Diamond Dogs (30th Anniversary Edition) [Remastered] - David Bowie

...create a private world.
Diamond Dogs brought to close the glam era for Bowie after this album there was nothing more to say that wouldn’t sound like self-parody or just asinine repetition.

Album
Disc 1

The albums tone is set by the minute and seven second long spoken narrative called “Future Legend” which sounds particularly Burroughsian which reads like an off-cut from the Burroughs book ...
...now, the year of the Diamond Dogs.

Bowie shouts “This ain’t Rock n’ Roll this is Genocide”.

Diamond Dogs (5.56) the title track plods along in a Stones-like manner and is the albums most unimaginative song, the album has for the first time and only time I can think of where Bowie plays most of the lead guitar.
His garage style of guitar playing is off-set by his soulfully played layered ... more

This 2004 double disc re-issue of Bowie’s last album with his now infamous Ziggy red mullet still intact was originally released on the 24th of April 1974 (which was number 1 in the UK album charts for a month) on the back of the of his last bona fide glam single “Rebel Rebel” which was released on the 15th of February 1974 (catalogue number RCA APO 5009) the single got as high as number 5 in the UK singles chart week beginning the 23rd of February 1974.

Background

Now having sacked the Spiders from Mars, Bowie was back to being a solo artist and this album was produced by him and engineered by Mike Harwood, the recording also shows Bowie taking the role of lead guitarist with the ever inventive Mike Garson adding his eccentric yet brilliant piano playing.

At the time Tony Visconti was building his own recording studio and at the same time had stopped producing Marc Bolan recordings which he felt where becoming repeats of earlier hits, Visconti was also reconciled with Bowie.

Visconti was brought in to arrange the strings on the track “1984” and do the final mix of the album.
Recorded late in 73 and early 74 the collection shows Bowie at his most indulgent and most creative.

At the time of the album’s release the press where only allowed to hear the album once and not given any advance copies to take away to listen too at their leisure, so I think in way to get revenge for what they saw as a snub the pre-release reviews from some of the critics was none to kind calling it Bowie’s “folie de grandeur”, I think that translates as “grand mistake” sorry if that’s wrong I’m not a French speaker.
I think far from being a grand mistake the album encapsulates what makes Bowie tick.

The albums release was also held up for about a month because of the original cover by Dutch artist Guy Peellaert which showed Bowie as a man half dog caused a storm by having the canine genitalia in full view.
The artwork was quickly airbrushed to remove the offending member although some copies did make it out of the pressing plant and if you can find an original copy with the gate-fold sleeve with the uncensored cover ka-ching!

This album is a masterpiece of invention, cinematic in scope, breathtaking brazen in it’s execution and finally if you listen closely scary in it’s content.
Bowie had intended this to be a soundtrack to a lavish musical stage presentation of the George Orwell book 1984, but when Orwell’s widow refused permission, he found himself with a whole load of material that dealt with the totalitarian themes of the novel and had nowhere to put them.

He then came up with his own futuristic urban nightmare background called “Hunger City”, this is a sort of post-nuclear landscape that burrows heavy from the William Burroughs book “Wild Boys”, which has at it’s heart a gang of gays who only wear leather jock straps and beat up and set fire to straight people, this technologically primitive hell is not a place for the faint-hearted.
Just like the Ziggy Stardust album the actual narrative remains under developed, just like all his best work there are plenty of gaps and unanswered questions with gaps and contradictions that allow the listener to put their own spin on the material.

At the time of the albums release a reviewer from the “Melody Maker” Charles Charlesworth noted that for most of the tracks Bowie have adopted the Phil Spector “Wall of sound” technique and his actual songwriting has become influenced by the cut-up method pioneered by American authors William Burrows and Brion Gysin.
Bowie’s lyrics are consciously more fractured as images collide with each other in a circular non-linear manner to create a private world.
Diamond Dogs brought to close the glam era for Bowie after this album there was nothing more to say that wouldn’t sound like self-parody or just asinine repetition.

