Diamond Dogs (1974)

The Bowie Project #8 – Diamond Dogs (1974)

David Bowie’s eighth studio album was released on 24 May 1974 by RCA Records. The album marks Bowie’s departure from the glam rock genre he had been exploring on his last three records and sees the beginning of a funk/soul influence that he would embrace more fully in his next releases. This album is an amalgamation of three different projects Bowie had been working at the time and while it is usually described as a concept album there is no real narrative running throughout but it’s more a collection of interconnected ideas and themes. One of the projects was a musical based on Ziggy Stardust which was ultimately scrapped, however fragments of songs written for it have found their way onto this release. Another was an adaptation of the George Orwell novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, Bowie attempted to secure the rights to the dystopian novel but was denied by his widow (as she denied any and all requests for adaptations right up until her death). Instead, Bowie wrote his own apocalyptic vision inspired by the writing of William S. Burroughs, particularly the novel The Wild Boys, Bowie had met Burroughs for an interview earlier in the year for a piece  in Rolling Stone magazine and the encounter hugely influenced his writing process with Bowie starting to use Burroughs famous cut-up technique and even later rewriting his own history to say The Wild Boys was one of the inspirations for the Ziggy Stardust character in the first place (which can’t be true as Bowie admits in the Rolling Stone interview he had not yet read the book). All these fragmented pieces come together to create Diamond Dogs, a record that I feel has kind of passed me by, I’ve always listened a lot to the Ziggy Stardust/Aladdin Sane period and would end up skipping straight to Station to Station and the Berlin trilogy, so spending some time with this album and really getting to know it has been really great, it’s quickly become one of my favourite Bowie records, one I’ve slept on for far too long, there’s a lot more than “Rebel Rebel” going on here.

This is a kind of transitional album for Bowie, his backing band the Spiders from Mars were gone, this meant Mick Ronson’s distinctive guitar wasn’t there anymore, leaving Bowie to play the guitar parts himself; his long time producer Ken Scott had also departed and Bowie took on full production duties. Overall, this is actually the album that Bowie has had the most direct creative of control of in his entire career up to this point, there are no cover songs and Bowie played a lot of the instruments including saxophone and the majority of the backup vocals too. Bowie is on record at the time stating this album is “more me” than any previous record he had released (although he always said this especially at points where he shedding old personas in an attempt to the let the audience think they are finally going to witness the true Bowie and then later we see yet another transformation and realise we’ve been played once again, it’s unclear if we’ve ever really met the “real” Bowie).

The distinctive album artwork depicts Bowie as a half-man, half-dog hybrid, he’s still got the distinctive Ziggy Stardust haircut and his surrounded by two freak show dogs, the cover was designed by Belgian artist Guy Peeliaert and represents the apocalyptic distorted future landscape presented on the record in it’s opening track. The album’s tour featured elaborate set-pieces influenced by movies like Metropolis and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari due to Bowie’s interest in German expressionism and it eventually morphed into the Soul Tour as Bowie’s style began to shift and change and he got ready to enter his new “plastic soul” era with his next album Young Americans (this tour is expertly captured in the 1975 BBC documentary Cracked Actor which is essential viewing for anyone interested in this era).

The album introduces Bowie’s next persona, Halloween Jack, the gang leader of the Diamond Dogs. Bowie would present himself as Halloween Jack in concert dressed in red suspenders and an eye patch. This character was short lived as the soul style quickly began to take hold throughout the tour. Diamond Dogs raw guitar and visions of urban decay, scavenging children and nihilism could be seen as a forerunner to the punk revolution of 1977 with roaming gangs of grotesque mohawked teenagers taking to the streets of London and shocking the public after the emergence of bands like the Sex Pistols. Bowie’s ahead of the curve yet again. The record was an attempt to shed his previous glam rock style, it still kept some of those same characteristics he had become famous for, but it is more gritty, direct, and experimental. It’s almost a proto-punk record in some ways. This album is direct, energic as well as thematically rich and now more than 45 years later its presentation of crumbling society still feels relevant.

