I remember hearing about how, due to the fact that Diamond Dogs was failing to gain traction upon its release in 1974, that MainMan (Bowie's Promo Co.) decided to go for a "Hail Mary" pass and cut a TV spot and run it on Saturday mornings in the US in the hopes of recruiting young teens. It sure worked with my friends and I--the next Monday at school it was all we could talk about - "Did you see him? What did he say in the commercial?" etc. (I think he says - "All right? That alright?" ) It created such a buzz that I really think it helped rope many of us in who at that point were a bit too young to have experienced Ziggy. The cheesy "Scooby Doo-esque" opening smacked of Saturday morning cartoons/commercials, it was enough to spook suburban parents, and that I remember it this well (along with friends) makes me think it was a bit of a masterstroke (and I think I bought it the next day)







Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2009-08-15 21:28 by hbwriter.

What does Bowie & Iggy have in common? Must love dogs!

"by Bowie" -- his only album credited as such (I think PIN-UPS just said "Bowie" on the cover but the label said "David Bowie").

This ad for DAVID LIVE is interesting -- the performance footage doesn't look like it was filmed at an actual show, it must have been specifically for this commercial:







Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2009-08-16 02:04 by Glam Descendant.

......David looks like he's really rolling....on something....while filming that commercial......

Terrific advert. I wish bands would do that now.
I remember the one for Pink FLoyd's Animals on TV, too.

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Glam Descendant
"by Bowie" -- his only album credited as such (I think PIN-UPS just said "Bowie" on the cover but the label said "David Bowie").

This ad for DAVID LIVE is interesting -- the performance footage doesn't look like it was filmed at an actual show, it must have been specifically for this commercial:

Looks like they spent tens of dollars on that one...

[/quote]Looks like they spent tens of dollars on that one...[/quote]


ROTF LMAO You took the words right out of my mouth. The DD one cost about $25 and took less than 25 minutes to make, The DL one actually had an impressive special effect but the cheesy announcer and the ridiculous "live" content (Bowie's dancing during some sort of rehearsal) make it quite laughable by any modern standard.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2009-08-16 06:21 by Duane in Houston.

There was also a TV ad for Lennon's MIND GAMES but I couldn't find it on youtube. Involved someone playing the Queen as I recall.

Still love the album. "1984" is one of my favorites. Hear the wah wah, man!!

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Duane in Houston
The DL one actually had an impressive special effect but the cheesy announcer and the ridiculous "live" content (Bowie's dancing during some sort of rehearsal) make it quite laughable by any modern standard.

It's not fair to judge things by a "modern" standard, but that ad was done on the heep cheep even then.

I recall there were also TV ads for Lou Reed's Sally Can't Dance and Nilsson's Pussy Cats, so there seems to be a concentration of television marketing from RCA around 1974.


Re: Diamond Dogs...I just picked up a used copy of the 30th Anniversary edition last Saturday. Hadn't played my vinyl copy in years and years.

It was the album that was his big breakthrough.

Bowie became FM staple in the U.S. with the release of Ziggy in '72, and got tons of airplay with the reissue of "Space Oddity" that year, plus the tracks "Hang On To Yourself" and "Suffragette City" from Ziggy,

"Changes" from the previous album was in heavy rotation, as was "Let's Spend the Night Together" and "Panic In Detroit" from Aladin Sane. His cover of "Sorrow" also got a lot of airplay on the FM rock stations.

But "Rebel Rebel" in '74, and the Diamond Dogs album was his real commercial success. Creem reported at the time that it wasn't until '74 that the Ziggy Stardust album went gold!

I wonder if that was just imprecise accounting, or if it was an accurate reflection of the cultural resistance to Bowie. I started high school in '72, and I can tell you there was a lot of hesitation among the majority of kids to embrace Bowie at that time, due to what is now called homophobia.

Eventually those muscular Mick Ronson riffs won over the Humble Pie set, but I don't think the guys who owned Canned Heat albums ever got on board.


Anyway, Diamond Dogs after all these years was a better listen than I recall. When released it seemed unfocused and murky, compared to the previous couple of albums done with Ronson on guitar and Ken Scott producing. Hearing it now, the murkiness sounds like a strength!

