19.Diamond Dogs

         Diamond Dogs , recorded in late 1973 and early 1974, shows him at both most indulgent and his most creative.

         Although never really a critics' rave, the album remains one of those most admired by his hard-core following. It is the closest Bowie has ever come to the ideal of a totally theatrical pop music. Martin Kirkup commented: " Where Aladdin Sane seemed like a series of Instamatic snapshots taken from weird angles, Diamond Dogs has all the deeper colours. "

         With this album, Bowie proved that without Ken Scott,without Ronno and The Spiders, he was still able to produce work of real quality.

         Diamond Dogs was also important in that it saw him working again with then ex-chum Tony Visconti.

         During the time Visconti was concentrating on Bolan, he was watching Bowie's career unfolding : "Hunky Dory made me jealous. I had nothing to do with it, but I asked myself, Where were the songs like that when I was producing him?"

         The themes of urban decay, decadence and the apocalypse, which are the main ideas on the album, are given a psychosexual twist. He envisaged a world in which snaggle-toothed ragamuffins dressed in looted furs and diamonds took over the city. The principal character, Halloween Jack, and his gang live on top of deserted skyscrapers and travel around the city on roller-skates. Bowie says he drew inspiration for the characters of 'Hunger City' from a story told to him by his father, who worked for many years for Dr Barnado's. 

Tracks:

Side one

1. "Future Legend" – 1:05
2. "Diamond Dogs" – 5:56
3. "Sweet Thing" – 3:39
4. "Candidate" – 2:40
5. "Sweet Thing (reprise)" – 2:31
6. "Rebel Rebel" – 4:30

Side two

1. "Rock 'n' Roll with Me" (lyrics: Bowie, music: Bowie, Warren Peace) – 4:00
2. "We Are the Dead" – 4:58
3. "1984" – 3:27
4. "Big Brother" – 3:21
5. "Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family" – 2:00

         The album begins with the track ' Future Legend', a spoken narrative describing a future urban apocalypse. It is a portrait of a city environment on the point of collapse, and its view of a dehumanised humanity, are indicators of Burroughs' influence.

         Diamond Dogs  is a trip into grotesquerry and seedy lowlife. The title track references Tod Browning, the maker of the then banned 1932 film Freaks, one of the most controversial movies ever made,starring, as it did, men and women with real-life deformities and rare medical conditions.

         The underrated 'We Are The Dead", with its creepy electric - piano opening, funeral pace and house-of-horrors imagery, is likewise graphically Gothic.  But it's the brazen drug-referencing that is most evident: "Is it nice in your snow-storm, freezing your brain? "

         In fact "Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (reprise)" is the real masterpiece of the album, and it's also my favourite track from the album (in fact,I'm not sure,I love the whole album). It's in moments like this, rather than in the big hit singles or the radio-friendly songs, that Bowie's reputation as a true pop genius resides.

        For '1984' , Alan Parker plays a brilliant Shaft-inspired riff, as Bowie warns "Beware the savage jaw/Of 1984"

        The ending of the album is also quite brilliant. "Big Brother",replete with fake horns, strummed guitar and a massive wall of sound builds an  astonishingly overwrought climax which echoes some of Bowie's earlier work on The Man Who Sold The World .

        Then the song dissolves into the astonishing "Chant of the Ever-Circling Skeletal Family", a truly mesmeric and frightening chant in five/four time . It's on of the greatest moments Bowie has ever committed to tape.

        Aside from these moments of grand experimentation in sonics and theatricality, Diamond Dogs also contained two of Bowie's best ever pop songs:  " Rock'n'Roll With Me", the single that never was,pointed, ever so slightly, towards the more soulful future that would be The Young Americans period.

        And then, there's rebel rebel , which reached a surprisingly lowly Number 5 after crashing into the Top 40 once place below that in the first week of release. The last of his bona fide glam singles, it was a manifesto for all the Bowie Boys and Bowie Girls: " You got your mother in a whirl  / She;s not sure if you're a boy or a girl" sums up early -70s gender-bending perfectly. Arguably Bowie's greatest-ever riff, it was a brilliant taster for the album proper.

        Bowie performed the new single on the Dutch Show Top Pop in February,whilst in Holland for a few days to work on the new album at a studio in Hilversum. With an added eye patch ( he had gone down with a bout of conjunctivitis), the Aladdin Sane meets pirate man look was the last time we would see the full crimson spiky Bowie haircut  ( if I were to choose,I'd say this is one of Bowie's sexiest videos.I love his hair here)

        The cover presents Bowie half-man/half-dog,and it;s one of Bowie;s most dramatic, and definitely most seedy covers ( made by the Belgian artist Guy Peellaert)

        Diamond Dogs brought the first phase of Bowie's career to an end. Released in April 1974, Diamond Dogs not only closed down Bowie's glam-rock period, but became glam-rock's epitaph.

        When he left the UK for the US in April 1974, the version of him on show was, on first inspection, a sartorially toned-down representation. The era of glitter and stack-heeled boots was indeed over,but the man himself was entering the most paranoid and out-there period of his life,a three-year period of chill, supercharged creativity. He redesigned his Ziggy cut into an epic flame-coloured parting,packed away the kabuki garb and reinvented himself as a sharply dressed soul boy in a suit. The gouster was born.