David Bowie is (part 13): 'Tens of thousands found me in demand'

Between October 1973 and February 1974 David Bowie began to record a new album with his old producer and friend Tony Visconti. Bowie had originally intended his next album to be a rock adaptation of George Orwell's 1984. He had even got as far as writing three songs for the project, '1984', 'Big Brother' and 'We Are The Dead'. When he approached Orwell's widow, Sonia, she refused permission on the grounds that she thought it sounded 'bizarre'.

Undeterred, Bowie came up with his own concept of a dystopian post-apocalyptic future world, known as Hunger City, complete with roller-skating gangs, violence and drugs. Bowie played a new character, Halloween Jack, a 'real cool cat'. At the time of its release Bowie described Diamond Dogs as "a very political album. My protest... more me than anything I've done previously". Diamond Dogs' raw guitar style and visions of urban chaos, scavenging children and nihilistic lovers ("We'll buy some drugs and watch old bands / And jump in the river holding hands") have been credited with anticipating the punk revolution that would take place in the following years. Bowie himself has described the Diamond Dogs, introduced in the title song, as

"all little Johnny Rottens and Sid Viciouses really. And, in my mind, there was no means of transport, so they were all rolling around on these roller-skates with huge wheels on them, and they squeaked because they hadn't been oiled properly. So there were these gangs of squeaking, roller-skating, vicious hoods, with Bowie knives and furs on, and they were all skinny because they hadn't eaten enough, and they all had funny-coloured hair. In a way it was a precursor to the punk thing."

Diamond Dogs was released at the end of April and it went to number one in Britain and to number five in the US.

Diamond Dogs

All songs written by David Bowie, except where noted.

Side one

1. 'Future Legend' – 1:05
2. 'Diamond Dogs' – 5:56
3. 'Sweet Thing' – 3:39
4. 'Candidate' – 2:40
5. 'Sweet Thing (Reprise)' – 2:31
6. 'Rebel Rebel' – 4:30

Side two

1. 'Rock 'n' Roll with Me' (lyrics: Bowie; music: Bowie, Warren Peace) – 4:00
2. 'We Are the Dead' – 4:58
3. '1984' – 3:27
4. 'Big Brother' – 3:21
5. 'Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family' – 2:00

On 1 April 1974 David Bowie arrived in New York. He intended to move there and to sort out his problems with manager Tony Defries. Almost immediately he contacted Michael Kamen, a British rocker with a coke habit and a band that included guitarist Earl Slick. Kamen was employed as his Musical Director. He also auditioned a young session musician called Carlos Alomar but Alomar wasn't prepared to take the big drop in wages MainMan was offering. In June Bowie began the Diamond Dogs tour. His fans were shocked to see the 'Ziggy' hair and outfits gone in favour of floppy blonde hair, double-breasted suits and braces.

The first leg of the (US) Diamond Dogs Tour had elaborate staging that Bowie had been toying with since 1971. The $400,000 set included a backdrop of thirty-foot skyscrapers representing 'Hunger City', his dystopian metropolitan setting, plus a motorised bridge, a remote-controlled mirrored module and a cherry-picker in which Bowie would descend singing 'Space Oddity' into a radio mic disguised as a telephone. Bowie was obssessively attempting to assimilate the then-current cutting-edge R&B/soul into his repetoire and despite the outrage and negative criticism of his peers, he achieved it with some considerable success, as can be heard on the album David Live which was recorded on 14 & 15 July 1974.



When the first leg of the tour was finished Bowie went to Sigma Sound in Philadelphia to record a session for his next album. This time he managed to get Carlos Alomar to join him. The result of this first session, which was a conscious effort to make a soul-orientated album, was another new direction. Around this time Bowie realised that he was not an equal partner in his management company MainMan, as he had naively assumed, but an employee! Shortly after the tour resumed, Bowie was introduced to a young BBC director called Alan Yentob who wanted to make a documentary about him in America. The result, Cracked Actor, depicted Bowie thin, paranoid and frequently 'out of his gourd', as Bowie would later put it, on cocaine. It is a fascinating document of a man who was lucky to survive this period in his life.



In October 1974 Bowie decided to ditch his expensive set in its entirety and play the shows with an even more blatant soul sound. In November he filmed for the Dick Cavett Show in New York. Again it demonstrates the effect of excessive amounts of cocaine, although his addiction was to get even worse.



Next time: Lennon, more cocaine and The Tree Of Life

David Bowie is (part 12): 'Everything's Alright'

In July 1973, David Bowie took the Spiders minus Mick 'Woody' Woodmansey and the rest of his entourage to the chateau in France where T-Rex had recorded 'The Slider' and there they recorded Bowie's next album, 'Pin Ups'. It was to be an album of covers of some of Bowie's favourite songs from the sixties. It was effectively the last of the Ziggy-era albums which entered the charts at number one when it was released in October. Its predecessors were also still on the charts at numbers 13, 19 and 26. Whilst perhaps not the best-sounding Bowie album today it is nevertheless a fascinating document, an insight into how Bowie worked at that time and it would have been fantastic to any fan wanting more from 'Ziggy', as well remaining an interesting take on the Mod period.

