Dusted Down: “The Idiot” and “Lust For Life” by Iggy Pop

Lust For Life and The Idiot

This is the fourth in an occasional series where I look back on forgotten gems from the corners of my collection, giving me an excuse to listen closely to an album (or two in this case) I may have overlooked for some years.

The first two instalments covered 1978’s Comes A Time by Neil Young­, then Benny Profane’s debut album from 1989, Trapdoor Swing.

I’m now trying to make these features a little more regular and speedier, and to use them as a more concerted way to play albums I’ve not heard for a long time, with the most recent being a look back at Pere Ubu’s eighth studio album Worlds In Colllison from April 1991.

The selection process

As I’m rather anal, I have a detailed spreadsheet that contains various minutiae about all my CDs, including the date I last played it. I’m not so bad as to record every single play (which would be fascinating. To me at least!), but it means that (barring any errors) I know that there are around 1,400 discs I haven’t played since before October 2000, when I first started logging CD plays.

My Iggy collection

As for the Ubu feature, I used a simple random number-generated system, which guided me to select Iggy Pop’s second solo studio album, August 1977’s Lust For Life, for this piece from that list of c.1,400.

However, as I then noticed that his first LP, The Idiot from just five months earlier, was also on that list, I’m covering both at once.

The first thing to say is: the shame. How have I gone over two decades without listening to either of these albums? Wow!

The history lesson

Iggy Pop co-founded seminal proto-punk outfit The Stooges in 1967 with guitarist Ron Asheton, his brother Scott, and Dave Alexander on bass.

They broke up after two albums, reforming with a different line-up to make one more before calling it a day again in 1974.

I started digging into Iggy via The Stooges while at the University of Sheffield, first acquiring third album Raw Power from Sister Ray in Soho for £9.99 just before my third year in September 1990, and then the first two LPs three months later when back down south again, from Virgin on Oxford Street.

I then got hold of the infamous live album Metallic 2xKO from Jack’s in Sheffield for £8 in March 1991, finally picking up my first Iggy solo album, The Idiot, from Virgin for £6.65 four months later, which must have been special bulk deal, as I got The Doors’ fifth album Morrison Hotel for the same price that day.

It took me another eleven months to snap up Lust For Life from HMV on the same road in a 3-for-£19.99 purchase, together with Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks and the debut Bob Dylan album. As I have never managed to consider the former to be more than massively overrated, suffice it to say that Lust For Life is probably my favourite of those three.

The facts

Iggy joined long-time fan David Bowie (who had mixed Raw Power prior to release) on tour in 1976 to help promote Station To Station. Both men moved to northern France in an attempt to beat their drug addictions, where Bowie offered to produce an album for his hero, having initially only intended to help him with a single of the album’s opener.

Recording for The Idiot started in France in June 1976, being mixed in Berlin during August, with help from Tony Visconti. Bowie composed much of the music, with Iggy writing his lyrics to fit, although some were composed on the spot, a method later used by Bowie on his “Heroes” LP.

Roquairol by Erich Heckel

Lauren Thibault, formerly of Magma, owned the studio and played bass on some of the tracks.

The album was titled after Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel, with Erich Heckel‘s painting Roquairol inspiring the album’s cover photo (and then that of “Heroes”).

Bowie then recorded Low, which was issued ahead of The Idiot. After touring in March and April of 1977 in support of The Idiot, which was issued that March, with Bowie on keyboards, Iggy set about the follow-up.

Also on that tour were Ricky Gardiner on guitar (who later played on Lust For Life), as well as brothers Tony Fox and Hunt Sales on bass and drums, respectively. They had also both been in Runt with Todd Rundgren, and later reappeared in the less enjoyable Tin Machine.

Support on the tour came from Blondie who were promoting their eponymous debut album. Those would surely have been great nights.

The albums dusted down

Iggy described The Idiot as “a cross between James Brown and Kraftwerk”, which is a little bit of a stretch if you ask me, as there’s not all that much soulful funkiness in evidence!

The Idiot

Sister Midnight kicks things off in a nicely brooding way, with some farty synths and Iggy’s deep voice, which some reviewers have compared to Jim Morrison of The Doors.

It was released as the pre-album single in February 1977, getting absolutely nowhere. It’s the only track on the LP not written by just the two main men, as Bowie originally wrote it with Carlos Alomar, before Iggy added his words. It was later reworked with new lyrics as the swirlier Red Money, the closing track on May 1979’s Bowie album Lodger.

Nightclubbing was the last song recorded for the album with most of the musicians having already left. Bowie wanted to replace the drum machine backing with real drums but Iggy refused, saying “It kicks ass, it’s better than a drummer.”

