Does David Bowie think that people are like dogs?

Hi. Looking at the Diamond Dogs cover, I wonder if David Bowie was going through a depressed, decadent period and began feeling as if he and those around him were a lot like mere dogs. During this time from what I understand, Bowie behaved very much like an animal.

Looking at the cover itself, we see Bowie as half-man, half-dog. The girls around him, his lovers, are also part beast. Even the non-airbrushed cover seems to indicate Bowie's genitalia are exactly like a dog's. Bowie has an intense, intelligent gaze on his face, however, when you look at the rest of him you see nothing but a canine.

In the song, Future Legend, Bowie says the "peoploids" are like "packs of dogs" that shop the glass fronts of the avenue and buy mink and sable to wrap around their legs like fur.

In "Diamond Dogs," Bowie uses words like "hump" and "bitch" to describe the main character who could be Bowie himself and says he "crawls down the alley on his hands and knees" just like a dog. Halloween Jack meets his "hussy" on the other side of town like two dogs in heat who climb the fence to meet in the middle of the night. It's important to note that whenever Bowie describes sex on this album, it is in the cheapest images: dirty, sleazy, nondescript, and without discretion.

In the song, "Sweet Thing," Bowie says he "trails on a leash" as he makes love in a doorway and has sex with "anyone, anywhere, anytime" in cars, on floors, in cellars, where anyone can see. It is easy to see that at this time, Bowie lived and felt he was living the life of a brute animal, without morals or character.

In the song, "We Are The Dead," Bowie says, "we're dancing where the dogs decay, defecating ecstasy." Bowie describes his entourage as a group that decays and evacuates like nothing more than brute beasts. They have no spirit, no soul; because of "all we've seen, because of all we've said, we are the dead."

Perhaps strangest of all, in the song, "Chant Of The Ever Circling Skeletal Family," Bowie actually sings and sounds like a dog, chanting, "shake it up, shake it up" as he gets more frenzied like a dog getting worked up and excited. At the end of the song, he barks repeatedly: "brah brah brah brah brah" having transformed completely into a dog himself.

I think the Diamond Dogs era was when Bowie was his most decadent. He began to feel depressed and ashamed. Bowie yearned for a more spiritual life and was beginning to feel sick of the life he adapted. You can hear this in the music and lyrics of the album. Even the cover proclaims that although he seems to radiate intelligence and wit, look at him more closely and you will see a man that lives like an animal.

 

interesting analysis, sounds well thought-out to me

 

Reminds me of a quote I remember being attributed to Alfred Hitchcock, the film director:

An interviewer asked him about having said that actors are "like cattle".
He replied, "I didn't say that actors are like cattle, I said that they should be treated like cattle."

Off topic, I realize. Sorry.

 

He's not chanting, "brah brah brah brah", he's chanting, "run run run run."

Listen closely to the fadeout.

 

Roger Waters thinks that.

 

Interesting. I never took the lyrics that literally, or seriously. I thought the cover was to indicate a side-show or freak show at a circus. The lyrics don't reflect that at all. They visualize a dystopian world of in the future full of chaos and a breakdown of society as we know it today but perhaps headed in that direction. The "run! run! run! run!" (thanks for the info, I never knew that's what he was saying) sounds like a warning, a siren going off. And that's the summation of the record for me.

 

It's actually an edit of the word "Brother", the first word of the line. The word is chopped in half, so it's "bro, bro bro bro". Soft 'o'.

Diamond Dogs was the end result of an attempt to obtain the rights to Orwell's "1984" and stage it as a musical. When Orwell's estate declined, Bowie refashioned the songs into the Diamond Dogs album instead.

 

That's what I first thought. An edit from "Brother! Hoo Hoo (?) Shake it up shake it up."

I can't believe I'm posting this.

 

My favorite Bowie album, nihilistic vibe aside.

 

Too much coke, me thinks.

 

right now, in Canada if not elsewhere, Oh You Pretty Things is being excerpted for a commercial for a line of kids clothing that is sold in grocery stores hereabouts.

the most depressing part about it, is how old I feel!

 

That's an interesting comment, about Bowie yearning for something better. I never noticed it, and don't know whether his subsequent recordings provide evidence of that.

But I remember having similar thoughts about Madonna, who I never cared for, when she turned to children's books and Kabbala.

 

Pedantic Bowie fan has to say this: The peoploids are "like packs of dogs, assulting the glass fronts of Love Me Avenue" (IIRC) i.e looting, not shopping.

I think the key dog-related idea is that the packs of street kids are similar to packs of wild dogs. They thrive in a decaying urban environment. I don't think the dog in being used as a symbol of Bowie himself, or the human condition in general. That's just my reading though.

And don't forget the Halloween Jack is "a real cool cat"

 

During the Diamond Dogs era, Bowie had not yet begun his serious cocaine use, although there is a cocaine reference on this album:

Is it nice in your snowstorm, freezing your brain/ Do you think that your face looks the same?

But I do think he was well on his way to having sex with literally thousands of women. I feel Bowie does have a tender conscience and is a good man and had begun to feel a little empty about this.

Witness the Freddie Mercury tribute concert, albeit much later in his career, during which Bowie fell on his knees and prayed The Lord's Prayer in Wembley Stadium. I interpret this as a sign of guilt and repentance. Bowie was handing the rock and roll kingdom over to God who he felt, had true authority.

The Diamond Dogs album is largely an expression of guilt and shame in my opinion. Spiritual death is a large theme of this album: "And in the death, as the corpses lay rotting on the slimy thoroughfare." Bowie, according to witnesses, was having sex with anyone in every place and felt like a "devil, sick of sin."

The dog has always been a symbol of evil and decadence in Bowie's work. In Fall Dog Bombs The Moon, he states of the "smart and cruel" main character, "Just a dog." I feel he was using this animal to describe the state of his character at this time on the Diamond Dogs album. The last sounds on this album describe the frenzied barking of bestial people.

 

Don't like the production of this Bowie album.

Mr Leitch (name checked on Bookends) DD guest vocalist.

He also did guest vocals on Alice Cooper's BDB.

 

Sorry, this kind of argument is just absurd. Bowie is not identical to the persona he adopts for the purpose of his songs, and the lyrics don't give a direct window into his psyche. This ought to be especially obvious on an album like Diamond Dogs, where he's singing from the viewpoint of people caught up in a dystopian narrative, and many of the lyrics are plainly influenced by Nineteen Eighty-Four.

If you want to argue that the album gives some insight into Bowie's preoccupations at the time, then sure, you're welcome to make your case. But claiming it's "easy to see" he felt he was "without morals"? Nonsense.

 

Some of Bowie's best vocals on DD- a real tour de force among the nihilism.

 

Why would anyone feel guilt or shame about having sex with many women (and men I assume)?

What you are all failing to understand is that a great writer can create a world just from his/her imagination, it doesn't mean they believe in it or it's an extension of their own feelings. I think Bowie was just having some fun with some ideas here. Sometimes you can't read too much into these things.

 

I agree, particularly when it comes to an artist as theatrical as Bowie. He clearly likes to play with different images/characters, so there's no reason to believe that he's exactly like any of the characters he's portrayed at various times in his career. I would even suggest that getting on his knees and praying in a concert was a contrivance, but given that probably no one here personally knows Bowie we can only speculate.

 

Diamond Dog Dave is supposed to have a big tadger,
no doubt the hound was modeled on his own fine specimen !

 

All David Bowie lyrics should be taken as literally as possible. Yes, he really thinks you are squawking like a pink monkey bird.