Gatefold cover courtesy of WikiFur: https://en.wikifur.com/wiki/Diamond_Dogs. Painting by Guy Peellaert.

The introduction to the Diamond Dogs chapter in Jérôme Soligny’s David Bowie Rainbowman opens with an assessment of the album by the artist himself: “Diamond Dogs was a transitional album, and it’s one of my favourites. It straddles two eras. Carrying the weight of a record on my frail shoulders, while the two previous ones had got me to the top of the charts, was very risky, and my management tried to talk me out of it.”

The first step in the transition involved dismantling the Spiders of Mars. If Bowie fans missed that puzzling piece of news, one look at the exceedingly unglamorous cover painting would have told them his embrace of glam rock had reached its limit and that he was keen to take his music in a different direction.

Bowie certainly wasn’t exaggerating when he spoke of “carrying the weight,” as he hired himself to produce the album, sang all the vocals, played baritone and tenor saxophones, the Moog synthesizer, the Mellotron, and all but two of the guitar parts. The two previous albums that topped the U.K. charts were Alladin Sane and Pin Ups, and the brass should have figured out that if David Bowie could release an album of covers and make it to the top, his fans would likely embrace anything he came up with. Sure enough, Diamond Dogs made it three number ones in a row.

Bowie’s brain was working on overload during the period preceding the creation of Diamond Dogs. From Wikipedia: “Conceived during a period of uncertainty over where his career was headed, Diamond Dogs is the result of multiple projects Bowie envisaged at the time: a scrapped musical based on Ziggy Stardust (1972); an adaptation [for stage and television] of George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949); and an urban apocalyptic scenario based on the writings of William S. Burroughs.” The 1984 project excited him the most, but he was forced to change his plans. From The Bowie Bible: “I’d failed to obtain the theatrical rights from George Orwell’s widow for the book 1984, and having written three or more songs for it already, I did a fast about-face and recobbled the idea into Diamond Dogs: teen punks on rusty skates living on the roofs of the dystopian Hunger City; a post-apocalyptic landscape.”

The about-face was not absolute, as Bowie refused to abandon the 1984-related songs. That decision led to a somewhat confusing narrative, further aggravated by including two holdovers from his glam days that had nothing to do with 1984 or the Diamond Dogs concept. If you set aside the glam tracks, Diamond Dogs is a concept album that explores two separate versions of dystopia: the world of the Diamond Dogs and the journey to an Orwellian existence. Diamond Dogs is more like a film with a fractured narrative (like David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive) that all comes together in the end—a coherent jigsaw puzzle created out of inchoerence. The scenes paint disturbing pictures of the future that will give listeners plenty to think about, and as the human race continues down the path of self-destruction, Diamond Dogs is an unfortunately timeless album.

Another challenge facing listeners involves Bowie’s choice of lyrical construction. “Bowie used William Burroughs’ cut-up technique to allow new meanings to emerge from his words. Not all were meant to be readily understood, and it remains likely that a couplet such as ‘If this trade is a curse, then I’ll bless you/And turn to the crossroads, and hamburgers’ was meant to defy interpretation.” Bowie defended that approach thusly: “You write down a paragraph or two describing several different subjects, creating a kind of story ingredients-list, I suppose, and then cut the sentences into four or five-word sections; mix ’em up and reconnect them. You can get some pretty interesting idea combinations like this. You can use them as is or, if you have a craven need to not lose control, bounce off these ideas and write whole new sections.” (The Bowie Bible, ibid). The lyrics may not make perfect sense, but in the context of a dystopian universe where nothing makes sense, most of the lyrics are compatible with the mood.

Diamond Dogs is a transitional album in the purest sense, as it presents music from a wide variety of genres that opened the door to several possible directions where Bowie could take his music: progressive, pure rock, proto-punk, funk, krautrock, R&B and soul. Critical reaction was mixed, with stick-in-the-muds like Rolling Stone and Robert Christgau classifying the album as crap, while Disc magazine argued that Diamond Dogs was “without doubt the finest [LP] he’s made so far.” Martin Kirkup of Sounds claimed that “Diamond Dogs has the provoking quality of a thought-out painting that draws on all the deeper colors.” Billboard saw a “subtler, more aesthetic Bowie” than his previous records on an album “which should reinforce his musical presence in the 70’s”.