Iggy’s almost crooning on this number, which bears the marks of some krautrock influences. It’s been said that the riff is based on Gary Glitter, but I’m not overly convinced by that.

The spidery guitar work is by Phil Palmer, whose uncles are Ray and Dave Davies!

This song was memorably, stiltingly covered by Grace Jones as the title track to her May 1981 LP (somehow the NME’s album of the year…), as well as on the Holiday ‘80 EP by The Human League, which I have as a bonus track on second album Travelogue.

Obscure fact fans may be interested to learn that the kick drum was sampled by Nine Inch Nails on Closer from The Downward Spiral in 1994, though I’ve not bothered to listen to that.

Funtime, marginally the shortest cut on the record, is a bit woozy and muddy, with a nicely atonal guitar solo. The backing vocals seem to be a slightly different tune. This was originally titled Fun Fun Fun and was inspired by Iggy hearing the Sex Pistols’ cover of No Fun by The Stooges.

Funtime has been compared to both Neu! and The Velvet Underground, with Lila Engel from Neu! 2 supposedly the main ‘inspiration’, as I think you can tell:

This song has been covered a few times, including by Peter Murphy from Bauhaus on his 1988 solo LP Love Hysteria, which was almost certainly the first time I heard the song, as I think I had a copy of that album courtesy of schoolmate Stu.

It’s also been done by R.E.M. and Blondie, even being taken to the verge of the Top 40 by Boy George in April 1995.

Baby seems like a bit of a filler and was in fact the b-side to the Sister Midnight single. It’s led by the bass and synths, not drums, and feels a little cabaret-esque.

China Girl is much less poppy than Bowie’s version, somewhat gloomier and darker, and without his grandiose vocal leaps. This was released as the second 7” off the album in May 1977, again failing to chart, unlike Bowie’s version which peaked at #2 (behind The Police’s Every Breath You Take) in June 1983, one of four weeks it spent in the UK Top 10 as it sold an estimated 471,000 copies, making it the fourth biggest single of the year (and far ahead of Every Breath You Take, which topped the charts for four weeks, curiously).

The song is led by distorted guitar and synths, originally being titled Borderline. It’s apparently the tale of unrequited love inspired by Kuelan Nguyen, partner of French actor-singer Jacques Higelin, who was then also recording at the same château.

The “Shhh…” line was a direct quote from Nguyen after Pop confessed his feelings for her one night, with most of the lyrics being improvised at the microphone.

Side two opens with Dum Dum Boys, which is most notable for the great guitar work. The title and concept for the track (the tale of The Stooges) came from Bowie.

Tiny Girls starts with some great sax work by Bowie, which features again later in the song. This number sits between the two longest tracks and is a bit of a jazz-influenced palate cleanser.

Unsurprisingly, this has been recorded by fewer other artists than many tracks on this album, but has been done quite effectively by Depeche Mode’s Martin L. Gore on his 2003 debut solo LP Counterfeit²:

Mass Production features some nice Roxy Music-era Eno-esque sounds, with the first minute being Thibault’s tape loops.

Bowie again inspired the concept for this song. Iggy said, “He just said, ‘I want you to write a song about mass production’, because I would always talk to him about how much I admired the beauty of the American industrial culture that was rotting away where I grew up.”

This is quite a slow, downbeat ending to the record.

Lust For Life begins with some twiddly, funky guitar parts that I had completely forgotten, possibly by Carlos Alomar who is on lead guitar.

Lust For Life

The whole band is on fire in fact on the instrumental intro, subtly so, not in a show-offy way, with the drums, bass and piano all getting brief moments in the spotlight before Iggy semi-sneers his way in. Kudos also to the great, howling backing vocals.

It gained a totally new lease of life when it was featured in an iconic scene in the Trainspotting movie in 1996, having already apparently been in Desperately Seeking Susan!

It’s been covered by a range of artists from the sublime (The Smithereens did it in quite a rock-y version as a 12” bonus track in 1988) to the ridiculous (Mötley Crüe and Tom Jones with The Pretenders).

Sixteen is the shortest track on this LP and is the only song which uses Iggy’s music as well as his lyrics. It reminds me of The Fall a little, perhaps vocally most of all.

Some Weird Sin is very perky musically, with a jaunty little guitar riff, but is very much an album track.

The Passenger’s music was written by Ricky Gardiner, with probably the best tune on the album. The vocals are also great, dirtied up a little and sometimes with some ace backing vocals.

I think I knew this first from the version by the Siouxsie And The Banshees that is featured on their 1987 covers LP Through The Looking Glass that I bought on cassette back in the day, and somehow have never got round to replacing on CD.

