DAVID BOWIE DIAMOND DOGS 50th ANNIVERSARY RELEASE
This May, classic David Bowie album Diamond Dogs will be issued as a limited edition 50th anniversary half-speed mastered LP and a picture disc LP pressed from the same master.
The writing of the album was influenced by Bowie not being able to secure the rights for a theatrical production of George Orwell’s 1984 and the work of William S. Burroughs, whom Bowie had interviewed for Rolling Stone in November 1973. The songs on the album created an urban apocalyptic scenario with Bowie appearing on the cover as a controversial half-man, half-dog hybrid painted by the Belgian artist Guy Peellaert from photos by the world-renowned photographer Terry O’Neill.
The album includes the single ‘Rebel Rebel’, which reached No. 5 in the UK charts and swiftly became one of the Bowie classics. Meanwhile, its parent album went on to reach No. 1 in the UK album charts and No. 5 in the US.
To promote Diamond Dogs at the time, Bowie undertook his most theatrical and elaborate tour to date, which was captured on film for the infamous BBC programme Cracked Actor and the classic David Live album. Despite written promises to fans that the tour would reach the UK, it never did. For the second leg of the US tour, Bowie stripped back the show and started taking his material in a more soulful direction, which would be fully realised with the release of his next album, Young Americans.
This new pressing of Diamond Dogs was cut on a customised late Neumann VMS80 lathe with fully recapped electronics from 192kHz restored masters of the original master tapes, with no additional processing on transfer. The half-speed was cut by John Webber at AIR Studios.
Photo: Terry O’Neill
Diamond Dogs 50th anniversary half-speed mastered LP will be available 24th May 2024 via Parlophone.