What I admire most about David Bowie’s wide-ranging discography is that you never knew what he was going to do next, and Tony Visconti also admired that quality: “I don’t know if Diamond Dogs is a favourite album for his fans, but it has a timeless sound to it. It’s the work of a visionary. David is obviously very good at changing his sound and style, yet remaining David Bowie at the core. Not many artists can do this; in fact, I can’t think of one.” (Soligny, p. 505)

*****

The first two tracks contain the only songs that are clearly attached to the Diamond Dogs dystopia. Some of the others may be, but it all depends on how you interpret the cut-up lyrics.

“Future Legend”: The album opens with an eerie howl that never fails to give me the goosebumps. Thankfully, it only lasts a few seconds before we hear the synth pattern that will serve as background to Bowie’s spoken-word introduction, with bizarre sounds appearing through his recitation. One of those sounds is only bizarre in context: Bowie plays the melody of “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” on guitar, turning the original metaphor for falling in love into its literal meaning.

Bowie never reveals the cause of the dystopian descent, but the scene depicted in “Future Legend” reminded me of the premise of Stephen King’s The Stand: “One man escapes from a biological weapon facility after an accident, carrying with him the deadly virus known as Captain Tripps, a rapidly mutating flu that – in the ensuing weeks – wipes out most of the world’s population.” In Bowie’s vision of Hunger City, the population of Manhattan has shrunk to a mere ten thousand, and many of those who survived did so thanks to genetic mutation—including the animals:

And in the death
As the last few corpses lay rotting on the slimy thoroughfare
The shutters lifted in inches in Temperance Building
High on Poacher’s Hill
And red, mutant eyes gaze down on Hunger City
No more big wheels

Fleas the size of rats sucked on rats the size of cats
And ten thousand peoploids split into small tribes
Coveting the highest of the sterile skyscrapers
Like packs of dogs assaulting the glass fronts of Love-Me Avenue
Ripping and rewrapping mink and shiny silver fox, now legwarmers
Family badge of sapphire and cracked emerald
Any day now
The Year of the Diamond Dogs

Holy fuck! Corpses rotting? Peoploids with red eyes? Gangs looting Tiffany’s and Madison Avenue Furs with abandon? Rats the size of cats? Anyone would be bewitched, bothered, and totally bewildered in that hellhole. The piece ends with crowd noise nicked from Rod Stewart’s live album with the Faces, Coast To Coast – Overture And Beginners, with Bowie initiating the transition by shouting, “This ain’t rock and roll, this is genocide!”

No shit, Sherlock!

“Diamond Dogs”: The title track is a Stones-like rocker, probably written sometime during the Ziggy Stardust era and repurposed for the new project. In addition to fleshing out the nature of the Diamond Dogs and the assumed leader of the pack, we learn that some of the survivors have no interest in robbing and pillaging, but are determined to resume the habits of the good old days—partying, fucking, and rocking out. The narrator is one of those who apparently healed more quickly than most, and while he waited for the medics to release his “friend,” he learned a great deal about how to survive in the new world disorder:

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, Tod Browning’s Freak you was

Crawling down the alley on your hands and knee
I’m sure you’re not protected, for it’s plain to see
The Diamond Dogs are poachers and they hide behind trees
Hunt you to the ground they will, mannequins with kill appeal

With one leg partially amputated and a body held together by silicon, the woman would have been a perfect fit for Tod Browning’s movie featuring deformed circus performers, but this bitch just wants to par-tee! She doesn’t care how she looks, and neither does he, as demonstrated by his willingness to shield her from the Diamond Dogs.

I keep a friend serene
(Will they come?) Oh, baby, come unto me
(Will they come?) Well, she’s come, been and gone
Come out of the garden, baby
You’ll catch your death in the fog
Young girl, they call them the Diamond Dogs (2)

Bowie then introduces us to Ziggy’s replacement, a fellow named Halloween Jack, described by Soligny as “a hastily sketched alter ego, a dandy more frail than Ziggy, who will crumble even more during the tour.” His appearance on the main stage is brief, and while he is presented as the unofficial leader of a pack in desperate need of leadership, his credentials are limited to his ability to bypass the broken elevator in the Chase building by swinging down from the top of the skyscraper on a rope a la Tarzan. Whoop-de-fucking-doo. I think Bowie would have been better off eliminating the character for two reasons: he’s not essential to the narrative, and the song goes on way too long. His presence also diminishes the impact of the most important verse—one that captures the essence of living on the knife-edge of uncertainty in a hellish, brutal world.

