David Bowie – ‘Aladdin Sane’ (EMI)

Three decades ago, an orange-haired kid called Ziggy Stardust found himself struggling with fame among the freaks.

David Bowie had used his skinny alter-ago to transform himself from a folky also-ran with just the one hit (‘Space Oddity’) into a leper messiah for the moonage. As a self-made starman he ran riot over the Seventies, inventing glam and filling the teen mags with racy, shaved-eyebrow chic.

It all went a bit weird while touring the States with the Spiders From Mars, resulting in this schizoid album that achieved record sales in 1973 and which sounds as fresh as a daisy today.

Mike Garson's honky-tonk jazz piano on the title track and the astonishingly punk (for its time) cover version of the Stones’ ‘Let’s Spend The Night Together’, helped to hoist Aladdin head and shoulders above his peers. The late, great Mick Ronson’s fiery guitar on ‘Cracked Actor’ and Bowie’s supercharged vocal performance on the sultry ‘Lady Grinning Soul’ and ‘Time’ increase the joy.

Add a couple of classic hits (‘Drive-In Saturday’ and ‘The Jean Genie’) and a bonus disc of live cuts and out-takes for the diehards, and you’ve got a digitally remastered anniversary edition that is pretty damn unbeatable.  9/10

Andy Barding