Diamond Dogs

e merging triumphantly from the scene-setting, spoken-word Future Legend, Diamond Dogs’ title track kicks off with a snippet of adulatory cheering that Bowie lifted from the Faces’ live album (somewhat bizarrely, Rod Stewart can be heard clearly over the post-‘This ain’t rock’n’roll, this is genocide’ opening riff).

It’s set in an anarchic future that, while dystopian, was gladly embraced as near-utopian by a teenage constituency primed for the advent of punk. Central protagonist Halloween Jack lives atop Hunger City’s Manhattan Chase, and it’s all street gangs, little hussies with Dali brooches and ‘mannequins with kill appeal’ across a swaggering bump-’n’-grind riff.

Diamond Dogs, 1974