Halloween Jack

The album opens on a howl with the spoken word track “Future Legend”, this introduces the setting of an Orwellian vision of a “glitter apocalypse” where “fleas the size of rats sucked on rats the size of cats” in the “year of the Diamond Dogs”. The prose on display here is reminiscent of writings of William S. Burroughs and this is the closest the album gets to giving us a real narrative, although it does set the theme for everything that comes after. This track makes me think it’s a shame we never got any fiction prose from Bowie, he was clearly incredibly well-read and interested in the power of narrative so I can imagine a David Bowie novel could have been an incredible psychological sci-fi dystopian dreamscape. The one-minute song is full of references and allusions to Burroughs, Ray Bradbury, the 1940 musical Pal Joey, as well as Scott Walker’s rendition of “Any Day Now” right at the end.

The sound of crowds cheering the announcement of “this ain’t rock ‘n’ roll, this genocide!” opens the title track of the record “Diamond Dogs”. This profession can be seen to reference Bowie’s fascination with the links between the power of performer and that of a leader at a fascist rally, this is a theme he returns to again and again in the 70s that he would later try to distance himself from claiming his interest in Nazi’s was a result of reading too much Nietzsche, taking too much cocaine, and taking on multiple personas where what he says and what he actually believes are often two different things. “Diamond Dogs” also directly references another huge influence on the album and that’s Todd Browning’s 1932 horror movie Freaks who’s portrayal of real life “freakshow” actors such as dwarfs, Siamese twins, and those missing limbs connected with Bowie's feeling of being like an other in normal society. The track itself is great musically and lyrically and much like some of the material on Aladdin Sane sounds reminiscent of Exile era Rolling Stones. It introduces Halloween Jack “a real cool cat” directly and was released as a single to little success. NME critics Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray said, “as a potential hit single, the title track from Diamond Dogs was something of a non-event. Too long, too bleak in vision, too tough to dance to... you know the drill."

The next three tracks is a suite of songs that all stick together it’s “SweetThing/Candidate Song/Sweet Thing (Reprise)” but for ease sake I’m just going to refer to the entire thing as “Sweet Thing” and I think it might just be one of my favourite things Bowie has ever released and the more I listen to it and the more I love it. First off we’ve got Bowie’s opening vocals on the track where he’s singing in a deeper baritone register than we’ve ever heard before and then he bursts into epic high notes as the track builds, in terms of vocal performances alone it demonstrates a range that before this he had never presented. Bowie’s also playing the saxophone and guitar on this track and is beginning the showcase a true level of musicianship as he no longer as Mick Ronson to back up the more intricate guitar work. Bowie used Burroughs cut-up technique for the lyrics so some of them can be quite cryptic, however it’s intended to describe transactional loveless sex with a stranger but with passion with which Bowie sings the lyrics just puts it on another level, it’s one of the most underrated things in Bowie’s catalogue and is a fan favourite for those who are seriously into Bowie.

“Rebel Rebel” is the album’s lead single and has been described as Bowie’s farewell to the glam rock movement, it was a hit and reached number 5 in the UK singles chart and stands as Bowie’s most covered song. This song was original written to be part of the abandoned Ziggy Stardust musical and is probably one of Bowie most iconic anthems, the music is straight up Stones inspired rock ‘n’ roll but lyrics allude to Bowie’s position as an LGBT icon with lyrics “you’ve got your mother in a whirl, she’s not sure if you’re a boy or a girl” the song seems to be championing alternative lifestyles as something to be proud of and something to flaunt, for 1974 it’s pretty forward thinking and Bowie’s androgenous gender bending nature really helped to normalise these kind of things. Barry Walters of Pitchfork said of the song, “If Bowie often drifted above listeners' heads, here he shoots straight at their solar plexus and scores with what ranks among the greatest, most insistent riffs of the '70s. Rockers who'd dismissed Bowie as a dandy now gave the dude a pass." There really is something in this song for everyone even if it doesn’t really contribute to the overall theme of the album, but hey you’ve got to have that catchy hit single and it’s a good one.

