After his breakthrough with
Ziggy Stardust
and before his U.S. pop hits "Fame" and "Golden Years" David Bowie produced a dark and difficult concept album set in a post-apocalyptic "Hunger City" populated by post-human "mutants."
Diamond Dogs
includes the great glam anthem "Rebel Rebel" and utterly unique songs that combine lush romantic piano and nearly operatic singing with scratching, grungy guitars, creepy, insidious noises, and dark, pessimistic lyrics that reflect the album's origins in a projected Broadway musical version of Orwell's
1984
and Bowie's formative encounter with William S. Burroughs.
In this book Glenn Hendler shows that each song on
shifts the ground under you as you listen, not just by changing in musical style, but by being sung by a different "I" who directly addresses a different "you."
is the product of a performer at the peak of his powers but uncomfortable with the rock star role he had constructed. All of the album's influences looked to Bowie like ways of escaping not just the Ziggy role, but also the constraints of race, gender, sexuality, and nationality. These are just some of the reasons many Bowie fans rate
his richest and most important album of the 1970s.