Diamond Dogs


Diamond Dogs is the eighth studio album by English singer-songwriter David Bowie, released on 24 May 1974 by RCA Records. Produced by Bowie himself and recorded in early 1974 at Olympic and Island Studios in London and Ludolph Studios in the Netherlands, it was Bowie's first album since 1970 to not feature contributions from his backing band the Spiders from Mars – comprising Mick Ronson, Trevor Bolder and Mick Woodmansey. Thematically, it is a marriage of the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell and Bowie's own glam-tinged vision of a post-apocalyptic world. Bowie had wanted to make a theatrical production of Orwell's book and began writing material after completing sessions for his 1973 album Pin Ups, but the author's estate denied the rights. The songs wound up on the second half of Diamond Dogs instead where, as the titles indicated, the Nineteen Eighty-Four theme was prominent. It was also Bowie's final album in the glam rock genre; he would explore R&B and soul music on his next album Young Americans.
Backed by the lead single "Rebel Rebel", Diamond Dogs was a commercial success, peaking at No. 1 on the UK Albums Chart and No. 5 on the US Billboard 200. It received mixed reviews from critics, but nevertheless, was ranked number 995 in the second edition of Colin Larkin's book All Time Top 1000 Albums and number 447 in NMEs The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Bowie supported the album on the Diamond Dogs Tour; performances from the tour have been released on two live albums, David Live and Cracked Actor. The album has been reissued multiple times and was remastered in 2016 as part of the Who Can I Be Now? box set.

Origins

Thematically, it is a marriage of the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell and Bowie's own glam-tinged vision of a post-apocalyptic world. Bowie had wanted to make a theatrical production of Orwell's book and began writing material after completing sessions for his 1973 album Pin Ups, but the author's estate denied the rights. The songs wound up on the second half of Diamond Dogs instead where, as the titles indicated, the Nineteen Eighty-Four theme was prominent.
It was also Bowie's final album in the glam rock genre; he would explore R&B and soul music on his next album Young Americans.

Production and style

Though the album was recorded and released after the 'retirement' of Ziggy Stardust in mid-1973, and featured its own lead character in Halloween Jack, Ziggy was seen to be still very much alive in Diamond Dogs, as evident from Bowie's haircut on the cover and the glam-trash style of the first single "Rebel Rebel". As was the case with some songs on Aladdin Sane, the influence of the Rolling Stones was also evident, particularly in the chugging title-track. Elsewhere, however, Bowie had moved on from his earlier work with the epic song suite, "Sweet Thing"/"Candidate"/"Sweet Thing ", whilst "Rock 'n' Roll with Me" and the Shaft-inspired wah-wah guitar style of "1984" provided a foretaste of Bowie's next, 'plastic soul', phase. The original vinyl album ended with a juddering refrain Bruh/bruh/bruh/bruh/bruh, the first syllable of " Brother", repeats incessantly. "Sweet Thing" was Bowie's first try at William S. Burroughs' cut-up style of writing, which Bowie would continue to use for the next 25 years.
Although Diamond Dogs was the first Bowie album since 1969 to not feature any of the Spiders from Mars, the backing band made famous by Ziggy Stardust, many of the arrangements were already worked out and played with Mick Ronson prior to the studio recordings, including "1984" and "Rebel Rebel". In the studio, however, Herbie Flowers played bass with drums being shared between Aynsley Dunbar and Tony Newman. In a move that surprised some commentators, Bowie himself took on the lead guitar role previously held by Ronson, producing what NME critics Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray described as a "scratchy, raucous, semi-amateurish sound that gave the album much of its characteristic flavour". Diamond Dogs was also a milestone in Bowie's career as it reunited him with Tony Visconti, who provided string arrangements and helped mix the album at his own studio in London. Visconti would go on to co-produce much of Bowie's work for the rest of the decade.

Packaging

The cover artwork features Bowie as a striking half-man, half-dog grotesque painted by Belgian artist Guy Peellaert, based on photographs of Bowie by Terry O'Neill. It was controversial as the full image on the gatefold cover showed the hybrid's genitalia. The genitalia were airbrushed out from the 1974 LP's sleeve on most releases. Very few copies of this original cover made their way into circulation at the time of the album's release. According to the record-collector publication Goldmine price guides, these albums have been among the most expensive record collectibles of all time, as high as thousands of US dollars for a single copy. The original image was included on the Rykodisc/EMI rerelease of the album in 1990, and subsequent reissues have included the uncensored artwork.