According to co-producer Ken Scott, the album was intended to be "a complete opposite of his other albums" and "he wanted to do songs that weren't known as well in the States as they were in England". The woman on the cover with Bowie is 1960s supermodel Twiggy. On the back of the album sleeve Bowie writes of Pin-Ups: "These songs are among my favourites from the '64–67' period of London. Most of the groups were playing the Ricky-Tick (was it a 'y' or an 'i'?) Scene club circuit (Marquee, eel pie island la-la). Some are still with us. Pretty Things, Them, Yardbirds, Syd's Pink Floyd, Mojos, Who, Easybeats, Merseys, The Kinks. Love-on ya!"

Pin Ups
(Click each track to hear it)

Side one
No.	Title	Writer(s)	Length
1.	'Rosalyn' (Originally recorded by The Pretty Things)	Jimmy Duncan, Bill Farley	2:27
2.	'Here Comes the Night' (Notably recorded by Them)	Bert Berns	3:09
3.	'I Wish You Would' (Notably recorded by The Yardbirds)	Billy Boy Arnold	2:40
4.	'See Emily Play' (Originally recorded by Pink Floyd)	Syd Barrett	4:03
5.	'Everything's Alright' (Originally recorded by The Mojos)	Nicky Crouch, John Konrad, Simon Stavely, Stuart James, Keith Karlson	2:26
6.	'I Can't Explain' (Originally recorded by The Who)	Pete Townshend	2:07

Side two
No.	Title	Writer(s)	Length
7.	'Friday on My Mind' (Originally recorded by The Easybeats)	George Young, Harry Vanda	3:18
8.	'Sorrow' (Notably recorded by The Merseys)	Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein, Richard Gottehrer	2:48
9.	'Don't Bring Me Down' (Originally recorded by The Pretty Things)	Johnnie Dee	2:01
10.	'Shapes of Things' (Originally recorded by The Yardbirds)	Paul Samwell-Smith, Jim McCarty, Keith Relf	2:47
11.	'Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere' (Originally recorded by The Who)	Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend	3:04
12.	'Where Have All the Good Times Gone' (Originally recorded by The Kinks)	Ray Davies	2:35

In October 1973 David Bowie recorded a one-off show for NBC in America called 'The 1980 Floor Show'. A bizarre combination of songs and acting the highlight has to be Bowie singing a duet of 'I Got You Babe' with Marianne Faithful dressed as some sort of perverted nun and apparently doing an impression of Velvet Underground singer Nico. Watch it here. Another highlight from 'The 1980 Floor Show' is one where Bowie tries out an early version of '1984' before, or possibly just after, he had given up on the idea of a musical adaptation of George Orwell's book (his widow, Sonia, refused permission on the grounds that she thought it sounded 'bizarre'). In this version the song is mixed with 'Dodo', a song that wasn't on the album that 1984 became, and which was only released in 1990 on the CD version of that album. See it here. Incidentally, the female backing singer in these videos is Ava Cherry, Bowie's then-girlfriend. Finally here is an interesting performance of Space Oddity, which was originally recorded in 1969 (skip to 3:48).

By the end of 1973 Bowie had decided he wanted to try a funky, more American vibe to his music. At a recording session for his next album, where they tried recording 1984/Dodo/1984 (reprise), it soon became clear that Mick Ronson and the rest of the band were not able to give Bowie what he wanted, or at least not immediately as he demanded. It was the end of the Bowie/Ronson partnership*. Around this time Bowie, Angie and Zowie moved to Chelsea while Defries, Bowie's manager, confidant and father figure moved to America. Without this crutch, Bowie became a mess and shortly after he started doing cocaine, the first time he had ever regularly taken drugs, to 'calm him down'. It was around this time too that Bowie became fascinated by Mick Jagger. Soon he would have the same relationship with Jagger he had had with Marc Bolan. He saw him as a friend but also a rival. Bolan had not made much of a mark in America so perhaps this was the source of Bowie's interest. As a result Bowie started making music that sounded very much like the Stones. One of the songs Bowie was working on in the studio sounded uncannily like the Rolling Stones. It was released as a single in February 1974. Here is the 'salsa' version that was released in America.

 

Post Script
* "It was the end of the Bowie/Ronson partnership" as far as Bowie's career was concerned but Bowie gifted Mick Ronson three songs for his solo album 'Slaughter on 10th Avenue', which was released in 1974, including 'Growing Up and I’m Fine'.



Shortly before he started working on his next album in early 1974, Bowie recorded a bunch of tracks with a group called the Astronettes, including singer Ava Cherry, who would sing with him for the next four years. The sessions weren’t officially released until the mid-1990s, but “I Am a Laser” is notable for a few reasons – not least that Bowie later reworked it as “Scream Like a Baby.”



Next time: cocaine, milk and pentagrams.