Album
Disc 1

The albums tone is set by the minute and seven second long spoken narrative called “Future Legend” which sounds particularly Burroughsian which reads like an off-cut from the Burroughs book “Naked Lunch” with a hyena-like howl with discordant keyboards with guitar and a metronome along with Bowies vocals multi-tracked chanting “Bowie, Bowie”, at one part you can hear slurping animalistic noises this creates the backdrop for “Future Legend” to be recited thus:-

“And…. in the death as the last few corpses lay rotting on the slimy thoroughfare, the shutters lifted inches in Temperance building, high on poachers hill and red mutant eyes gazed down on Hunger City, no more big wheels, flea the size of rats sucked on rats the size of cats and ten thousand peoploids split into small tribes coveting the highest of the sterile skyscrapers, like packs of dogs assaulting the glass fronts of Love Me Avenue, ripping and re-wrapping mink and shiny fox, now leg warmers, family badge of sapphire and cracked emeralds, any day now, the year of the Diamond Dogs.

Bowie shouts “This ain’t Rock n’ Roll this is Genocide”.

Diamond Dogs (5.56) the title track plods along in a Stones-like manner and is the albums most unimaginative song, the album has for the first time and only time I can think of where Bowie plays most of the lead guitar.
His garage style of guitar playing is off-set by his soulfully played layered horn section and frantic keyboard playing, the more adept and skillful Mick Ronson could never have played with the sense of urgency that Bowie gets here.

What the song does is allow Bowie to use more canine vocalizations and a chance to introduce the Halloween Jack character and draw on a story told to him by his father who worked for Barnado’s homes about Lord Shaftsbury’s visit to poverty-stricken areas of London where he found children living in rags and living on the rooftops of London, hence Halloween Jack lives on top of Manhattan Chase.
The lyrics begin with the line “As they pulled you out of the oxygen tent, you asked for the latest party, with your silicone hump and your 10 inch stump, dressed like a priest you was, Todd Browning’s freak you was”.

The scene is set where scavengers prize food over mink coats, because minks are more plentiful, and any pleasure that can be possibly obtained has already been paid for in full.
Bowie’s guitar grinds away all the way through along with his howls and the frantic percussion and his vocals which have used in several layers singing the lead parts and the answering chorus section, the tracks comes to a halt with manic horns and guitar with pounding piano every instrument stops bar the guitar that keeps going after everything else has stopped.

The mood changes as a moog is played at funeral-like pace and Bowie uses “back-masked” keyboards that have the effect of making the listener feel ill at ease to introduce the centerpiece song of the album for me, it has 3 parts, the first being “Sweet Thing” (3.38) the track recounts Halloween Jack’s search for love in the ruins of the city and also presents in the middle section Candidate (2.40) Winston Smith’s first meeting with Julia (characters from the book 1984, this theme is repeated later) The last section Sweet Thing (reprise) is back too Jacks search, the piece has a unsettling air as Bowies opening vocals sound lower than his usual delivery giving the opening line of “”It’s safe in the city, to love in a doorway, to wrangle some screams form the room, and isn’t it me, putting pain in a stranger ? Like a portrait in flesh, who trails on a leash” as Bowie sings these lines his distorted guitar sound along with his keyboard playing is given a melodic backbone by the piano playing of Garson along with the military sounding snare drum sound played Aynsley Dunbar after the guitar solo at the end of the first part saxophones take us to the middle section Candidate, at this point the pace has quickened to a thrusting carnal pace with Bowie singing the lines in a quick fire manner the closing line of this section is a personal favorite of mine “ “With you by my side it should be fine, we’ll buy some drugs and watch a band, then jump in a river holding hands” at that a wailing sax starts along with phased guitar then “Sweet Thing (reprise) starts with the line “ If you want it boys get it here thing, hope boys is a cheap thing” the tempo has slowed again this slowing down allows Bowie to sing the lines “It’s got taste, it’s got claws, it’s got me, it’s got you” on the word “you” Bowie he elongates the word and holds it this a signal for cymbals to be hit and a grandiose vamping piano, thudding drums and more phased guitar and a feedback riddled mellotron sounds this neatly fits into the guitar intro of “Rebel Rebel”.

