I arrived at RAF Chicksands early in January 1972 and recently realized how my time there (1972-74) coinsided with the rise of Bowie's career. In fact it positioned me to witness some incredible moments.
"Starman was released on 28 April 1972 as the lead single on Bowie's fifth studio album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. The song had been recorded on 4 February 1972 at Trident Studio's in London. It was a late addition to the album, written as a direct response to RCA's request for a single.
Upon release, "Starman" sold favorably and earned positive reviews. I recall first seeing Bowie when he performed the song on the BBC television's Top of the Pops show. The song moved up the UK Singles Chart and helped propel the album to number five. It was his first major hit since "Space Oddity" three years earlier. The exposure from the television performance is what made Bowie a star.
Note the octave leap that Bowie does when he sings "Star - MAN" which was probably what hooked me on the song in the first place although I could not have told you technically why at the time. Bowie incorporated elements from Judy Garland's performance of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" into "Starman" including her octave leap on "Some WHERE". Music historian Peter Doggett states that whereas "Over the Rainbow" "used its cathartic rise to introduce a refrain that was emotionally, and melodically, expansive", the leap in "Starman" "was followed by a more uncertain melody, reflecting his character's innate lack of confidence."
Worth a watch is this great trailer for "Lightyear" which uses "Starman" for the most dramatic segment.
The chorus of "Starman" is loosely based on Over the Rainbow, alluding to his extraterrestrial origins over the rainbow. When I saw Bowie at the Rainbow Theater in August 1972 he changed the chorus to "There's a Starman, over the rainbow", in effect acknowledging the connection between the two songs. There was much cheering from the crowd.
At the time I took "Starman" as a message of hope for a better future and found listening to it uplifting, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" creates that same magic. But Bowie was not being especially optimistic and said: "Ziggy is advised in a dream by the infinites to write the coming of a starman, so he writes "Starman", which is the first news of hope that the people have heard. So they latch onto it immediately. The starmen that he is talking about are called the infinites, and they are black-hole jumpers. Ziggy has been talking about this amazing spaceman who will be coming down to save the earth. They arrive somewhere in Greenwich Village. They don’t have a care in the world and are of no possible use to us. They just happened to stumble into our universe by black-hole jumping. Their whole life is traveling from universe to universe".
This is a 1977 song nicely utilized in a classic 2012 movie scene. It has nothing to do with Chicksands but will do until I can post more material. Charlie does say that he feels "infinite" which is an obscure allusion to "Starman".
Speaking of the magic of octave leaps check out this cover of "Golden" where the singer uses a three octave range, at times hitting A5 - maybe even A6.