In the year of the scavenger, the season of the bitch
Sashay on the boardwalk, scurry to the ditch
Just another future song, lonely little kitsch
(There’s gonna be sorrow) try and wake up tomorrow

Though I would have preferred a shorter version, “Diamond Dogs” is a solid rocker, and I love Aynsley Dunbar’s thumping beat.

We will now gratefully leave Hunger City and temporarily enter the Orwellian Universe . . . which we’ll regret in the end.

The next three songs form a triptych that Bowie designed for the 1984 project, so the video below allows you to listen to the suite without interruption. Most of the 1984 songs are prequels to the rise of Big Brother, and Bowie uses some of those songs to identify the practices, beliefs, and conflicts in the present (1974) that began to eat away at the social fabric and provide fertile ground for an authoritarian leader to take over.

“Sweet Thing”:  From The Bowie Bible: “The short break between ‘Diamond Dogs’ and ‘Sweet Thing’ is the only moment of silence in the entire first half of Diamond Dogs. ‘Sweet Thing’ then begins with a reversed piano chord played by Mike Garson, with some additional guitar and Mellotron.” Mike Garson deserves plenty of credit beyond that bit of studio trickery, as his piano arpeggios and fills are absolutely gorgeous, adding a touch of empathetic beauty to a dark and often painful experience.

The Bowie Bible claims that “‘Sweet Thing’ is Bowie at his sleaziest, a song about transactional, loveless sex with the impassive protagonist ‘putting pain in a stranger’, and willing to ‘wrangle some screams from the dawn.’” Yes, the song is about transactional, loveless sex, but it isn’t sleazy—it’s fucking sad.

It’s safe in the city
To love in a doorway
To wrangle some screams from the dawn
And isn’t it me
Putting pain in a stranger?
Like a portrait in flesh, who trails on a leash
Will you see that I’m scared and I’m lonely?

Bowie’s delivery of those lines is exceptional. He begins in a low, dour tone of self-disgust in the first three lines, adopts a self-reflective tone in the next three, and wraps it up with a passionate cry for help in the last line. The verse actually ends with a bit of the cut-up technique that leads to the chorus:

So I’ll break up my room, and yawn and I
Run to the centre of things
Where the knowing one says:

“Boys, Boys, it’s a sweet thing
Boys, Boys, it’s a sweet thing, sweet thing
If you want it, boys, get it here, thing
For hope, boys, is a cheap thing, cheap thing”

Many men view resorting to a prostitute to relieve tension as failure, and there’s always the shame attached to engaging in illegal activities. In this case, hope is “cheap” as in “tasteless and undignified,” essentially an act of cheapening oneself—and that’s fucking sad.

The second verse has been interpreted by many as a reference to Winston and Julia from 1984 because of the opening line, “I’m glad that you’re older than me.” Winston had a hard time understanding why a woman ten or fifteen years younger than him would have an interest in an old fart, but Julia liked to bang older guys as a way of flipping the bird at the authorities. Of course, the pair had to make love in odd places to avoid discovery (a bombed-out church, a clearing in the woods, and, unfortunately for them, Mr. Charrington’s Shop), making the experience all the more delicious. The only doubt I have about the Orwellian connection is that the verse is followed by the “cheap thing” chorus, and neither Winston nor Julia viewed their affair as cheap. They were risking their lives by having sex that did not produce new Party members. In Oceania, non-procreative sex was considered a disgusting thoughtcrime punishable by death.

As a bisexual practitioner of sexual freedom and a student of Orwell, Bowie likely viewed the decency movements in 1970s Britain as repressive, alarming, and one big step towards Big Brother.

