Rebel Rebel - Live at Live Aid, Wembley Stadium, 13th July 1985

This song is about a boy who rebels against his parents by wearing makeup and tacky women's clothes. It was a defining song of the "Glam Rock" era. Characterized by feminine clothes and outrageous stage shows, Glam was big in England in the early '70s. Bowie had the most mainstream success of the glam rockers.

Three years before this was released, Bowie admitted he was bisexual. The announcement seemed to help his career, as he gained more fans and wrote more adventurous songs.

Bowie did an episode of VH1 Storytellers in 1999 where he introduced this song with this yarn: I can tell you about the time that I first met Marc Bolan who became a very, very good friend of mine. We actually met very early on in the '60s before either of us were even a tad pole known. We were nothing; we were just two nothing kids with huge ambitions, and we both had the same manager at the time. And we met each other firstly painting the wall of our then manager's office. "Hello, who are you?" "I'm Marc, man." "Hello, what do you do?" "I'm a singer." "Oh, yeah, so am I. Are you a Mod?" "Yeah, I'm King Mod. Your shoes are crap." "Well, you're short." So we became really close friends. Marc took me dustbin shopping. At that time Carnaby Street, the fashion district, was going through a period of incredible wealth and rather than replace buttons on their shirts or zippers on their trousers, at the end of the day they'd just throw it all away in the dustbin. So, we used to go up and down Carnaby Street, this is prior to Kings Road, and go through all the dustbins around nine/ten o'clock at night and get our wardrobes together. That's how life was, you see. I could also tell you that when we used to play the working men's clubs up north - very rough district - and I first went out as Ziggy Stardust, I was in the dressing room in one club and I said to the manager: "Could you show me where the lavatory is, please?" And he said: "Aye, look up that corridor and you see the sink attached to the wall at the end? There you go." So, I tottered briefly on my stack-heeled boots and said: "My dear man, I'm not pissing in a sink." "He said: "Look son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you." Them were the days, I guess.