Side two opens with the power ballad “Rock ‘n’ Roll with Me”, a song co-written with his schoolfriend Warren Peace which was supposed to address Bowie’s complex relationship he has with his fans. Bowie never used shared co-writing credit until 1974 and after this it became much more common for him. Like the previous song it was originally conceived as part of the Ziggy musical and is an early example of his upcoming soul style. During live performances Bowie would tell the audience that the song was about them, and like much of the material on Ziggy Stardust is an exploration of the role of a rockstar as a figurehead that audiences follow and hang onto every word of. While speaking of the song Bowie stated: “There were times, frankly, when I could have told the audience to do anything, and that’s frightening. Well, I’ve got that responsibility so I’ve got to be very careful about what I do with it.”

“We are the Dead” is for me one of the highlights of the album and is the first song related to Bowie’s ambition to create a theatrical production of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. In that novel the phrase “we are the dead” appears three times. First by the protagonist Winston Smith, who understands that resisting the party is tantamount to a death sentence. Secondly, in a speech by the antagonist O’Brien who is an agent for the Thought Police. Lastly, by Julia and Winston as a means of representing their shared struggle. In terms of the novel the phrase has a lot of significance in terms of representing oppressed people. It’s Bowie song to include the f-word in the lyrics something which he wouldn’t do again right up until “Girl Loves Me” on his last album Blackstar.

Next is a pretty blatant allusion with Orwell with the track “1984” and in terms of the story of the novel is supposed to represent when Winston is being imprisoned and interrogated by O’Brien. This song shows Bowie’s interest in funk music and the wah-wah guitar sound has been likened to the iconic “Theme from Shaft” by Isaac Hayes. It’s fast and funky and Bowie used to open the Diamond Dogs concerts with this song.

The epic “Big Brother” reflects the ending of the Orwell novel where Winston Smith has been fully brainwashed and now loves Big Brother. It’s another example of Bowie’s fascination with authoritarianism, totalitarianism, and megalomania which at some point in the 1970s developed into seeing some value in these traits. As his drug addiction worsened Bowie became incredibly interested in the Third Reich and in 1976 stated to Swedish reporter, “I believe Britain could benefit from a fascist leader. After all, fascism is really nationalism.” Later stating to journalist Cameron Crowe:

“I believe very strongly in fascism. The only way we can speed up the sort of liberalism that’s hanging foul in the air at the moment is to speed up the progress of a right-wing, totally dictatorial tyranny and get it over as fast as possible. People have always responded with greater efficiency under a regimental leadership. A liberal wastes time saying, “Well, now, what ideas have you got?” Show them what to do, for God’s sake. If you don’t, nothing will get done. I can’t stand people just hanging about. Television is the most successful fascist, needless to say. Rock stars are fascists, too. Adolf Hitler was one of the first rock stars.”

Rock Against Racism was in part set up as a response to these flippant and dangerous remarks. Bowie has since distanced himself from it and later in his career was a strong support of civil rights but with this in mind the themes and concepts behind this album become a little bit problematic. This remarks from Bowie have in my experience been mostly erased from the accept narrative of Bowie’s career but I think it’s important to note when looking at his career as whole that there is some questionable stuff there.

The final track is “Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family” which is a strange two minute piece that emerges from the final notes of “Big Brother”. Originally Bowie wanted the song to end on a repeated loop with “brother” being repeated over and over again with the only way to stop it being to get up and turn off the record so instead it just ends a repeated “brother” which slowly fades away. The jarring way in which it is repeated is enough to snap you back into consciousness and wonder just what is going on? It goes just long enough that I imagine plenty of people thought their record was skipping on first hearing it.

When Diamond Dogs was released, it received mixed reviews from critics with some lamenting the absence of Mick Ronson and claiming the album holds little mainstream appeal. For a lot of people this can seem like a transitional album, Bowie was ready to get rid of the Ziggy Stardust but in a way, he is still there, the look on the cover is still very Ziggy like and the album still uses a lot of the glam rock sounds that he had become known for. In retrospective it is setting up the soul and blue-eyed soul Thin White Duke period that would soon be born but it also an incredibly rich and interesting record with layers of meaning to be stripped back on almost every track. This is exactly what author Glenn Hendler does in his book in the 33⅓ series all about Diamond Dogs which I highly recommend for someone who wants to dig even deeper in the history and themes behind this album. Diamond Dogs for me is a really great album and an essential entry into Bowie’s catalogue that’s easy to skip past when focusing on more celebrated eras.

Diamond Dogs (1974) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ [9/10]