Reception and legacy

The record was Bowie's glam swan song; according to author David Buckley, "In the sort of move which would come to define his career, Bowie jumped the glam-rock ship just in time, before it drifted into a blank parody of itself". At the time of its release Bowie described Diamond Dogs as "a very political album. My protest... more me than anything I've done previously". Disc magazine compared the album to The Man Who Sold the World, while Rock and Sounds both described it as his "most impressive work... since Ziggy Stardust". Robert Christgau was more critical in Creem, suggesting that Bowie performs a pale imitation of Bryan Ferry's "theatrical vocalism". He also dismissed the lyrical content as "escapist pessimism concocted from a pleasure dome: eat, snort and bugger little girls, for tomorrow we shall be peoploids – but tonight how about $6.98 for this piece of plastic? Say nay."
Diamond Dogs made No. 1 in the UK charts and No. 5 in the US, Bowie's highest stateside placing to that date. In Canada, it was able to repeat its British chart-topping success, hitting No. 1 on the RPM 100 national albums chart in July 1974 and holding it for two weeks.
Diamond Dogs' raw guitar style and visions of urban chaos, scavenging children and nihilistic lovers have been credited with anticipating the punk revolution that would take place in the following years. Bowie himself described the Diamond Dogs, introduced in the title song, as: "all little Johnny Rottens and Sid Viciouses really. And, in my mind, there was no means of transport, so they were all rolling around on these roller-skates with huge wheels on them, and they squeaked because they hadn't been oiled properly. So there were these gangs of squeaking, roller-skating, vicious hoods, with Bowie knives and furs on, and they were all skinny because they hadn't eaten enough, and they all had funny-coloured hair. In a way, it was a precursor to the punk thing." According to Rolling Stone writer Mark Kemp, the album's "resigned nihilism inspired interesting gloom and doom from later goth and industrial acts such as Bauhaus and Nine Inch Nails."
Considering Bowie's direction afterwards through the punk and disco eras, Stylus Magazines Derek Miller says, "Diamond Dogs should be remembered not only as one of glam’s last great full-lengths but more importantly as a gap-record that somehow manages to cohesively storyboard Bowie’s crude conceptual surrealism while also expanding his sound." The album has often been regarded as an "English proto-punk" record, according to the cultural studies academic Jon Stratton, who calls it "post-glam". The pop culture scholar Shelton Waldrep describes it as "wonderfully dark proto-punk", while the music journalist C.M. Crockford says it is "the goofy, abrasive place where punk and art-rock meet, dance a little, and depart". In the opinion of The Guardians Adam Sweeting, while "the music still has one foot in the glam-rock camp", the album marks the point in Bowie's career where he "began exploring a kind of Weimar soul music with lavish theatrical packaging", featuring Broadway-style ballads such as "Big Brother" and "Sweet Thing". Barry Walters of Pitchfork describes the album as "a bummer, a bad trip, 'No Fun' – a sustained work of decadence and dread that transforms corrosion into celebration." He also believes that it foreshadowed the Thin White Duke, Bowie's persona throughout 1976, writing, " Blaxploitation funk and soul, rock opera, European art song, and Broadway."
Diamond Dogs has appeared on several professional listings of the best albums. It ranked number 995 in the second edition of Colin Larkin's book All Time Top 1000 Albums and number 447 in NMEs The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Based on such rankings, the aggregate website Acclaimed Music lists Diamond Dogs as the 276th most acclaimed album from the 1970s and the 27th most acclaimed from 1974.
Bowie played all of the album's songs except "We Are the Dead" on his Diamond Dogs Tour, recorded and released in two albums, David Live in 1974, and Cracked Actor in 2017. "Rebel Rebel" featured on almost every Bowie tour afterward, "Diamond Dogs" was performed for the Isolar, Outside and A Reality Tours, and "Big Brother/Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family" was resurrected in 1987 for the Glass Spider Tour.

Reissues

Diamond Dogs was first released on CD by RCA in 1985 with censored cover art. The German and Japanese masters were sourced from different tapes and are not identical for each region. Dr. Toby Mountain at Northeastern Digital, Southborough, Massachusetts, remastered Diamond Dogs from the original master tapes for Rykodisc in 1990 with two bonus tracks and the original, uncensored, artwork. "Future Legend" stops at 1:01 and "Diamond Dogs" runs 6:04 in this version. The album was remastered by Peter Mew at Abbey Road Studios, and released without bonus material.
The third in a series of 30th Anniversary 2CD Editions, this release included a remastered version of Diamond Dogs on the first disc. The second disc contains eight tracks, five of which had been previously released on the Sound + Vision box set in 1989 or as bonus tracks on the 1990–92 Rykodisc/EMI reissues. In 2016, the album was remastered for the Who Can I Be Now? box set. It was released in CD, vinyl, and digital formats, both as part of this compilation and separately.

Track listing

All tracks written by David Bowie, except where noted.
;Side one
  1. "Future Legend" – 0:58
  2. "Diamond Dogs" – 5:56
  3. "Sweet Thing" – 3:37
  4. "Candidate" – 2:39
  5. "Sweet Thing " – 2:31
  6. "Rebel Rebel" – 4:30
;Side two
  1. "Rock 'n' Roll with Me" – 3:57
  2. "We Are the Dead" – 4:58
  3. "1984" – 3:27
  4. "Big Brother" – 3:21
  5. "Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family" – 1:58
;1990 Rykodisc/EMI bonus tracks
  2. "Dodo" – 2:53
  3. "Candidate" – 5:09
;2004 EMI/Virgin bonus tracks
  1. "1984/Dodo" – 5:29
  2. "Rebel Rebel" – 3:00
  3. "Dodo" – 2:53
  4. "Growin' Up" – 3:25
  5. "Candidate" – 5:09
  6. "Diamond Dogs" – 4:41
  7. "Candidate" – 2:58
  8. "Rebel Rebel" – 3:09

    Personnel

Adapted from the Diamond Dogs liner notes.
;Production

Weekly charts

Chart Position

Year-end charts

Certifications and sales

Covers and references in popular culture