Examining Bowie's Exploratory and Experimental Phase

David Bowie's Diamond Dogs by Glenn Hendler 

Hunter Desportes, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I ended up reading three books featuring Bowie over Christmas break. This was the first one and focused on his album Diamond Dogs. I’ve always been intrigued by this album for many different reasons. Probably because “Rebel Rebel” is one of my all-time favorite Bowie songs and was like the first Bowie song I remember really connecting with when I was in high school. It’s got such a joyous beat, and I loved the lyrics about androgyny and identity. The cover, which Hendler examines and analyzes, also always stuck out to me. It’s so weird to consider a Bowie/Dog hybrid with other human animals in the background as well. In other readings on music, I learned that this album was really influential for Darby Crash forming the Germs. He would talk about the hidden meanings in this album, and after learning more about it and Bowie’s possible flirtations with autocracy and dictators, it’s really interesting to consider. One of the other aspects that makes this album so fascinating is that it started out as a musical production of Orwell’s 1984, but was eventually abandoned. Hendler doesn’t get too into this topic, but he does describe some of the instances of Bowie’s television appearances around this time and how kind of wild it was to have him in the tail end of glam rock parading about on television. This was more of a typical 33 1/3 book that examines the making of the album, interviewing some key players while also looking at Bowie’s relationship with the singer Ava Cherry and how she influenced some of his future work (especially the Young Americans album). This album also brought in the influence of Burroughs, and Hendler discusses how the Wild Boys and other Burroughs’ writing influenced some of the songs on this album. I gained a deeper appreciation for this album through Hendler’s research and documentation. It’s interesting to think of this album as kind of representing the transition phase from glam rock to more of the hybrid, genre morphing and experimental music that Bowie would forge in later albums in the 1970s.