The problem with Bowie's Diamond Dogs

I sincerely think its great album among other great albums in the Bowie catalogue.
Its surely been overshadowed by few other masterpieces, too bad since there ain't anything wrong with Diamond Dogs. I love it and it is probably one of my true favorites ever.
In fact, Diamond Dogs was the very first LP I bought when I started to get familiar with his work, so in some sort it has special meaning for me.

 

I bought my UK first pressing on day of release. ARLI-0576A- loly and ARLI-0576B- loly are matrixes. It still sounds great. I have all the CD editions - none compare.

DD has weathered the storm of time very well indeed. I loved it that first day, but actually love it even more now somehow. Someone asked me recently which two Bowie albums are best. My considered reply was "Hunky Dory and Diamond Dogs".

Incidentally, you can hear a brief snatch of Rod Stewart's voice on the applause track at the start of Diamond Dogs.

Bowie himself thought that DD had aged very well when interviewed for Just A Gigolo.

 

Just played it for the first time in ages and you're right. I really like it.

 

it was only 4 years old at the time, so you'd hope so!

 

Nothing wrong with it - except it is a single album attempting to cover operatic, epic ground - which, in this case, would have probably required a double LP and some other input into the production from someone else. It also, as others have noted, could have used Mick Ronson's deft touch here and there.

I like what's there though - it sounds like the cover looks. Half-man, half-dog. Scary and terrifying in a comforting way - or maybe the opposite of that.

 

Revisited the whole catalogue in recent weeks, and DD still doesn't do much for me outside of as a transition to probably his what I consider his peak period--Young Americans through Scary Monsters.

 

Yeah good question!
The other week I listened to this album with headphones and totally cranked this section up!
There's something about the release of this glorious noise after the sublime weirdness of "Sweet Thing" that is like nothing else in his catalog.

 

Exactly right. It is transitional. But we never would have gotten Station to Statiom, Low or 'Heroes' without that transition.

 

I love Diamond Dogs but I just don't like the sound. It doesn't sound well recorded or mixed to me. I am not sure what I would do to fix it, or if it really needs to be fixed. Sonically it just doesn't get me going. I just listened to it the other day and though I enjoyed it confirmed my long held opinion. Wasn't it the next album after the "Five Years" set? I would love to hear the same treatment for Diamond Dogs.

 

Actually that's a good point. I wonder if it would have been a double if DB had been allowed the rights to soundtrack 1984, which was his original concept for the album

 

It's probably my favorite Bowie album, though Aladdin Sane is up there... and Station to Station... and Lodger... and almost every other album of his too.

 

I feel the cover picture also works as symbolic for one of the themes of side one: human beings that behave like animals.

 

Actually, what were the Diamond Dogs supposed to be?

A gang of savages ( "peoploids split into small tribes...Like packs of dogs")
or actual mutants "And red, mutant eyes gazed down on Hunger City"?

"Fleas the size of rats sucked on rats the size of cats" - by this measure, the Dogs must have been about the size of a small car!

 

That end part of the reprise of "Sweet Thing" , all swirly noise and martial beats, owes a big debt to the end part of NEU!'s "Negativland". Bowie was a HUGE fan of NEU! and would have been well aware of this track when recording Diamond Dogs. Of course the NEU! influence comes across more strongly on the Eno collaborations, but it's interesting that this was an influence as far back as 1973/74.

 

I've often wondered this myself.

I've always pictured them as being the animaloid creatures crouched behind Bowie on the cover.

 

But why is Bowie a dog hybrid?

 

Agree with the OP, it would have been a great album instead of a good album if The Spiders where still on board!

 

You're spot on there! Bowie improved on it though IMHO.

 

I agree. Firstly I think this was when I got a feeling he'd lost his way. I think he had huge ambitions for this, but the songs are weak (and sign of things to come for, it seemed, a long time) formless things. He'd lost his musical muses (both ronno and visconti*) and replaced the whole band with session musicians. Maybe too many yes men when he needed no men. He suddenly no longer had the team needed to realise his vision and any friction to work against. It resulted in flat uninspired record. Ronno and Visconti had saved Man Who Sold The World – another album of under-prepared material and together they could have done it with Dogs, perhaps.

* I know Visconti returned to do some mixing, but Dogs was self-produced.

Rebel Rebel was an obvious hit single, but for me it was just Bowie by numbers.

I really feel he stopped writing good tunes/songs at this point.

I know people love Dogs, and I respect their love, I'm glad they find qualities in it, but that's what I feel about it.

 

Well.... the album is called "Diamond DOGS"

 

"Yes Men"? Like Visconti who walked away after "Man Who Sold The World" because he was frustrated? Could there be a more "No album" than "Diamond Dogs" in 1974? Bowie clearly was anticipating 1977

 

Maybe he's Halloween Jack?

 

You'd struggle to slide down a rope with canine back legs.

Carry on.

 

They’d taken over this barren city, this city that was falling apart. They’d been able to break into windows of jewelers and things, so they’d dressed themselves up in furs and diamonds. But they had snaggle-teeth, really filthy, kind of like vicious Oliver Twists. It was a take on, what if those guys had gone malicious, if Fagin’s gang had gone absolutely ape-****? They were living on the tops of buildings…they were all little Johnny Rottens and Sid Viciouses, really.

David Bowie, on “Diamond Dogs,” 1993.

 

The greatest misunderstanding concerning Diamond Dogs is that it is based on George Orwell's 1984, and intended to be for a stage musical. In reality, only three songs were actually from this project. The other songs were from an abandoned Ziggy Stardust theater presentation, and music inspired by an amalgam of Oliver Twist and J.G. Ballard (science fiction author famous for his apocalyptic novels).

The fact that it is cobbled together from these three inspirations by a drug-fueled artist and still holds together is what makes it a strange yet amazing disconnected masterpiece.