David Bowie - Diamond Dogs

Released - April 1974

Genre - Glam Rock

Producer - David Bowie

Selected Personnel - David Bowie (Vocals/Guitar/Saxophone/Synthesiser/Mellotron); Earl Slick (Guitar); Mike Garson (Keyboards); Herbie Flowers (Bass); Tony Newman (Drums); Aynsley Dunbar (Drums); Alan Parker (Guitar); Tony Visconti (Strings)

Standout Track - Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (Reprise)

1974 was a significant year for Bowie, and it kind of had to be. After barely two years indulging the persona, Bowie had "killed off" his Ziggy Stardust alter-ego live onstage, to the shock and surprise of his backing band the Spiders From Mars. Quite why such a move felt necessary is still a mystery to this day, really - it wasn't necessarily from a desire to work with new people, as he recalled both guitarist Mick Ronson and bassist Trevor Bolder (with the notable omission of drummer Mick Woodmansey) for his next project, the tepid and disappointing covers album Pin-Ups. It wasn't necessarily because he wanted to work on a totally different style of music incompatible with the persona, as 1974's Diamond Dogs would show a significant amount of the glam thrash stylings of Aladdin Sane still intact, even without any of the Spiders From Mars. It seems most likely that the simple idea of the Ziggy Stardust persona had taken up too much space in Bowie's mind and needed to be forcibly removed as a sort of scorched earth policy in order to enable him to transform himself, a necessity in order to maintain creatively healthy. That "scorched earth" policy, the chameleon-like ability to totally abandon a hard-won audience, morph into a new persona and adopt a totally different musical style has been a fixture of Bowie's work throughout his career, and Diamond Dogs, while not the first time it had become apparent, was perhaps the most significant. While Bowie's random shifts into different musical styles on his early albums could be seen as an attempt to try and find his voice and to reach a wider audience, 1974 was the first time he consciously tried to distance himself from an approach that had already proved enormously popular in the pursuit of something new.

Of course, it wouldn't be until 1975's Young Americans that that transformation became a total stylistic overhaul, and Diamond Dogs is a sort of bridge between the glam rock of the Ziggy Stardust era and the "plastic soul" of the Young Americans phase, but it's certainly a strange and different enough album to cause dyed-in-the-wool Ziggy fans to raise their eyebrows at it. What strikes the listener most about Diamond Dogs is its cartoonish sense of theatricality - it opens with a hyena-like wail and a spoken-word narration setting the scene in a decaying dystopian future on "Future Legend," while the title track features far more overt storytelling and scene-setting than the more figurative "story" of The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars ever resorted to. The album also features an ambitious and cinematic multi-part song suite in the form of the sublime "Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (Reprise)," all together contributing to the sense that this album was far more conceptual than Ziggy Stardust had been. This all emerges from the genesis of the project, which Bowie initially wanted to be a musical adaptation of George Orwell's 1984, a book he had become obsessed by while touring America to promote Aladdin Sane. Ultimately, Orwell's estate refused to grant Bowie rights to adapt the novel, leaving him with material (most notably the song "1984" itself and "Big Brother") already written that explored themes of isolation in a dilapidated utopia. So as not to waste these musical ideas, Bowie set about tying the songs into his own imagined dystopian future, described in depth on "Future Legend" and "Diamond Dogs." Casting himself as Hallowe'en Jack (still essentially the same kind of figure as Ziggy, but this time the leader of a gang of degenerate proto-punks running wild in a ruined city rather than an alien Messiah), he set about crafting that manages to be cartoonishly imaginative and hauntingly depraved at one and the same time.

