statue was unveiled in Aylesbury, England, the town where Ziggy Stardust was given his live debut.
[H/T Telegraph]
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