David Bowie 1974 Caricature

David Bowie 1974 Caricature, illustrated here from his photo shoot for his Diamond Dogs album, age 27.

David Robert Jones, known professionally as David Bowie was an English singer-songwriter and actor. He was a leading figure in the music industry and is considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century.

Diamond Dogs was released on May, 24, 1974 by RCA Records. Produced by Bowie himself and recorded in early 1974 at Olympic and Island Studios in London and Ludolph Studios in the Netherlands, it was Bowie’s first album to not feature contributions from his backing band the Spiders from Mars – comprising Mick Ronson, Trevor Bolder and Mick Woodmansey. Thematically, it is a marriage of the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell and Bowie’s own glam-tinged vision of a post-apocalyptic world.

Backed by the lead single “Rebel Rebel”, Diamond Dogs was a commercial success, peaking at No. 1 on the UK Albums Chart and No. 5 on the US Billboard 200.

Though the album was recorded and released after the ‘retirement’ of Ziggy Stardust in mid-1973, and featured its own lead character in Halloween Jack (“a real cool cat” who lives in the decaying “Hunger City”), Ziggy was seen to be still very much alive in Diamond Dogs, as evident from Bowie’s haircut on the cover.

On January 10, 2016, two days after his 69th birthday and the release of the album Blackstar, Bowie died from liver cancer in his New York City apartment. He had been diagnosed 18 months earlier but had not made the news of his illness public.