The track list for David Bowie’s 1974 album Diamond Dogs offers a couple obvious clues about one source of inspiration: song titles include both “1984” and “Big Brother.”
Side one
"Future Legend" – 0:58
"Diamond Dogs" – 5:56
"Sweet Thing" – 3:37
"Candidate" – 2:39
"Sweet Thing (Reprise)" – 2:31
"Rebel Rebel" – 4:30
Side two
"Rock 'n' Roll with Me" – 3:57
"We Are the Dead" – 4:58
"1984" – 3:27
"Big Brother" – 3:21
"Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family" – 1:58
But Bowie didn’t just want to use themes from George Orwell’s 1984 on the record.
He initially hoped to turn the 1949 dystopian classic into a full-fledged musical of its own.
According to Christopher Sandford’s biography Bowie: Loving the Alien, the adaptation would've been “a West End musical, with an accompanying album and film.” But in a Rolling Stone interview with William S. Burroughs from February 1974—just months before the release of Diamond Dogs—Bowie himself mentioned he was “doing Orwell’s 1984 on television.” But thanks to Orwell’s widow, Sonia, the musical never progressed past the incubation stage.
“My office approached Mrs. Orwell, because I said, ‘Office, I want to do 1984 as a musical, go get me the rights,’” Bowie explained in 1993, “and they duly trooped off to see Mrs. Orwell, who in so many words said, ‘You’ve got to be out of your gourd, do you think I’m turning this over to that as a musical?’ So, they came back and said, ‘Sorry, David, you can’t write it.’”
Since Bowie had already started “putting bits of it down” in the studio, the surprise rejection forced him to pivot quickly. His ill-fated musical became a concept album with Orwellian overtones. Though Sonia Orwell passed away in 1980, Bowie never resurrected his original plans for her husband’s harrowing tale.
As was typical of Bowie, sound was preceded by vision. On Diamond Dogs, the extraterrestrial messiah that was Ziggy is gone and we encounter Bowie as half-man, half-dog.
Musically, the album creates a tension between dark and light, sinister, yet seductive. Positioned somewhere between glam rock (or in Bowie’s case art rock), soul/funk and the soon-to-arrive punk, Diamond Dogs is a transitional album. Bowie was always on the move.
Diamond Dogs features multiple tracks that bear direct influence from Orwell’s novel. Beginning with the opener ‘Future Legend’, Bowie introduces us to “Hunger City”, his own version of dystopia, where people are compared to “packs of dogs.” Although many of these lines are inspired by words from Burrough’s Naked Lunch, the image he paints is distinctively Orwellian.
And in the death
As the last few corpses lay rotting on the slimy
Thoroughfare
The shutters lifted in inches in Temperance Building
High on Poacher's Hill
And red, mutant eyes gaze down on Hunger City
No more big wheels
Fleas the size of rats sucked on rats the size of cats
And ten thousand peoploids split into small tribes
Coverting the highest of the sterile skyscrapers
Like packs of dogs assaulting the glass fronts of Love-Me Avenue
Ripping and rewrapping mink and shiny silver fox, now legwarmers
Family badge of sapphire and cracked emerald
Any day now
The Year of the Diamond Dogs
This ain't Rock'n'Roll
This is Genocide
However, there are three tracks on side two in which Bowie explicitly references Nineteen Eighty-Four. ‘We Are the Dead’ is named after a line from the book, which was most likely inspired by the poem ‘In Flanders Fields’ by John McCrae (1915).
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
1984
Someday they won't let you, now you must _________
The times they are a-telling, and the changing isn't _________
You've read it in the tea leaves, and the tracks are on TV
Beware the savage jaw
Of 1984
They'll split your pretty cranium and fill it full of _________
And tell that you're 80, but, brother, you won't _________
You'll be shooting up on anything, _________'s never there
Beware the savage jaw
Of 1984
Come see, come see, remember me?
We played out an all-night _________ role
You said it would last, but I guess we enrolled
In 1984 (Who could ask for more?)
1984 (Who could ask for mo-o-o-o-ore?)
I'm looking for a _________, I'm looking for a ride
I'm looking for a _________, I'm looking for a side
I'm looking for the treason that I knew in '65
Beware the savage jaw
Of 1984
BIG BROTHER
Don't talk of dust and ________
Or should we powder our ________?
Don't live for last year's capers
Give me steel, give me steel, give me pulsars unreal
He'll build a ________ asylum
With just a hint of mayhem
He'll build a better ________
We'll be living from ________
Then we can really ________
Please saviour, saviour, show us
Hear me, I'm graphically yours
Someone to claim us, someone to ________
Someone to shame us, some brave Apollo
Someone to ________ us, someone like you
We want you, Big Brother, Big Brother
I know you think you're awful ________
But you made everyone and you've been everywhere
Lord, I'd take an ________ if you knew what's going down
[…]
Watch the 1984 Summary video and fill in the blanks with the correct word or phrase.
Nineteen eighty-four is about _____________________.
George Orwell wrote 1984 in the late _____________________.
1984 takes place in _____________________.
The main character of 1984 is _____________________ .
At the beginning of the book he starts writing a _____________________.
Julia works in the same building as him. She's some kind of _____________________.
Winston and Julia go to O'Brien's house and confess that they want to be _____________________.
In the ministry of love they _____________________Winston in all sorts of horrible ways.
Winston and Julia are basically _____________________people after they get out.
The last words of the novel are 'he loved _____________________ _____________________.'
Discussion questions
What does a totalitarian government try to do?
What is the London in the book like?
Who is Big Brother?
How can the government watch you in your home?
What is the penalty for breaking the rules?
Why does Winston start writing a diary?
How does he feel about Julia?
Why does he accept O'Brien's invitation to his apartment?
Where are Winston and Julia taken by the police?
What happens there?
Why are they eventually released?
Keys:
