David Bowie: Diamond Dogs (2017 remaster) [PARLOPHONE]

Why you'll love it

This remaster is pressed on heavyweight 180g vinyl in a gatefold jacket with a replica of the original die-cut inner sleeve. Diamond Dogs went to No. 1 in the UK and No. 5 in the US, led by "Rebel Rebel."

This edition

• Remastered
• 180g vinyl
• Gatefold jacket
• Replica die-cut inner sleeve
• Stereo mix
• Pressed in the EU

About the album

Diamond Dogs is what happens when David Bowie has three projects on the go and decides to do all of them at once. A Ziggy Stardust musical, an adaptation of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and a William S. Burroughs-style city apocalypse all fed into it, and the title track introduced a new character, Halloween Jack. With the Spiders from Mars gone and Mick Ronson off making his own record, Bowie produced it himself and played the lead guitar.

He recorded it in early 1974 at Olympic and Island Studios in London and in Hilversum in the Netherlands, with Tony Visconti back in the fold for the first time in four years. "Rebel Rebel" has one of the great riffs of the decade, "Sweet Thing" and "Candidate" make a grand, sleazy suite, and "1984" and "Rock 'N Roll With Me" hint at the funk and soul of Young Americans just around the corner. Guy Peellaert painted the half-man, half-dog cover from Terry O'Neill photos.

It was Bowie's farewell to glam, his biographers rate it among his best, and it's been cited as an influence on the punks who arrived a few years later. He took the stage show on the road with sets so elaborate they needed their own postcode.

Also at Kops: more David Bowie on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Parlophone (cat# DB 74761), a reissue of the 1974 album.