1973 · performance
The London concert where Bowie ended the Ziggy and Spiders show, rather than his own performing career.
Hammersmith Odeon became the setting for a farewell that was easy to misunderstand. On 3 July 1973, Bowie played the final Ziggy and Spiders show to a paying audience. The venue matters because the announcement was made from its stage, in front of an audience encountering the ending as part of the performance. This World concerns that particular evening, not a general story of Bowie’s retirement.
Markers identify buildings or documented location references. They do not mark an exact recording room, stage position or camera angle.
Bowie’s official archive describes the audience leaving startled by the farewell. Its later account clarifies that the announcement concerned Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars collectively. Bowie himself toured North America again the following year. That distinction changes the meaning of the place: Hammersmith marks the ending of a specific stage identity and band presentation, not the end of Bowie’s live career. The archive also notes a later Ziggy appearance at the Marquee’s 1980 Floor Show. [1]
Pennebaker Hegedus Films describes a concert film framed by fragments from behind the scenes. A shortened version reached television in 1974, while a full theatrical release followed in 1983. The record of Hammersmith therefore travelled in stages: an evening in a London auditorium became a broadcast and then a cinema experience. The camera preserves a way of encountering the performance, even for viewers who never entered the theatre. It also helps explain why the venue remains inseparable from the public memory of Ziggy’s farewell. [2]
Eventim Apollo, 45 Queen Caroline Street, Hammersmith
3 July 1973
David Bowie’s final Ziggy and the Spiders show to a paying audience took place at Hammersmith Odeon on 3 July 1973; the farewell concerned that collective act rather than the end of Bowie’s performing career. [1]
This is the historical concert site. Check the current venue’s own programme and access arrangements before attempting an interior visit. The association does not identify a publicly accessible backstage route or an exact standing position.
