Diamond Dogs [Remastered] - David Bowie > Reviews > The boy who became a pooch

Author's product rating:   

Originality	Definitely a cut above the rest
Lyrics	Thought-provoking
Quality and consistency of tracks	Mixed
How does it compare to the artist's other releases	Average
Value for Money

Advantages:	The title track
Disadvantages:	Most of the album

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

He stares out at you from the nightmarish cover of Diamond Dogs with that sinister, wide eyed look and Ziggy trim still firmly in place, a combination of vampish man-woman-canine, promising all sorts of sexual weirdness, with strong drugs definitely on the agenda.

Ziggy was dead, long live Ziggy II, the misshapen, misbegotten, misanthrope, who would willingly paw at your crotch if it got him a bone, rammed even further up the rear end of some science fiction paperback. The Five Years that Ziggy Stardust had hinted at were up, Aladdin Sane’s Cracked Actor had taken one too many fixes and all that was left was a grim, desolate wasteland with only drugs and sex to break the monotony – rock and roll had ceased to be particularly relevant in the era of the dog. Of course this meant that David Bowie was even more entrenched in its antiquated dips and swings, revelling in some basic bump and grind while he dropped all sorts of mind numbing drugs and doggy doo doo.

David Bowie had announced his retirement from live performance after murdering the legend of Ziggy on stage at the end of a mammoth world tour, even teasing the misguided young things with an acoustic reading of Brel’s My Death to believe that here there was a real live rock’n’roll suicide taking place. “Would it satisfy your teenage lust?” He had reappeared briefly at the end of 1973 with the slim and understated cover version album, the whimsical Pin Ups, but as the time ticked on, until it was but a decade before the grim Big Brother landscape that George Orwell had dreamed, Bowie couldn’t keep away, opting to offer up an ill informed half way house between Ziggy Stardust and 1984. It was conceived as some unholy kind of rock opera brimming over with decadence and doom, offering all sorts of fresh delights as BB glared down unsympathetically upon us, allowing DD to take centre stage and Bowie to cavort for our delight.

By now he was completely immersed in the world of science fiction and preoccupation with the end of the world. The more fanciful guardians of hindsight may have passed it off as Bowie spying that the world of the jaded rock superstar was about to be blitzed by the nuclear assault of punk rock, but it was probably more a case of too many Smarties colouring his judgement.

It was actually quite predictable and unoriginal, but Bowie has made a career out of duff plagiarism, and even with the patchy and off colour Diamond Dogs you could tell why. He’s always had a feel for a hook and knows how to make best use of his whiny, nasal vocal style. Stir in a heady whiff of sex and drugs and you had the perfect Bitches Brew, grimly attractive and totally compulsive viewing/listening.

Diamond Dogs is the sort of album you buy, then sell, then buy again, only to sell again and wish urgently that you hadn’t. It’s a love me hate me thing, with the idea and imagery hugely addictive but the substance slightly less enticing. Still, since when has rock and roll actually had anything to do with music? Rarely in the case of Bowie.

Track listing –
Future Legend
Diamond Dogs
Sweet Thing
Candidate
Sweet Thing (reprise)
Rebel Rebel
Rock’n’Roll With Me
We Are The Dead
1984
Big Brother
Chant Of The Ever Circling Skeletal Family

Bowie prefaces the album, as he did with Five Years on Ziggy, with a moody, doom laden premonition, this time the eerie spoken word mythology of Future Legend, where he trades in sleaze, decadence and filth and sets the scene perfectly, before seaguing breathlessly into the driving title track: “As they pulled you out of the oxygen tent, you asked for the latest party, with your silicon hump and your ten inch stump, dressed like a priest you was, Todd Browning streak he was, crawling down the alley on your hands and knee, I'm sure you're not protected, for its plain to see Diamond Dogs are poachers, and they hide behind trees, hunt you to the ground they will, mannequins with kill appeal.” It’s a veritable adrenaline rush of sound and this startling opening gives you every reason to believe that you’re in for one of the biggest albums of all time. Unfortunately our man cannot sustain the pace or the invention and inevitably things start to tail off sadly.

Sweet Thing and Candidate are anonymous Bowie rock by numbers without much at all to say, and although Rebel Rebel was a pretty classy single it couldn’t touch the man’s best material. Bowie made the most of his own asexual/bisexual/try sexual persona for the lyrics: “Got your mother in a whirl, 'cause she's not sure if you're a boy or a girl, hey, babe, your hair’s alright, hey, babe, lets go out tonight, you like me, and I like it all. We like dancing, and we look divine, you love bands when they play it hard, you want more, and you want it first, put you down, say I'm wrong, you tacky thing, you put them on.” It’s good enough but you just get the dreadful feeling that David’s just working on automatic.

As slight as it is, however, Rebel Rebel is infinitely better than much of what succeeds it, with few highlights following. Rock’n’Roll With Me is uplifting enough and 1984 has a decent hook, but there’s nothing really to maintain the interest and keep us in touch with the tale which has gone completely off the boil by now. The final track is errant dross and the lasting memory of this album (if you actually bother listening to it) is of an opportunity foresaken. After the smashing opening this is a great shame, but Bowie often struggled to hold the dramatic tension over a full long player, let alone today’s death defying CD durations.

If only he had been able to to come up with some other tracks as powerful as Diamond Dogs then he may well have been onto a sure fire winner, but as it was it just felt like a rush job, dashed off around a couple of neat ideas and the contributions of a bunch of session men. The Spiders From Mars were limited sure, but at least they had more life in them than the tired old stagers strutting their stuff here.

Still, it was a nice cover and Bowie demonstrated some decent hind quarters to his freakish chums.