David Bowie - Nineteen Eighty-four (1974)

In 1974 David Bowie was looking towards his next project, and in a Rolling Stone interview with William Burroughs that February he casually mentioned that he would be doing George Orwell's '1984' on television. This then expanded to become a planned adaptation as a West End musical, with an accompanying album and film. He had written some new songs, and plans were progressing, but disaster struck when Orwell’s widow and executor of his estate, Sonia Orwell, didn’t like Bowie’s ideas for bringing the book to life, so she denied him the rights. One of apparently 20 new songs written for the project, '1984/Dodo', was premiered on the TV special 'The 1980 Floor Show', but attempts to write an actual script with the American playwright Tony Ingrassia had come to nothing. Bowie was reportedly furious when Sonia Orwell refused permission for his rock musical, saying "For a person who married a socialist with communist leanings, she was the biggest upper-class snob I’ve ever met in my life." Doubtless, Sonia did hate the idea, but then she had approved almost no adaptations in any medium since the fiasco of the 1956 movie, and she certainly didn’t meet Bowie, refusing permission with no discussions. His eighth studio album, initially titled 'We Are The Dead', was therefore a salvage operation, although he did say at the time "To be quite honest with you… the whole thing was originally 19-bloody-84. She put the clappers on the musical by saying no, so I, at the last minute, quickly changed it into a new concept album called 'Diamond Dogs'. I didn’t ever want to do 'Diamond Dogs' as a stage musical; what I wanted was '1984'." 
We can therefore only surmise, via its few surviving songs, what Bowie’s adaptation would have been like. He seems most intrigued by the concept of absolute authority, the quisling culture over which it rules and how the mind seems eager to condone and accept it. For Bowie, this situation only meant that the endgame he had imagined as far back as 'The Supermen' or 'Cygnet Committee' was coming to pass soon, and in songs like '1984' he seemed to welcome it. We know from various sources that the obvious songs from 'Diamond Dogs' - '1984', 'We Are The Dead', and 'Big Brother' - were originally destined for the stage show, but in a 2008 interview, Bowie told the Mail On Sunday that the 'Sweet Thing' medley was also written for the '1984' musical. 'Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing', which was written using William Burrough's cut-up method, would have been a centre-piece to the stage production, as Bowie thought it would be evocative to wander between the melodramatic 'Sweet Thing' croon into the dirty sound of 'Candidate' and back again. As well as '1984' itself, he also recorded the '1984/Dodo' medley from the 'The 1980 Floor Show', plus 'Dodo' on its own, and a longer, more stripped-back version of 'Candidate' than the one that ended up on 'Diamond Dogs'. While we really have no idea of what the musical would have sounded like, we have almost enough songs to try to piece it together, and so by adding in the afore-mentioned 'Cygnet Committee' (which does have some themes which fit nicely on here), and replacing the 'Diamond Dogs' version of 'Candidate' in the 'Sweet Thing' medley, we end up with a 40 minute album of what could possibly be the starting point for the '1984' musical project. This is all pure conjecture, of course, but has been a lot of fun for me and correspondent Norman Crowther to put together after some intensive online research, so enjoy the fruits of our labours on an album that all Bowie fans really do wish existed. 

Track listing
  
01 1984
02 Cygnet Committee
03 Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing
04 Dodo
05 We Are The Dead
06 Big Brother
07 1984/Dodo (Reprise)