Phish Honor David Bowie With Full-Album Performance of ‘Ziggy Stardust’
Part of the fun of being a Phish fan is trying to figure out who they'll cover during their annual epic Halloween show. This year's honoree wasn't too much of a surprise: The group performed David Bowie's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars album, completing a circle they started with their song "David Bowie" 30 years ago.
Jambase offers an in-depth review of the night's festivities, which sprawled across three sets at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. The Ziggy Stardust set — along with the band's other Halloween 2016 performances — is available to purchase and download at the LivePhish website. You can check out the evening's rendition of "Five Years" above.
As fans are aware, Phish's "David Bowie" song — first performed on Halloween night in 1986 — is far from the only example of their fondness for the man and his music. The band covered Bowie's "Life on Mars" on a regular basis throughout the mid-'90s, and over the last six months, they've taken to performing an a cappella cover of "Space Oddity" — which they brought out for a fitting encore at the Halloween show. As frontman Trey Anastasio explained, the decision to honor Bowie this year might have taken plenty of preparation, but it didn't require much thought.
"It was a conversation we had pretty quickly," said Anastasio. "‘Oh, Halloween is coming up. Let’s do Ziggy Stardust.'"
"You can’t point to anyone else in rock who was so relevant for so long," added keyboardist Page McConnell. "It’s hard to know how to honor them all, [but Ziggy on Halloween] felt right. And there are no weak links – no fluff, no filler. Every sonic detail is intentional, more than on any other album we’ve covered."
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