It was released as the second single off that Banshees album, but only scraped to #41 in the UK chart, with the preceding This Wheel’s On Fire from the same album having done much better, reaching #14.

Weirdly, it’s been recorded by famed trouser-splitter P.J. Proby on a 1986 12” led off by a suitably histrionic version of Bowie’s Heroes. This version is almost entirely spoken word and is really quite strange. Listen if you feel ready:

Tonight, the side closer, starts with a very Bowie-esque backing vocal chant, and he also features notably behind the choruses. However, the song suffers slightly from some rather naff keyboards towards the end.

Success features a great vocal backing chorus and is another number whose musical backing often sounds like a late-70’s Bowie track.

It rather entertainingly all nearly collapses at the end, although the backing chorus manages to keep up with the words as they somewhat spiral out of control: “I’m gonna do the twist. I’m gonna hop like a frog. I’m gonna go out on the street and do anything I want. Oh shit.”

Duran Duran covered this (pretty poorly) on their lambasted 1995 covers album Thank You (also including songs originally by the likes of Public Enemy and Led Zeppelin), making it sound like a Gary Glitter number. That LP was voted as the worst album of all time by Q readers in 2006!

Advert for Lust For Life

As a sidebar, I own two of Q’s supposedly ten worst albums ever made – Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music perhaps unsurprisingly featured highly, as (much more unfairly) did My Beauty by Kevin Rowland.

Turn Blue, the longest track on the LP, has music by Warren Peace, who sang backing on a number of Bowie albums. He plays keyboards and sings back-up on this rather meandering song, another to feature Carlos Alomar on lead guitar. This is undoubtedly the weakest link on the record.

Things only pick up a little with Neighborhood Threat, which is fairly forgettable as well, but benefits from some nice (very) background Bowie-sounding vocals.

Album closer Fall In Love With Me features the core band of Iggy and Bowie joined by Tony Sales, Hunt Sales and Ricky Gardiner. The backing track sounds like a Bowie song circa Lodger and ensures the album goes out on a bit of a (fairly monotonous) high.

Like every other solo Iggy album I’ve heard, both of these records are patchy, but the highs are pretty high and the lows aren’t horribly low. I’d certainly recommend these as the starting point for any exploration of his post-Stooges work – The Idiot and then Lust For Life, I’d say.

It’s hard to estimate how much of the credit should go to Bowie, but I’m pretty sure neither album would be anything like as good without his influence, even if they’d managed to be recorded.

What happened next

The Idiot hit #30 in the UK (by far his highest placing to date) and #72 in the US. Lust For Life just outdid that in the UK by reaching #28 but only made it to #120 in the US.

Iggy didn’t get near the Top 30 again until twice in the 2010’s when Post Pop Depression made #5 in March 2016 and Free got to #26 in September 2019, its only week on the chart.

Real Wild Child (Wild One) 7″

As a statto sidenote, his only top 10 single in the UK came with Real Wild Child (Wild One) from Blah-Blah-Blah in January 1987.

Lust For Life and The Passenger both made the top 30 of the UK singles chart in the later 1990s, following the Trainspotting boost.

The next Iggy album to appear after these two was Kill City, just two months after Lust For Life, with James Williamson credited jointly. However, this had originally been recorded as a demo in 1975.

The proper follow-up was New Values in September 1979, which is a decent album, enlivened greatly by a pair of Iggy classics in I’m Bored and Five Foot One (though perhaps the less said, the better, about African Man).

Things headed downhill for a while after that, such that I only own two of the fifteen (!) solo LPs that came after New Values, plus copies of two more on tape: Blah-Blah-Blah and the HM guitar-heavy (courtesy of the Pistols’ Steve Jones) Instinct. Every one of the others seems to get an “alright” review, but rarely piques my interest sufficiently, as you can tell.

So that means I have copies of just seven of his eighteen solo LPs, which is likely to remain the case, as there are no others on my radar now, having recently picked up New Values and Zombie Birdhouse.

The other album I have that’s not yet been mentioned is 1999’s rather downbeat Avenue B (purchased in Munich in the October of that year, unusually) which features several spoken word pieces, the somewhat risqué Nazi Girlfriend (“I want to fuck her on the floor among my books of ancient lore, so I will make a full report… Her French is perfect, so’s her butt.”) and a fairly unnecessary cover of Johnny Kidd & The Pirates’ Shakin’ All Over.

Just to bring things down at the end of this article, it’s worth noting that The Idiot has another, darker place in musical history as it was the last record that Joy Division’s Ian Curtis listened to before hanging himself in May 1980.

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Playlist

Here are the two LPs in full: