Sleeve Talk

On a whim the other day I dug out my copy of David Bowie's "Diamond Dogs" album to play for the first time in donkey's years and looking at the sleeve reminded me just how freaky Bowie used to look and how I was a little creeped out by him when I was a kid. With his bony frame, dodgy eyes, wonky teeth, milk-bottle pallor and outlandish costumes he looked like a zombie in a gay horror film. I still remember back in 1973 going round a friend's house after school and his older sister had just bought a copy of "Aladdin Sane" which he got out to show me and we both stared at the sleeve photos — especially the one on the inside gatefold — as if we were sneaking a peek at his Dad's porn magazines, something about it looked a bit pervy and illicit. Sounds silly I know but I was only 10, and I loved science fiction too but Bowie seemed to be coming from a far weirder place than Star Trek.

Of all the iconic images on his 1970s sleeves the one on the front of "Diamond Dogs" is probably the freakiest, showing Bowie as some mutant half human-half dog stretching out across the gatefold like a depraved Ray Harryhausen creation. The original version of the painting was even more perverted with the dog half of Bowie proudly displaying his meat and two veg like a centerfold in Dog Fancy magazine, but when record label execs saw early proofs they worried that some shops wouldn't carry it so the poor old dog was neutered by having his todger airbrushed out.

The cover was painted by Belgian artist Guy Peellaert who had just published a book of paintings called "Rock Dreams" which depicted various rock legends (Dylan, Sam Cooke, Hank Williams, Bowie himself) in fantasy settings. Bowie saw an exhibition of the paintings at Biba and commissioned Peellaert to do the cover which apparently ticked off Mick Jagger as he was after him to do The Stones next album too. In the end Peellaert did both "Diamond Dogs" and "It's Only Rock and Roll" that year, though Bowie beat them to the shops by several months and his cover is far more striking. Take that, Mick.

"Diamond Dogs" was Bowie's last Glam Rock album and his last proper rock album of any kind for the rest of the decade and I think it's fallen through the cracks in his catalogue between his Ziggy pomp and the Thin White Duke/Berlin era and doesn't get the attention they do which is a shame as I think it's a better album than "Aladdin Sane" — though I'll resist the temptation to call it the dog's bollocks.

Download: Big Brother/Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family - David Bowie (mp3)
Buy: "Diamond Dogs" (album)