David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust is returning to the Big Screen with a new documentary

Directed by DA Pennebaker, the concert movie Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars: The Motion Picture captures David Bowie and his band at the height of their powers on stage at London’s Hammersmith Odeon on July 3, 1973, the singer causing a furore with his announcement that the gig would be “the last show we’ll ever do.”

MOJO magazine returns to this moment of high drama with an exclusive companion film where Woody Woodmansey, the sole surviving member of the Spiders From Mars, re-lives the events of that fateful night, and chronicles Bowie’s rise from the fringes of the British underground scene to global superstardom.

This new film sees Woody return to London’s Trident Studios where he and his fellow Spiders – Mick Ronson (guitar) and Trevor Boulder (bass) – cut a number of classic albums with Bowie including The Man Who Sold The World (1970), Hunky Dory (1971) and, of course, The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars (1972).

In a wide-ranging conversation with MOJO’s Editor-In-Chief, Phil Alexander, Woody – whose acclaimed autobiography My Life With Bowie: Spider From Mars has just been published by Sigwick & Jackson – reflects on the most formative period in Bowie’s career, and provides a fascinating insight into the man’s impact as well as the star’s conflicted view of commercial success.

Woody Womansey commented “Every so often an artist comes along and has that ability to really communicate – because that’s what art is – and it’s on such a high level. There’s good music, there’s better music, great music, and then you’ve got somebody who can deliver constantly. He was a cut above. I always thought that any time David Bowie wanted to write a hit song he could sit down and in 20 minutes he would have written one. He always had that about him. The fact that he didn’t do that was his choice. He came out at a point when the business and the world really needed brightening up. It needed a lift. He managed to do that, he managed to lift it, and then [his influence] went into all into the other arts and genres of music, and brightened all of their areas up. That’s one individual who managed to do that.”

Presented in association with CineEvents, the nationwide screenings of both films will take place across the UK on March 7, 2017. Participating cinemas include: Picturehouse, Everyman, Curzon, ODEON, Cineworld and Vue cinemas as well as a number of independent sites and chains.

Tickets can be purchased from www.ziggystardust-cinevents.com