“Candidate”: There are several interpretations of “Candidate” floating about the internet, so take your pick:

• “I think the song is Bowie describing his life as a touring rockstar, interrupted by him being pimped out by his managers and labels. I mean, pimped out in both a capitalist and sexual sense.” (Talking Tall on Reddit)
• “I’m sorry. You can have your own idea, OP. For me, that song will always be about male hustlers cruising & picking up other male hustlers.” (response to Talking Tall)
• “Forming the central part of a suite with “Sweet Thing” and its reprise, “Candidate” is the story of an illicit one-night stand, implied to be between two men, in an oppressive society (i.e, the 1984 universe).” (Genius).
• “Disdainful of verses and choruses, Bowie generates lyrics partly made up of random words, fruits of chance which, in Bowie, were never entirely arbitrary. Here they are coloured by confessions and messages reflecting his chronic uncertainties. He reveals all to us freely, without holding back. Everything is heightened and intensified by his use of cocaine, a drug he suspects to be less recreational than he has been told – he ignites the harmonies, floods the arrangements and, when he seems unstoppable, he gives himself a much-deserved break.” (Soligny)
• “The rotten heart of Diamond Dogs; a triptych where prostitutes are the only lovers left, where street hustlers double as politicians.” (bowiesongs)

I suppose the interpretation depends on your worldview. I don’t consider any of those interpretations invalid, and Bowie songs often convey multiple meanings. I grew up in Noe Valley, San Francisco, and I made friends with several gay males in the nearby Castro district, some of whom became my mentors as I explored the world of BDSM. Though they were generally safe in the Castro, they were subjected to multiple forms of harassment when they stepped into the “normal” world. Ergo, I lean toward the homosexual interpretation. Here goes:

Part two of the triptych moves from the heterosexual to the forever stigmatised homosexual. In this case, “candidate” refers to a possible hook-up, not a wannabe politician. Needless to say (but I’ll say it anyway), I believe that what consenting adults do in the bedroom is their own fucking business, and no one should have to be forced to meet their sexual needs in a public bathroom.

The scene likely takes place in a future when the decency gang gained enough power to convince Parliament to revoke U.K. laws legalizing homosexuality. It’s also clear that the events do not take place in Hunger City, where the bars and shops have likely been ransacked out of existence. The song opens with Bowie playing a mournful tune on the sax, accompanied by guitar and “For the first 32 bars of ‘Candidate,’ up until Bowie smells ‘the blood of les Tricoteuses,’ he told Newman to play his snare rolls as if he was a French drummer boy watching his first guillotining during the Terror.” (from bowiesongs)

I’ll make you a deal, like any other candidate
We’ll pretend we’re walking home ’cause your future’s at stake
My set is amazing, it even smells like a street
There’s a bar at the end where I can meet you and your friend
Someone scrawled on the wall “I smell the blood of les tricoteuses”
Who wrote up scandals in other bars
I’m having so much fun with the poisonous people
Spreading rumours and lies and stories they made up

Les tricoteuses were the working-class women who tended to their knitting while watching people get their heads chopped off during the French Revolution; the graffiti is intended as a threat. The narrator laughs it off, but he knows damn well that he has to remain on guard at all times. The first verse is semi-narrated and funereally slow, but the music speeds up gradually in the second verse as Bowie doubles up on the vocals and shifts his tone from faux confidence to emotionally charged babbling:

Some make you sing and some make you scream
One makes you wish that you’d never been seen
But there’s a shop on the corner that’s selling papier mache
Making bullet-proof faces, Charlie Manson, Cassius Clay
If you want it, boys, get it here, thing
So you scream out of line
“I want you! I need you! Anyone out there?
Any time?”
Tres butch little number whines, “Hey dirty, I want you
When it’s good, it’s really good, and when it’s bad I go to pieces”
If you want it, boys, get it here, thing

The third verse involves the endless hassle of finding a safe place to fuck (“On another floor, in the back of a car/In the cellar like a church with the door ajar.”) and the continuing threat posed by the tough guys who get their kicks by beating the shit out of gay men. (“But we can’t stop trying ’til we break up our minds/Til the sun drips blood on the seedy young knights/Who press you on the ground while shaking in fright.”) The never-ending struggle leads to bitter resignation and an ambiguous ending that could be interpreted as a suicide attempt or a validation of the chosen lifestyle (I lean toward the latter):

I guess we could cruise down one more time
With you by my side, it should be fine
We’ll buy some drugs and watch a band
Then jump in the river holding hands

“Sweet Thing Reprise”: The mournful saxophone returns, backed this time by Mike Garson’s subtle piano. At first, Bowie sounds like he’s in tears as he repeats the chorus (“If you want it, boys, get it here thing/Cause hope, boys/Is a cheap thing, cheap thing”), but as the song progresses, his voice rises to high passion as he confronts the sad truth that whatever paths we choose to manifest our true selves involve compromise and some degree of self-repression due to social expectations.