Rebel Rebel (4.30) this track in the days of vinyl was the end of side 1, blasting away in the rubble of Hunger City one of his last hits in his personal vision of hell.

The song “Rebel Rebel” is basically a re-write of the 1972 track “Jean Genie” all be it a vastly superior form, this is one of the few times that I can think of when Bowie has used a formula to write a pop song and in the process created an anthem which contained a mini manifesto for all the Bowie girls and boys who where the most conspicuous aspects of pre-punk youth culture, the lines in the track “you got your mother in a whirl, she’s not sure if you are a boy or a girl” these lines sum very succinctly recount the blurred lines in 70’s gender bending scene.

Rock ‘N’ Roll with me (4.02) this is where Julia and Winston discover and celebrate their love, for me it’s one of Bowie’s least self –conscious love songs and represents the first hints of what was too be covered in the “Young Americans” album.
The track begins with a delicate elegant piano phrase followed by a treated guitar and simple percussion that has a snare drum with a tambourine sound at the end of the drum strike then Bowie delivers in a dreamy croon the opening line “You were the one that knew, they sold us for the likes of you, I always wanted new surroundings, a room to rent, while the lizards lay crying in the heat, trying to remember who to meet, I would take a foxy kind of stand, while tens of thousands found me in demand” to extenuate these lines Bowie plays sax at the end of the sung lines.
The piano playing of Garson has an oriental feel that sounds like it is singing the line “when you Rock ’N’ Roll with me” before Bowie gets to the chorus this is a simple but highly effective device using the piano.
The chorus of “When you Rock’ N’ Roll with me, no one else I would rather be, no one else can do it for me, I’m in tears again, when you Rock’ N’ Roll with me” is given more punch by using swirling keyboard sounds that cross from speaker to speaker, the middle 8 section of this track has some of the best electric guitar work that Bowie has committed to tape, the track ends with Bowie pleading the line “I’m in tears” repeating it until his guitar plays a riff to close off the song.

“We are the dead” (4.54) the possible optimism of the previous piece is now short lived as the doomed lovers realize that their situation is hopeless.
The title of this song comes from a remark by Winston in the book: - which means even if their subversive activities are successful, they will certainly never live to see “Big Brother and the Thought Police” overthrown.
The track is constructed from two alienating blocks, an undulating yearning melody which carries the verse and an ominous spiraling equivalent on the chorus it just sounds like we are doomed an there isn’t a whole lot we can do about, Bowie’s opening line “Something kind of hit me today, I looked at you and wondered, if you saw things my way, people will hold us to blame, it hit me today, it hit me today” sets the tone for the track along with the echo used on the lead vocal that make this exercise in wordplay sound all the more dark and sinister.

This gives another favorite line of mine a killer delivery “For we’re dancing, where the dogs decay defecating ecstasy, you’re just an ally of the lecher, locator for the virgin king, but I love you in your fuck-me pumps, and your nimble dress that trials”. How cool is that how often are you going to see those words together in song.

1984(3.27) this track has the only lead guitar parts not played by Bowie, the lead for this track is played by one Alan Parker.
Parker borrows the ack-ack guitar sound from Isaac Hayes who derived it from Jimi Hendrix; Hayes had used this particular motif as part of his soundtrack to the 70’s movie “Shaft” along with some gorgeous sounding strings that give that disco sound of the time which hides the dark subject matter.
The song finds Winston captured and being tortured after his betrayal by Julia this could represent Bowie’s overview of his life at the time.
The track fades out with a repeat of the guitar parts this time played on the keyboards.

