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David Bowie
Diamond Dogs was Bowie’s first misstep since becoming famous, but his aura was so powerful that most people hadn’t noticed. As far as the media was concerned, the photo of Bowie as a post-apocalyptic half man/half dog mutant provided more than enough fodder for their copy. The album’s hit single “Rebel Rebel” helped to disguise the paucity of continuity on this album, but the fact remains that Diamond Dogs catches Bowie at a fairly uncertain moment in his career. Fed up with Ziggy Stardust, but unable to entirely throw that persona off, Bowie dabbles in various modifications of his image with this album. Unfortunately, none are anywhere near as convincing as his previous incarnations. The main reason this happens is simply because the material is lacking. Bowie was certainly an artist who was capable of pushing his image before his material, but he was always imaginative as a songwriter, too, so the material always seemed to come from some rarefied place.
Diamond Dogs is too schizophrenic, so the album suffers. Since Bowie expends a great deal of energy trying to develop a theme that never gels, two straight-ahead rock and roll numbers (“Diamond Dogs” and “Rebel Rebel”) have the burden of carrying the entire album. They aren’t enough. The “Sweet Thing/ Candidate” medley is the only other musical offering on side one; it takes him minutes, but takes us nowhere. The same goes for side two’s “Big Brother” segment. “Rock and Roll with Me” is as close as Bowie has ever come to writing generic material, and “We Are the Dead” is lifeless, which leaves “1984” to carry the entire second half of the album. Even this is greatly disappointing, though, especially since it was drastically edited from the ten-minute centerpiece that it had become in recent live (and televised) performances. Why spend so much time and energy introducing your audience to something if you aren’t going to utilize it on your album? It is questions like these that remain unanswered, and it is reasons like this that make Diamond Dogs seem so inconsistent, schizophrenic, and confused.
Grade: 
 
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