Well, let it be
It’s all I ever wanted
It’s a street with a deal

And a taste
It’s got claws
It’s got me
It’s got you

The song then devolves into what Soligny accurately described as motorik a la Neu—a grinding sound of tension that reflects the difficulties faced by those who choose to be different. The triptych is one of Bowie’s finest compositions, and his thespian talents merge with his vocal talents to provide us with a deeply moving story, however you interpret the lyrics.

“Rebel Rebel”: If you’re wondering how this song fits into the apocalyptic narrative, forget about it. From The Bowie Bible: “In 1972 and 1973, Bowie was planning a stage adaptation of the Ziggy Stardust story. The project never came to fruition, but two songs written for it – ‘Rebel Rebel’ and ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll With Me’ – were recorded for Diamond Dogs. This helps explain why those songs owe little to the dystopian vision of that album, a loose adaptation of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.”

On the same page is a tweet sent by Mike Garson that opens the door to a faint connection: “This is an anthem, let’s face it. So many can relate to the rebellious spirit of this one.” I would hope that any attempt by a demagogue to turn a democratic country into an authoritarian shithole would be met with oodles of rebellious spirit.

“Rebel Rebel” is Bowie’s most covered song, but none come close to matching the original. Anthemic songs tend to contain repetitive lyrics and riffs, and I feel a bit sorry for Alan Parker, who had to play the signature riff over and over for four-and-a-half minutes. Backed by solid performances from the rhythm section with Herbie Flowers laying down some impressive bass riffs and Dunbar driving the beat, Bowie’s vocal is appropriately assertive as he defends the rights of those who choose to veer from the norm.

You’ve got your mother in a whirl
She’s not sure if you’re a boy or a girl
Hey babe, your hair’s alright
Hey babe, let’s go out tonight
You like me, and I like it all
We like dancing and we look divine
You love bands when they’re playing hard
You want more and you want it fast

They put you down, they say I’m wrong
You tacky thing, you put them on

Rebel rebel, you’ve torn your dress
Rebel rebel, your face is a mess
Rebel rebel, how could they know?
Hot tramp, I love you so

“Rebel Rebel” adds little to the dystopian concept, but it does serve a higher purpose . . . as explained in the next segment.

“Rock ‘n’ Roll with Me”: “Bowie pulls out all the stops on this ballad, which he wrote with Geoff MacCormack at Oakley Street, one day (or night?) in October 1973. An ode to his audience or a cry for help, ‘Rock’n’roll With Me’ is a vocal tour de force.” (Soligny, ibid )

I would make one small correction to Soligny’s take. “Rock ‘n’ roll with Me” is an ode to his audience AND a cry for help. For all his showmanship, David Bowie wanted to create an intimate connection with his audience and disdained any signs of adulation. From The Bowie Bible:

During live shows, Bowie occasionally told the audience that the song was about them. In a September 1974 Melody Maker interview, he was asked about his role as a figurehead, which Bowie attempted to downplay. “That’s just it. That’s what I said in ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll With Me’. I mean, the verse of that talks about that . . .  you’re doing it to me. Stop it. That’s why I’m happy my music is going in the new direction. It’s responsible music. I mean, one could play an enormous game with people, but I am not prepared to do it. I could see how easy it was to get a whole rally thing going. There were times, frankly, when I could have told the audience to do anything, and that’s frightening. Well, I’ve got that responsibility so I’ve got to be very careful about what I do with it. It needs a bit of forethought.

It’s no wonder that he imbues these lines with desperate passion.

When you rock and roll with me
No one else I’d rather be
Nobody here can do it for me
I’m in tears again
When you rock and roll with me

I translate the line “Nobody here can do it for me” as a reference to the business side of music—the management, the publicists, the record company moguls. I know of two promising artists from the Seattle music scene who signed with big labels and quit after one or two albums because they found the experience unrewarding and restrictive (I won’t name names because I don’t know what they’re doing now). Serious musicians couldn’t care less about fame; their primary goal is to forge a genuine, human-to-human connection with the audience.

The intro featuring Mike Garson’s gospel-tinged piano and the Motown feel of the song foreshadows Bowie’s next move to the soul music of Young Americans. Explorers have to keep exploring.

