Aladdin Sane - "Ziggy Goes To America"

"Ziggy Goes To America"

The name of the album is a pun on "A Lad Insane". An early variation was "Love Aladdin Vein", which Bowie dropped partly because of its drug connotations. Although technically a new Bowie 'character', Aladdin Sane was essentially a development of Ziggy Stardust in his appearance and persona, as evidenced on the cover by Brian Duffy and in Bowie’s live performances throughout 1973 that culminated in Ziggy’s ‘retirement’ at the Hammersmith Odeon in July of that year. Moreover there was not the thematic flow on this album that was present on its predecessor. Bowie himself described Aladdin Sane as simply "Ziggy goes to America", most of the tracks being observations he composed on the road during his 1972 U.S. tour—the reason for the place names following each song title on the original record sleeve. Biographer Christopher Sandford believed the album showed that Bowie "was simultaneously appalled and fixated by America".

His mixed feelings about the journey stemmed, in Bowie's words, from "wanting to be up on the stage performing my songs, but on the other hand not really wanting to be on those buses with all those strange people... So Aladdin Sane was split down the middle." This kind of "schizophrenia", as Bowie describes it, was conveyed on the cover by his makeup, where a lightning bolt represents the duality of mind, although he would later tell friends that the "lad insane" of the album's title track was inspired by his brother Terry, who had been diagnosed as a schizophrenic.