Bowie on the Diamond Dogs tour at Boston Music Hall in 1974
George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four had a profound effect on Bowie, having first read the novel several years prior to the creation of the Ziggy Stardust character. The influence of Orwell’s chilling portent of things to come was woven deeply into the tapestry that made up the Ziggy narrative, yet 1974’s Diamond Dogs was Bowie’s first proper post Ziggy-period creative project, discounting the hurried covers album Pin Ups, and wasn’t just heavily inspired by Orwell’s masterwork. It was originally conceived as a fully-fledged soundtrack record to accompany a full-scale stage production of the novel.
Ultimately, Bowie’s ambitions to get the project officially sanctioned fell flat as the Orwell estate denied Bowie the rights to do it. However, this refusal came after Bowie had already written a large proportion of material for the record, including the rather on-the-nose track 1984 - so he forged ahead with the album regardless. The original theatrical designs of the material is still clear from the somewhat stagey arrangements of many of the tracks that make up Diamond Dogs, from We Are The Dead’s almost spoken word spiraling melodrama to the multi-section Sweet Thing cycle’s emotively performed vocal.