In thinking about the back-to-back placement of the two non-thematic songs, I get the feeling that it was an intentional move on Bowie’s part to provide a much-needed intermission—a break from the dystopian madness. Looking at it from that perspective turns what at first appears to be a pair of unwelcome detours from the narrative into songs with a valid purpose, so I’m sticking with my assertion.

“We Are the Dead”: I can still remember the gasp and sudden rise in my heartbeat when I first read this passage in 1984.

‘We are the dead,’ he said.

‘We are the dead,’ echoed Julia dutifully.

‘You are the dead,’ said an iron voice behind them.

They sprang apart. Winston’s entrails seemed to have turned into ice. He could see the white all round the irises of Julia’s eyes. Her face had turned a milky yellow. The smear of rouge that was still on each cheekbone stood out sharply, almost as though unconnected with the skin beneath.

‘You are the dead,’ repeated the iron voice.

‘It was behind the picture,’ breathed Julia.

‘It was behind the picture,’ said the voice. ‘Remain exactly where you are. Make no movement until you are ordered.’

I was young and naïve then, and had grown up in a democracy during an era when the economy was booming, and the big news was that the President had soiled an intern’s dress. In that brief period of optimism, I was hoping that Winston and Julia would somehow elude the Thought Police. To be completely honest, I was rooting for Julia more than Winston because when he first uttered that phrase, she responded, “We aren’t dead yet.” I love people who refuse to give up despite the odds.

It would seem that Bowie applied that gloomy phrase to the scene in Hunger City:

They tell me, “Son, we want you, be elusive, but don’t walk far”
For we’re breaking in the new boys, deceive your next of kin
For you’re dancing where the dogs decay, defecating ecstasy
You’re just an ally of the leecher

The overuse of the cut-up technique makes it impossible for me to give you a complete interpretation, but one passage involving the illicit romance between Winston and Julia is clear and incredibly moving:

Because of all we’ve seen, because of all we’ve said
We are the dead
One thing kind of touched me today
I looked at you and counted all the times we had laid
Pressing our love through the night
Knowing it’s right, knowing it’s right

From a musical standpoint, “We Are the Dead” is the most complex composition on the album, with a chord pattern that barely qualifies as a pattern. The sound is enhanced by tape delay on Garson’s electric piano and tons of reverb on Bowie’s guitar. “We Are the Dead” is essentially a chaotic theme song for a chaotic universe.

“1984”: Bowie had written this song before Mrs. Orwell shattered his dreams, but he still managed to include certain aspects of 1984 in the lyrics. The narrator (some have identified him as Halloween Jack) warns his colleagues of the danger posed by Big Brother and reveals himself as a Baby Boomer with a nod to Bob Dylan:

Someday they won’t let you, now you must agree
The times they are a-telling, and the changing isn’t free
You’ve read it in the tea leaves, and the tracks are on TV
Beware the savage jaw
Of 1984

He also warns them of the likelihood of brainwashing (“They’ll split your pretty cranium and fill it full of air”) and the elimination of individual identities (“And tell that you’re 80, but brother, you won’t care”). Like many Boomers, he feels a responsibility to question authority:

I’m looking for a vehicle, I’m looking for a ride
I’m looking for a party, I’m looking for a side
I’m looking for the treason that I knew in ’65
Beware the savage jaw
Of 1984

Not surprisingly, the populace remains oblivious, prioritizing pleasure over rebellion until it’s too late to stem the tide, and they wind up stumbling into the darkness:

Come see, come see, remember me?
We played out an all-night movie role
You said it would last, but I guess we enrolled
In 1984 (who could ask for more?)

For once, the lyrics are not the problem, but the Isaac Hayes-Barry White arrangement doesn’t work for me and seems quite inappropriate given the circumstances. Soligny waxed lyrical over the arrangement, so to provide a balanced viewpoint, I will quote his paean to “1984” and add my comments in parentheses:

Last but not least, the version of ‘1984’ on Diamond Dogs is probably the best, and this song is clearly one of the most representative of the album. (No it isn’t.) This is more down to the richness of its composition than its soul and rhythm’n’blues vibes. The term ‘disco’ has sometimes been used to describe it, but it is far from that. (Sure sounds like disco to me!). The first minute, driven by Alan Parker’s rhythm guitar, owes a lot to Charles ‘Skip’ Pitts’ playing on Shaft’s original soundtrack, composed by Isaac Hayes. However, the 30-second bridges that twice lead back to the theme are marvels of Bowiesque music writing. The chord progression defies understanding, (No, it doesn’t) as does the melody that straddles it and takes the song to new levels. (The melody is forgettable in seconds.) Of course, David Bowie owes a lot to Tony Visconti here. His string arrangement is excellent and could rival the work of the best in the genre, including Don Ronaldo and Gene Page. (It sounds like every string arrangement applied to disco songs).

