Iggy Pop

Lust For Life
RCA, 1977

David Bowie and Iggy Pop met each other as one was on the way up and the other was on the way out. Bowie had just released Hunky Dory and started work on the record that would catapult him to fame in the guise of spandex-loving space alien Ziggy Stardust. Pop meanwhile was in limbo. His band The Stooges had been dropped from the Elektra record label a few months earlier, after two albums of dark and guttural rock and roll that were critical and commercial flops. Decades later The Stooges and Fun House would be hailed as one of the major inspirations for a generation of punk and heavy metal bands, but in 1971 Pop was just another misfit with a heroin problem. Bowie encouraged the Detroit musician to move to London, where The Stooges reformed to record their third and final album of the period, Raw Power. Bowie's input as producer failed to make it much more popular than the previous two, and in 1974 the band called it quits (before suffering a collective mid-life crisis and reforming in 2005).

While The Stooges were embarking on their final tour, Bowie was reinventing himself after having retired his persona of Ziggy Stardust. He recorded an album inspired by George Orwell's sci-fi dystopia 1984 called Diamond Dogs, and then plundered Philadelphia soul music to create the pure pop of Young Americans. Rumours circled of his heavy cocaine use. He appeared on television shows gaunt, pale and nervous and began embodying a new character called The Thin White Duke. In 1976 he and Pop, who had tried to kick his heroin habit in a mental institution after the break-up of The Stooges, relocated to West Berlin together to dry themselves out. Sharing an apartment they created Pop's first solo records The Idiot and Lust For Life, with Bowie writing much of the music and Pop the lyrics. They charted higher than any of The Stooges records had and made him a bonafide rock and roll star, especially in Britain. In 1996 the title track of Lust For Life was introduced to a new generation as the theme song of sorts for heroin-chic film Trainspotting. Later still its drum beat – which was itself largely pilfered from the Motown classic 'You Can't Hurry Love' – was lifted without alteration and used by Jet in their 2003 hit 'Are You Gonna Be My Girl'.