Big Brother (3.20) this is introduced by a stunning interlude that sounds like an outtake form the Miles Davis “Sketches form Spain” this is where Bowie uses the mellotron to copy the sound of a trumpet, during the passage of the track we find that Winston has been shocked, tortured, and manipulated out of his rebellious ways and now adores “Big Brother” with Bowie’s own fascination with the “Nietzsche” concept of supermen as a means of Salvation, this subject was covered as far back his 1970 “The man sold the World” album, to close off the album Big Brother segues into “The Chant of the ever circling Skeletal Family” (2.04) Bowie has used an amazin’ and frightening chant in 5/4 time the rebel of 1984 finally gets zombied out and as the album ends “Bruh! Bruh! Bruh! Is repeated off into infinity (in the days of vinyl this phrase was repeated until you lifted the needle from the matrix groove between the label and the groove of the album).
The music is all Latino percussion and phased guitar with Bowie repeating the same word Brother until the Bruh! repeat and end.
With the passage of time this album isn’t as trivial as some critics thought at the time with the raise of the “net” and all things technological who knows where it will all end?

Disc2
Demos & rarities.

1984/Dodo (5.27) between 18th and the 20th of October 1973 at the London Marquee, Bowie recorded the “Midnight special” for US television, showcasing material form his newly released “Pin-Ups” album and the performance featured a duet with Marriane Faithful who was tastefully attired in a nuns habit slashed at the back to reveal her modesty the track they sang was called “You didn’t hear it from me” and was done as part of a medley with 1984. This was the last studio recording with Mick Ronson and Trevor Bolder from the time.

Rebel Rebel (2.58) (US single version) this is from the rare single recorded April 1974 at RCA studios New York released May 74. (Catalogue number RCA APBO 0287) For this version Bowie used the master tape overdubbing and re-mixing and Geff McCormack added castanets and congas with Bowie adding more vocals with phasing. This is arrangement Bowie uses to this day for live performances of the song. The track also appears on the Sound & Vision box set.

Dodo (2.58) is the studio version for the proposed 1984 musical was intended to be done with Lulu. Originally entitled “You didn’t hear it from me” this version has the first daft of the lyrics and is quite flat in its construction. (For fans only)

Growin’ Up (3.23) this is a surviving track which features an uncredited Ronnie Wood on guitar and Bowies voice is quite rough at times from the aborted Pin-Ups 2 album which was to feature American cover versions, other tracks where “God only knows” (Beach Boys) a version of this would later appear on the “Tonight” album and “White light White heat” (Velvet Underground) this version survives all be it with Bowie’s vocals removed on the Mick Ronson album “Play Don’t Worry” catalogue number SMMCD 504.

Alternative Candidate (Demo)
The only thing that this track shares with the one that appears on the album is the title and the line “pretend we’re walking home” but does have a very naughty couplet “inside every teenage girl is a fountain, inside every young pair of pants there’s a mountain”. This like looking at an artist’s sketch book, this the idea but I will do this instead.

Diamond Dogs (K.Tel edit) (4.37) this is a unique edit of the title track to fit the 1980 best of catalogue number (NE1111). I still have the advertising poster for this along with other posters in a box in the loft ka-ching!

Candidate (2.37) (Intimacy mix) the album track re-mixed for the soundtrack of the film “Intimacy”.

Rebel Rebel (2003) completely reworked for the “Charlie’s Angles” “Full Throttle soundtrack, this arrangement is the opening live track on the Reality Tour DVD.

This is a 1999 re-master using a 2004 transfer which has again improved the overall sound of the original album giving the tracks greater detail and warmth.

The packaging for this re-issue has a card cover sleeve with the restored artwork full listing for both discs inside the sleeve is a 20 page booklet with rare photos printed on heavy card and the album has a card gate-fold sleeve which recreates the first issue but with fully restored sleeve art. I found my copy on CD-Wow for 10.99 that included P+P Amazon are 13.99 plus P+P.

On a personal note at the time of buying the original album when I was 15 I had a real hard time finding a copy that worked properly, I went through 35 copies from my local record shop that all jumped in the same place, with a sense of frustration a finally wrote and sent my copy to the record company, I have to this day the letter I got back dated the 15th of August 1974 acknowledging the receipt of my copy of this album and that they rarely had problems with their pressings but unfortunately the problem I was having could traced back to the original master disc used to press Side 2 of this album, it had a fault and thanked me for bringing this problem to their attention and to please “accept our sincere apologies for this unprecedented occurrence and we dispatch a replacement without delay” I wonder if this would happen today.
 

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