Soligny, Jérôme. David Bowie Rainbowman: 1967-1980 (p. 489). (Function). Kindle Edition.

We are not living in a 1984 universe just yet, so you are completely free to share your own opinion, and I promise not to sic the Thought Police on you for disagreeing with me.

“Big Brother”: Bowie wastes no time getting to the heart of the matter: social chaos invariably leads to the rise of demagogues. Hitler might have never come to power if the Great Depression and the unbelievable levels of inflation that wrecked the German economy had been averted. In our times, demagogues don’t need a real crisis to spread chaos, for they can invent it through misinformation and exploiting the fears and weaknesses in the populace. Once they take power, demagogues need to continue the chaos and fear-mongering by identifying the opposition as enemies and turning those who are different into scapegoats who represent mortal threats to the nation. Creating chaos is essentially Voldemort’s core strategy for staying in power, because he knows that fearful people long for a savior to punish the scapegoats and rid the country of its so-called enemies.

As we can assume that the chaos of Hunger City is not an isolated event, we can also assume that demagogues are rising all over the dystopian world—as they did in Orwell’s masterpiece. Exhausted by the endless chaos, the still-living place their bets on a strongman to free them from their misery:

Don’t talk of dust and roses
Or should we powder our noses?
Don’t live for last year’s capers
Give me steel, give me steel, give me pulsars unreal
He’ll build a glass asylum
With just a hint of mayhem
He’ll build a better whirlpool
We’ll be living from sin
Then we can really begin

Please saviour, saviour, show us
Hear me, I’m graphically yours

Someone to claim us, someone to follow
Someone to shame us, some brave Apollo
Someone to fool us, someone like you
We want you, Big Brother, Big Brother

Powdering our noses is likely a reference to the cocaine employed to help them through their misery (and a habit that Bowie unfortunately over-indulged in). As noted in the analysis on Genius, “An asylum made of glass is an inherent contradiction: though ostensibly intended for mental health care, asylums have historically been used to hole up socially undesirable people, most prominently LGBT people, and keep them away from ‘normal’ society.” I don’t know about the whirlpool, but the first thing I thought of is Voldemort’s stupid plans for the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. The subjugation to the savior needs no explanation, but the Genius analysis noted a curious change to the lyrics in the final round: “Someone to fool us” becomes “someone to fool,” implying that the leader-worship is a ruse and that at least some people are committed to resistance.

The music is much more in sync with the milieu in comparison to “1984.” The first sounds we hear are a mix of upper-range sax and choral voices that appear throughout the song, conveying veneration of Big Brother. For the most part, the arrangement is in high power mode, honoring the masculine orientation of the strongman, with one brief aside set to a 12-string guitar. I have to say that of all the diverse sounds in the song (12-string acoustic guitar, rhythm guitar, baritone and tenor saxophone, Mellotron, handclaps, tambourine, bass, drums, sound effects), I find the choral voices the most disturbing because I know that many so-called Christians in the MAGA movement view Voldemort as god on Earth (and he took advantage of that unbelievable misconception by posting images of himself as Jesus).

“Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family”: I don’t know why Bowie bothered to make this a separate track, as it emerges seamlessly from “Big Brother” and has little value as a stand-alone. It’s basically a dystopian college fight song—a Big Brother rah rah thing, (Yawn)

*****

Diamond Dogs obviously has some flaws, but one must take into consideration that Bowie was dealt a shitty hand when Mrs. Orwell put the kibosh on his plans. From my perspective, his perseverance and hyper-creative mind turned a possible disaster into a work that has stood the test of time. The energy he put into every song is remarkable, and there’s no denying that Bowie put his heart and soul into the “recobbling.” He had every reason to take pride in what became one of his favorites.