As was noted at the time, "Rebel, Rebel" was Bowie "doing" the Stones-1964. It's one of those Songs I Wish The Stones Had Done. ("You Shook Me All Night Long" being another)

As I posted on another Bowie thread, I love the final track, "Chant..." I think it's one of the best things Bowie has ever done. On college radio, I played it and then segued to the instrumental "The Phone Call" from the Pretenders first album. The two worked really well together.

Another thought...the 35-year old Diamond Dogs album, which started out as a musical of Nineteen Eighty-Four, came out 26 years after Orwell's book. To me, it seems like society ch-ch-changed a lot more in the 1948-1974 period, than '74-2009, but maybe that's all just based on the perspective of my age. I'm curious if the fifty-somethings/plus agree with that, and what the younger posters think.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2009-08-16 17:53 by loog droog.

One of the interesting things about Bowie was that he and his manager, Tony DeFries, conciously decided to market and present Bowie, particlarly in the USA as an established "Star" which, of course, at that time he certainly was not. He was virtually unknown in the US when Ziggy came out and was pretty much only a cult phenomenon in England. Through carefully targeted interviews and the use of props like limosines and first class hotel accomodations the American press treated him as a star even though he never had a "hit" record in the U.S. and his overall album sales were lack-luster at best. He always head-lined in the US starting with his Ziggy tour which pretty much went under the Radar until he made the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. At that point people started getting interested in him and his remarkably good record, Ziggy, came out. Even then he never even dented the American charts. This was a period of great concern by everyone in the Bowie camp. MainMan was hemmoraging money trying to keep up the SuperStar act without really bringing any money in. They were basically broke. Like you said, Bowie never had any action in the American charts until Rebel Rebel which gave them hope. I believe Fame as well as Young Americans eventually righted the ship at which point Bowie left DeFries. I don't think Bowie ever really sold a lot of records. I think he was a cult favorite like Lou Reed or Roxy Music, darlings of the critics but just outside of the mainstream. I became a huge fan after someone turned me onto Ziggy in college in 1973. Soon after that I saw him at The Tower Theatre in Philadelpia which became the David Live record (a true miss-calculation on Bowie's part) and the Station To Station Tour in Pittsburgh a little later on. A few years after that I saw him on the Low (or Hero's) tour and he had lost his edginess at that point and I turned my musical interests elsewhere. You just can't beat those Visconti produced records with Mick Ronson on guitar. Those were the best.

Interesting post, Duane.

Funny thing, even before he hit "big" Bowie was making a splash with records for other people, like Transformer for Lou Reed. "Walk On the Wild Side" basically introduced Lou to the world....his VU material was...well, underground to all but a tiny tiny percentage of the music-listening public. [If all the people who now say the were into the Velvets in the '60's had actually bought the records, White Light White Heat would have been triple platinum! I'm also skeptical of people who say they listened to Big Star in the '70's....yeah, right.]

Another big Bowie production was "All the Young Dudes" for Mott the Hoople. If anything, his extra-curricular work expanded the notion of his importance, and created that illusion of stardom you reference.

A common dismissal among rock fans in '73 was that Bowie was a "hype"--a big phony marketing ploy. Not so far from the truth, although he did have talent.

Based on airplay, I'd say Bowie or Reed were a little beyond "cult" status, whereas Roxy Music in the U.S.--at least until Siren and "Love Is The Drug"-- fell into that slot.


As interesting as later stuff like Station to Station and Low was, I also liked him best when Ronson was his right hand man. I think the general thought at the time was Mick was Bowie's Keith.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2009-08-17 01:19 by loog droog.

[www.davidbowietribute.com]

Always been a big Bowie fan since Ziggy and loved Space Oddity when it came out in '69.

I remember that I was a bit reserved to my friends being a Bowie fan because of his (as loog droog mentioned) "homophobia" act, but I turned them all to Bowie fans.

Golden period the Mick Ronson time although he did some great things after that, saw him in 1976.

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That was terrific, thanks!

Bowie creating a song -- this is hilarious:

that's one of the best clips of anything i've ever seen in my life - seriously - i'm agape

Glad you enjoyed it. What makes it particularly work is that the song itself really does sound like a Bowie composition (which I suppose it is). Anyway, yeah, really hysterical. "Pug pug!"

That clip is a riot!

Dangerous too....yesterday I sent it to a friend who was home resting after getting a vasectomy...he wrote me today and said he laughed so hard he nearly ripped a stitch!

Thanks for a good laugh.