Of the Spiders-era musicians, pianist Mike Garson is the only one to be retained (although drummer Aynsley Dunbar is kept on from the Pin-Ups sessions), although it does see Bowie reunite with Tony Visconti for the first time since 1970's The Man Who Sold The World - here, Visconti provides the string arrangements. Faced with the impossible task of replacing guitarist Mick Ronson, the man who had defined so much of Bowie's sound since 1970, he took the surprising decision to take on the lead guitar duties himself, consciously deciding to go for a more raucous, amateurish sound rather than try to replicate the guitar wizardry of Ronson. Although the amateurishness is notable, Bowie proves himself a surprisingly adept guitarist, replacing technical skill with raw power and energy, and the chugging riff of "Diamond Dogs" or the iconic riff of "Rebel Rebel" really show him in a good light as a guitarist. The album's first half pretty much delivers classic after classic - after the brief spoken word of "Future Legend," "Diamond Dogs" is a chugging, playful stomping rocker in the vein of the Rolling Stones, managing to be incongruously feelgood while telling the story of a decaying futuristic society plagued by drug addicts and criminals. While "Rebel Rebel" might be the most iconic and classic track here, it's quite possible that the album's musical highlight is the mini-suite of "Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (Reprise)." On "Sweet Thing" Bowie pushes his voice into totally uncharted territory, sweeping from a terrifying bass intoning the opening "Safe in a city" to a shrill, declamatory wail as the song builds in intensity ("Can't you see that I'm scared but I'm lonely?") "Candidate" sees the whole thing build over scraping strings and Bowie's melasmatic saxophone work into a frenzied, almost tuneless insistence before descending back into the beautiful melody of the "Sweet Thing (Reprise)" which ultimately climaxes in a barrage of discordant noise before finally erupting into the riff of "Rebel Rebel." It's undoubtedly the most ambitious thing Bowie had attempted up to this point, and manages to be both hauntingly beautiful and chaotically terrifying.

"Rebel Rebel" has firmly ensconced itself as one of Bowie's all-time classic, and the raucous, beautiful simplicity of that unforgettable riff is another of his finest moments. The lyrics explore all the identity and authority issues that the glam movement challenged ("Got your mother in a whirl, she don't know if you're a boy or a girl,") though quite how it fits into Bowie's futuristic narrative is anyone's guess. In many ways, it can be seen as Bowie's final farewell to the glam rock movement and all it meant to him, and all he achieved through it. As a glam figurehead Bowie had given freedom of expression to a whole generation of young people, and all that is gloriously summed up in "Rebel Rebel."

The album's second half is slightly less consistent, and also points more directly at the direction Bowie would be taking next. While touring America, Bowie had been exposed to two things - the first was drugs and his time in LA contributed to a long-standing cocaine habit that severely impacted his physical and mental health over the next few years, and the second was soul and funk music, a still entirely American scene that came to occupy much of his brain in 1973 and '74. "Rock 'n' Roll With Me" is a bombastic but lovely epic soul ballad, while "1984" is heavily funk-influenced in its insistent, cymbal-heavy drum part and choppy, wah-wah guitar reminiscent of Isaac Hayes' Shaft soundtrack. Sadly, while the guitar of "1984" is undoubtedly cool, it doesn't really have a tune that ever really struck me, and "We Are The Dead," while it has an interesting moodiness to it, I always found similarly forgettable ultimately. Things pick up again though with the album's final full-blown song, the paean to Orwell's dystopian dictator "Big Brother." The song's epic chorus ("Someone to claim us, someone to follow, someone to shame us, some brave Apollo,") with its squaking sax and shimmering synth, is one of the most darkly dramatic moments on the album and segues into the chaotic, looped "Chant Of The Ever-Circling Skeletal Family" which finishes things off in suitably apocalyptic mood.

Altogether, it's certainly the most ambitious record Bowie had recorded up to this date, being far greater in scope and orchestral grandiosity than any of his earlier material. It had just enough of an after-image of Bowie's glam persona to keep old fans entertained without totally alienating them, while also showing that Bowie had the vision, the drive and the raw talent to create an album of true brilliance even without the support of the Spiders. Naturally, it was another big hit, reaching No. 1 in the UK and No. 5 in the US, and primed Bowie fans for the fact that their idol was not somebody who would pander to them, but somebody who would follow his own creative whims, even if it meant forging into totally unknown territory nobody else had anticipated him going in. The next step would be a more concerted effort to muscle into the soul and funk scene, and to attack the American market head-on in the form of the plastic soul of Young Americans. That it might be a move that would alienate fans even further didn't phase Bowie one bit - he had already proven that he was an artist who had what it takes to keep finding new audiences even if old ones would resent his abandoning them.

Track Listing:

All songs written by David Bowie except where noted.

1. Future Legend

2. Diamond Dogs

3. Sweet Thing

4. Candidate

5. Sweet Thing (Reprise)

6. Rebel Rebel

7. Rock 'n' Roll With Me (David Bowie & Warren Peace)

8. We Are The Dead

9. 1984

10. Big Brother

11. Chant Of The Ever-Circling Skeletal Family