Diamond Dogs (1974)

Ziggy was dead. Aladdin came and went. The Spiders from Mars scattered to the winds after Bowie broke up the band onstage at the Hammersmith Odeon in July of ’73. Diamond Dogs, then, was one last gasp of glam. In turns messy and garish, and every bit as addled and scatterbrained as Aladdin Sane, Diamond Dogs kicks off with an apocalyptic rant detailing the state of the future as Bowie sees it: a world of desecrated skyscrapers, tribes of roaming “peoploids” wrapped in shredded furs, all while “fleas the size of rats sucked on rats the size of cats.” If it feels theatrical, it’s by design — originally written in part as a stage adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984, the songs were salvaged and scraped together into a rough-hewn album after Orwell’s estate refused to grant the rights for a musical. Their loss. The mini-suite of “Sweet Thing / Candidate / Sweet Thing (Reprise)” is surprisingly powerful, never mind the fact that it’s bookended by “Diamond Dogs” and “Rebel Rebel,” the two greatest Stones songs not actually written by the Stones. Also funny: turns out Bowie’s single greatest guitar riff wasn’t played by any of the inimitable guitarists to pass through his ranks (Mick Ronson, Carlos Alomar, Reeves Gabrels, etc) — he played it himself, along with the bulk of the album’s instrumentation besides drums and bass. Side two fares less well due to its inconsistency, jumping from the plasticky disco of “1984” to the goofy pomp of “Rock ‘n’ Roll With Me” and then back to the fake-trumpet theatricality of “Big Brother” (but goddamn if that chorus doesn’t slap you silly). By the end of the record you get the sense Bowie badly wants to leap out of his own skin, what with the mess of styles on display. He’d do that soon enough.