“It’s all I ever wanted”
David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs album was unleashed on a very expectant public in the UK on May 24, 1974.
Anticipation was high because the album had already been delayed for a month and images of the human/dog hybrid on the cover had featured heavily in the music press.
Preceded by the Top 5 single Rebel Rebel, Diamond Dogs entered the UK album chart at #1 where it remained for three weeks.
In North America (where it also went Top 5), the publicity was even more intense ahead of the ambitious Diamond Dogs Tour extravaganza.
Along with the scene-setting opener, Future Legend, the title track offered a vision of a post-apocalyptic Hunger City, wherein Halloween Jack and the Diamond Dogs roamed the streets and the rooftops.
Though constructed from Bowie’s own imagination and various literary influences, George Orwell’s 1984 flavoured side two of the LP with the tracks We Are the Dead, 1984 and Big Brother.
The album was produced by Bowie himself who also provided much of the instrumentation.
Aside from Rock ‘N’ Roll With Me, the ominous closing Chant Of The Ever-Circling Skeletal Family and the aforementioned tracks, Diamond Dogs also contained the epic, nine minute Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (Reprise), an astonishing recording that you’ll find in the top ten of many Bowie fans’ favourites.
If you’ve managed to resist the charms of this canine beauty thus far, let the dogs lick you to death over on Spotify now.
Pictured here is a print of Guy Peellaert’s original artwork and the withdrawn RCA sleeve before the poor pooch’s emasculation.
FOOTNOTE: In Diamond Dog years, the album is in fact 287 today!