“Future Legend” by David Bowie

David Bowie's Diamond Dogs, released by RCA on May 24, 1974, doesn't so much start as crawl out of the rubble, and "Future Legend" is the crawl. Barely a minute long, it opens on a distorted howl, and then Bowie, speaking rather than singing, conjures a ruined Manhattan renamed Hunger City, overrun by giant vermin and by humans gone feral as dog packs. The narration has drawn comparisons to William Burroughs, Naked Lunch especially.

Halfway through, the Richard Rodgers tune "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" drifts in, a credit printed on the original vinyl but dropped from most CDs, before the track tumbles straight into the album's title song. Bowie wrote, arranged and produced it himself, mixing it with engineer Keith Harwood, and as curtain-raisers for glam's end of days go, it's a doozy.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.