David Bowie – Life On Mars? – Live 1976

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Life On Mars was originally released in December 1971, on David Bowie’s “Hunky Dory” album. It was subsequently released as a single, in June 1973, at the height of Ziggy-mania.

The live audio was recorded at the Nassau Coliseum, New York on the 23rd March 1976. It is available on Live Nassau Coliseum ‘76 – part of the Station To Station reissue box set, released in 2010.

Perhaps Bowie tired of singing Life On Mars; he dropped it from the set on the latter part of the Ziggy tour, in June ’73, despite it being No. 3 in the UK charts at the time.

It didn’t feature at all on the ’74 Diamond Dogs tour.

It reappeared in the set, on the Station To Station tour in ’76. However, it was in a truncated form; at just about two minutes long, only the first half of the song was performed, and after the mid-song guitar break, the band segued into Five Years. Moreover, the performance of Life On Mars on the ’76 shows seem rather cursory to me. Did Bowie regard it as merely a warm up for Five Years?

Whereas, he performed awesome versions of Five Years during that period – check out the mesmerizing performance of it on the Dinah! Show: youtube.com/watch?v=qWM9R-mcgzE.

Bowie didn’t perform Life On Mars on the entire ’78 tour, and we don’t hear him sing it again until the excellent one-off performance on the Tonight Show, in 1980.

I originally made and posted this video last year, but it quickly got taken down from my YouTube channel by one of the copyright owners. So I’ve finally got around to re-uploading, with a few minor improvements. Let’s see how it fares from the wrath of the corporate’s on my Vimeo channel.

This video was made because there is simply no decent quality video material available from the ’76 tour, of a complete song. Therefore anything we can get is valuable, was my rationale. So basically, this video is a rather desperate attempt to use the one-minute of not-that-great footage from the last show of the tour, in Paris. And to make up for the gaps in the Paris footage, I’ve thrown in a little from the Vancouver rehearsals, and Phillipe Bergeron’s Montreal Forum footage (youtube.com/watch?v=XAj2iX9xqCo).

Therefore, dear viewer, be warned: the performance of the song on the ’76 tour, it’s length, the quality of the footage available, and this video are indeed, all rather small affairs.

Caveats aside… Hope you dig it!

Do me an’ yerself a favor – watch it in the H’est D available, with the sound UP LOUD!

If anyone has any other footage, or ideas for another video project, of material from Bowie’s classic period, do please get in touch: nachomarcho@gmail.com

Putting this video together was another huge labour of love, made with respect for the source.

I don’t own the rights, and I’m not making any money out of this etc. Just a fan making videos for other fans.

Nacho, 28th April, 2017.