Professor Alex Sharpe, University of Warwick, said: "As Mike Garson noted recently, Bowie made a 'genius choice,' both artistically and commercially, in killing off Ziggy. It was hard on fans and especially on bandmembers Trevor and Woody (the two Spiders kept in the dark). But Bowie taught us an important love lesson that night at Hammersmith Odeon, one he would repeat, especially throughout the 70s. While he might have handled the moment better, more gently, within the band, through the ritual suicide he performed on 3rd July 1973, Bowie chose difference over identity, love over laws (of genre and identity), surprise over the cult of repetition. He showed us that to be a Bowie fan (or a lover, which is the same thing) is to mourn, to let go, and to learn to love again, and to do so as an act of faith for we can never truly know the other or the shape of her becoming".