FEATURE:
Funtime
Iggy Pop’s The Idiot at Forty-Five
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THERE is a bit to cover off…
IN THIS PHOTO: Iggy Pop and David Bowie during the tour for Pop’s 1977 album, The Idiot/PHOTO CREDT: Rex Features, via Associated Press
when it comes to the upcoming forty-fifth anniversary of Iggy Pop’s The Idiot. Released on 18th March 1977, it was released following the breakup of The Stooges in 1974 (the band since reformed), it was co-written by David Bowie. He also produced the album. I often wonder whether The Idiot is more a collaborative album that an Iggy Pop solo album. I am not sure if that is a concept. Like, today, Charli XCX and Taylor Swift recording songs together and producing together. It is definitely something that should happen more. Struggling addiction and compelled to rehabilitate and stop, Pop accepted an invitation to accompany David Bowie on his Isolar Tour. Bowie was also struggling with drug addiction (1977’s Station to Station found him heavily involved with cocaine). The fact was each wanted to help the other. Bowie agreed to produce the album, and, between them, they created something wonderful! Even if The Idiot is a dark album and is a tough listen in places, it has endured and influenced so many others. I will come to the impact of the album soon. Before then, there are articles and reviews that are worth combining, just so we can get a feeling of how important and enduring The Idiot is. Maybe not as regarded and acclaimed as Pop’s next album, Lust for Life (also released in 1977), The Idiot is a fascinating album that features some of Pop’s best tracks. UNSUNG discussed the brilliance of The Idiot, and the fact both Iggy Pop and David Bowie were in bad places in 1976 (it was recorded between June and August of that year):
“In the middle of the 1970s David Bowie and Iggy Pop were both struggling with the demons of their drug addictions. Iggy Pop had destroyed his mind through heroin and David Bowie had numbed his emotions through cocaine.
Iggy Pop had struggled with substance abuse throughout his tenure as the frontman of The Stooges. The band fired bassist Dave Alexander in August 1970 because he was an alcoholic and the band broke up for the first time in July 1971 (the same month Jim Morrison died). The band then briefly reunited in 1972 to record Raw Power. Their roadie and touring bassist Zeke Zettner died of a heroin overdose at the age of 25 in 1973. The Stooges broke up for a second and final time in 1974. Dave Alexander died at the age of 27 due to his alcoholism in 1975.
Iggy Pop checked himself into a drug rehabilitation clinic in a mental hospital in Los Angeles in 1975. During that same year David Bowie's cocaine psychosis was rapidly spiraling out of control as he recorded the sessions for Station to Station in Cherokee Studios.
In 1976 David Bowie left L.A. behind to return to Europe. He invited Iggy Pop to embark with him on this voyage. David Bowie had already begun to immerse himself in the experimentation of Krautrock pioneers such as Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger of Neu! (whose incorporation of industrial noise on the track "Negativland" from their December 1971 sessions for their self-titled debut would later inspire Bowie's Berlin period especially the opening track "Speed of Life" from Low.)
Fun House was recorded in a frenetic and furious two weeks in Los Angeles with an acid-fueled Iggy who was only 23 years young. L.A. was the city of hell for Iggy. The album cover of Fun House showed Iggy swarming and writhing in a fiery maelstrom. In complete contrast Iggy's solo debut was recorded during multiple months in a series of sessions at the Chateau d'Herouville in France as well as Musicland Studios in Munich. It sounds different than any other album he ever created.
The album cover of The Idiot showed Iggy standing and staring into the void surrounded by falling snow. Iggy was contemplative and introspective on the cover and in the songs. He was reflecting on the ruins and wreckage of his past.
The Idiot saved Iggy from certain self-destruction.
It was also musically innovative.
The original Rolling Stone review aptly summarized The Idiot as "the most savage indictment of rock posturing ever recorded" and "a necrophiliac's delight."
The album's songs can be split into three categories: 1.) tormented love/lust ballads ("Baby" / "China Girl" / "Tiny Girls") which were already part of Iggy's lyrical consciousness (examples from The Stooges are "Ann" & "Dirt"); 2.) celebrations of Berlin's nocturnal culture ("Nightclubbing" / "Funtime"); 3.) autobiographical exorcisms ("Sister Midnight" / "Dum Dum Boys").
"Sister Midnight' is the bastardized '70s child of The Doors' "The End"--Iggy's Oedipal dream of sex with his mother and being hunted by his father. It is an amalgam of funk and Krautrock led by Carlos Alomar's menacing and super cool guitar.
"Nightclubbing" is a decadent 1930s German cabaret piano combined with a drum machine. It's dance music for zombies.
"Funtime" is The Stooges' visceral hard rock turned inside out and transformed into a horror movie train stop party.
"Dum Dum Boys" is Iggy's detached and weary farewell to his 20s as he entered his 30s. It is a poignant and soul-searching lament for his former bandmates who disappeared and vanished. It lays the foundation for post-punk.
The closing track "Mass Production" was Iggy's dissection of industrial life. As he said in the book Gimme Danger: "I would always talk to Bowie about how much I admired the beauty of the American industrial culture that was rotting away where I grew up. Like the beautiful smokestacks and factories—whole cities devoted to factories." "Mass Production" is a dystopian nightmare with mechanical sounds sampled on tape loops grinding away harshly while Iggy groans and moans disturbing lyrics concerning dehumanization.
