It is 1978 and Australian fans of iconic megastar David Bowie go into meltdown when news breaks that Ziggy Stardust himself would be touring the country as part of his Isolar II tour.

In November, Bowie lands in Brisbane and sets sight on Lang Park. When Bowie hit the stage on the 19th of November, the English rocker had already released masterpiece albums ‘Low’, ‘Hunky Dory’, ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars’, ‘Station to Station’, ‘Heroes’, ‘Aladdin Sane’, ‘The Man Who Sold the World’ and ‘Young Americans’ – just to name a few.

When tickets went on sale earlier in the year they went like hot cakes.

His name sold the tickets because David Bowie was a draw.

There was no need to come out before his gigs and feed headlines to the media. David Bowie was enough for the people. But you wonder how David Bowie then would go in today’s world.

In fact, how would anyone or anything go in today’s world?

Lang Park, now commercially known as Suncorp Stadium, hosts everything throughout the year from the NRL, Super Rugby, A-League and still the odd concert.

But nothing quite comes close to State of Origin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shzCI2neSa8

Why? Because it sells itself, it’s a draw. It’s every kind of genius Bowie was and every part as intriguing.

Yet we have critics complaining that there isn’t the same kind of build-up of past series. They’re asking if Origin is dead because Paul Gallen hasn’t called the Queenslanders names or the Maroons aren’t rubbing salt into the wounds of a decade’s worth of torture.

Sports fans in this country have short memories and even shorter attention spans.

The legend of Origin will never die – no matter how hard you will it.

Apparently Origin is destroying the NRL despite the fact that State of Origin makes us great and different.

We are Origin.

Semi Radradra wants to play for the Blues after publically admitting he switched allegiances from Fiji to Australia for financial gain. Now he’s apparently leaving for French rugby.

What would we be if we allowed him to play a handful of games in the sky blue only for him to become the next Sonny Bill Williams or Israel Folau?

People flocked to Bowie because he was Bowie and people love Origin because it’s Origin.

Why do we want to destroy it?

Why do we want to make it just another game of footy?

A journalist, far more talented than me, recently said he didn’t care about Origin and the NRL needed to come first.

Why can’t they both be first?

And why are people so hell bent on lambasting the concept every time we don’t get a 27-26 extra-time thriller?

If you drag away enough rocks eventually it all caves in.

Origin will become just another match if we keep pulling on its sleeve.

Who would Bowie be if we told him how to sing or dress or write?

He’d be like everyone else and he wouldn’t be Bowie.

The music that night at Lang Park was so loud people in surrounding neighbourhoods couldn’t hear their own television sets. On that night around 18,000 packed into the old ground to watch him.

Five years later Bowie returned to the stage of Lang Park with almost 30,000 people staring back at him.

His fans never tried to change him.

@woodward_curtis

Feature image copyright Shinko Music/Getty Images

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