‘Diamond Dogs’ by David Bowie

‘Diamond Dogs’ is one of the pivotal albums in Bowie’s career, though given the twists and turns on display through his recorded output, you could make that claim about virtually any of them. However, ‘Diamond Dogs’ was the last of Bowie’s run of glam-rock-type albums that established him as a major star in the early seventies. Having abandoned his Ziggy Stardust persona after ‘Aladdin Sane’, ‘Diamond Dogs’ allowed him to work the remnants of Ziggy out of his system. As a result, bits of the album are an obvious continuation of earlier work, particularly the title track, and ‘Rebel Rebel’. ‘Rebel Rebel’, incidentally, is a song which contains such a condensed essence of glam, it more or less rendered glam obsolete. It was time for Bowie to move on.

This was the first Bowie album since ‘The Man Who Sold The World’ to feature no other members of the Spiders outfit. However, by retaining pianist Mike Garson, and re-recruiting Herbie Flowers as bassist and Tony Visconti as producer, Bowie demonstrated a willingness to mix and match elements of his own past which he would continue to do throughout his career. Mike Garson underpins much of the record. He has no standout pieces as he did on Aladdin Sane, but his piano flourishes through ‘Sweet Thing’ and ‘Candidate’ in particular are essential to the feel of the record. Because Bowie played most of the lead guitar on the album himself, there’s no other figure to dominate the album in quite such a way.

Away from the glam aspects of the album, Bowie develops a more soulful side. ‘Sweet Thing’ is an obvious example of this, but ‘When You Rock And Roll With Me’ is fairly different from all his previous output as well. It’s the conceptual stuff, however, that sticks from this album. It opens with ‘Future Legend’ a horribly disturbing (or ridiculous, if you like) monologue about ‘Hunger City’, the location for much of the albums descriptions. Bowie’s original plans to base a concept album around ‘1984’ were opposed by Orwell’s estate, but the influence is hardly hidden – naming your last two tracks ‘1984’ and ‘Big Brother’ is less than subtle, though both tracks are excellent. ‘1984’ is the clearest signal of the ‘Young Americans’ which was to come, and ‘Big Brother’ is a suitable filling climax, descending as it does into the disorientating ‘Ever-Circling Chant of the Skeletal People’.

It would be easy to sneer at ‘Diamond Dogs’ as the sort of ridiculous concept album which made the seventies something of a joke, but to do so would be unfair for two reasons. Firstly, in making this his last album of type, making him well ahead of the pack. ‘Diamond Dogs’ came out in 1974. Within two years, he would have made ‘Young Americans’ and ‘Station To Station’, and be holed up in Berlin making ‘Low’. By contrast, it would take Queen until 1977 to attempt to abandon glam rock, and that was with the slightly uncomfortable ‘News of the World’. Secondly, and more importantly, it’s just really good.

'David Live' by David Bowie

When Bowie toured Ziggy, he was accompanied by four people – a guitarist, a bassist, a drummer, and a pianist. By the time he was taking the Diamond Dogs tour across America, he was heading a band of eleven. As a result, the live album of the tour is, in parts, busier, fuller, more bloated, and messier than earlier live recordings.

The bulk of the album is material taken from ‘Diamond Dogs’ and ‘Aladdin Sane’, Bowie’s most recent two albums (sensibly discounting ‘Pin-Ups’). This is the material that works best. ‘1984’ makes for an excellent start, and ‘Sweet Thing’ and ‘Big Brother’ sound fantastic. The title track from ‘Aladdin Sane’ is successfully reworked for the stage, and ‘Time’ and ‘Watch That Man’ both benefit from the additional musicians.

Older songs are more of a mixed bag. ‘Suffragette City’ works well as a riot of noise, and ‘Space Oddity’ makes the transition well, but ‘The Width Of The Circle’ sounds more bloated than usual (and it’s bloated enough in the first place), and ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide’ is drained of its power by too much woodwind making it something of an anti-climax.

Most interesting are the two cover tracks. ‘Knock On Wood’ is reasonably disposable, but it carries a good sense of fun. ‘Here Today, Gone Tomorrow’ is something a departure – a more soul-influenced song which is the only real indication up to this point of the ‘Young Americans’ sound that was to come. As the tour progressed, these influences would apparently play a much more significant role, and it’s a shame, retrospectively, that the album wasn’t recorded during this later period.

As a result, this album can’t claim to be essential, or even mildly important, but it’s a decent enough listen with some good moments.