"I like to drive along the freeways
See the smokestacks belching
Breasts turn brown
So warm and so brown
Though I try to die
You put me back on the line
Oh damn it to hell
Back on the line, hell
Back on the line
Again and again
I'm back on the line
Again and again
And I see my face here
And it's there in the mirror
And it's up in the air
And I'm down in the ground"
The Idiot heavily influenced countless bands and musicians including Ian Curtis (of Joy Division) who committed suicide while listening to its bleak hallucinations.
The Idiot's title was taken from Fyodor Dostoevsky's philosophical novel. It is the darkest and greatest album of Iggy Pop's career”.
Quite a moment of recovery and resurgence for Iggy Pop in 1977. After the dissolvement of The Stooges and struggles with addictions, things could have gone a different way for Pop were it not for The Idiot and the support of David Bowie. I wonder whether Pop and Bowie knew, when making the album, that this was something that would inspire and motivate both of them to such a degree! Far Out Magazine wrote about The Idiot last year and highlighted how it turned things around for Iggy Pop:
“Over a tape-loop of industrial noise, the landscape of The Idiot was crafted by two of the greatest musical architects ever. It was this gritty, urbanise, creative expanse that resurged Pop’s artistry, as he once told Bowie, “I admired the beauty of the American industrial culture that was rotting away where I grew up.” This notion of recapturing youth became the lifeblood of the record, much in the same way the Stooges’ visceral energy is built on youth’s passion. This upsurge led to a slew of songs, which were later taken back to Berlin to be polished up at the legendry Hansa Studio’s where Tony Visconti would assist with the final mixes.
At this stage, it might be expected that I eulogise the brilliance of the record and betray opinions about ‘Nightclubbing’ featuring the greatest production and drum-sound in music. However, its legacy stretches beyond the sumptuous strength of the record. It is no exaggeration to save that it saved Iggy’s creatively, and it may have even saved his life full stop.
The Idiot charted at 72 in the US; it broke the top 30 in the UK and was a hit in Berlin and beyond. The title of the record is taken from the Fydor Dostoyevsky novel of the same name, and as if it was woven into place by some mystic figures of fate, Pop and Dostoyevsky traversed a very similar path. The two artists shared issues with excesses, greatness, threats of the gulag or institutions, brushes with being forgotten and a way of capturing life with veracity but eviscerating all the banal burdens that realism can sometimes entail.
Ultimately both artists now reside rightfully amongst the greats, but without The Idiot, it would have been very different”.
I will finish with reviews for the magnificent The Idiot. In terms of the legacy and the album’s standing through the years, Wikipedia collated facts about its impact and importance:
“Although reviewers consider The Idiot good in its own right, Pop's fans have criticized the album as unrepresentative of his repertoire and as evidence of his being "co-opted" by Bowie for the latter's own ends. In his contemporary review of the record, Riegel comments, "As the star of The Idiot ... Iggy Pop seems more under David Bowie's manipulative thumb than ever before, a condition that can be taken as positive or negative. Furthermore, Jones described it as his "second favorite David Bowie album". When reviewing Lust for Life, Pete Makowski of Sounds magazine felt The Idiot suffered from "being a part of Bowie's come down," calling it "a Low disco platter". O'Leary considers The Idiot a Bowie album just as much as a Pop one. Although Bowie's "Berlin Trilogy" is said to consist of Low, "Heroes", and Lodger (1979), O'Leary argues the true "Berlin Trilogy" consists of The Idiot, Low, and "Heroes", with Lust for Life a "supplement" and Lodger an "epilogue". Bowie himself later admitted:
Poor [Iggy], in a way, became a guinea pig for what I wanted to do with sound. I didn't have the material at the time, and I didn't feel like writing at all. I felt much more like laying back and getting behind someone else's work, so that album was opportune, creatively.
Bowie later re-worked "Sister Midnight" with new lyrics as "Red Money" on Lodger, while his version of "China Girl" on 1983's Let's Dance became a major hit. Bowie and the Sales brothers would reunite in the late 1980s and early 1990s to make up three-quarters of the rock band Tin Machine. Siouxsie Sioux of Siouxsie and the Banshees described it as "re-affirmation that our suspicions were true – the man was a genius and what a voice! The sound and production is so direct and uncompromised." The album has been cited as a major influence on post-punk, industrial, and gothic rock artists, including Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails, and Joy Division; the latter of the three formed in the months between the releases of Low and The Idiot. Pegg writes that their debut album Unknown Pleasures (1979) drew heavily on the "industrial soundscapes" and "relentless percussion" of tracks like "Nightclubbing" and "Mass Production", also noting that The Idiot was still playing on the turntable of the band's singer Ian Curtis when he was found having committed suicide in 1980. In addition, Seabrook cites "Mass Production" as an influence on modern alternative rock acts like the Smashing Pumpkins and Radiohead. In 2011, Killing Joke's Youth described The Idiot as one of his 13 favorite albums. In 1981, Grace Jones covered "Nightclubbing" as the title track to her album of the same name. Pop's version of "Nightclubbing" provided the kick drum sound for Nine Inch Nails' 1994 song "Closer". Pitchfork would later rank The Idiot number 96 in its list of the 100 Best Albums of the 1970s in 2004. The aggregate website Acclaimed Music lists The Idiot as the 20th most acclaimed album of 1977, the 172nd most acclaimed album of the 1970s and the 612th most acclaimed album in history”.
Although it must have been idyllic to record at Château d'Hérouville - and things seemed smooth, continuing like that when they located to continue work in August 1976 at Musicland Studios in Munich -, The Idiot could have been a mess. Iggy Pop was not necessarily in the best frame of mind but, as Bowie showed on albums like Station to Station, he can produce magnificent work when gripped by addiction issues – though, of course, artists are definitely more productive and better off clean and sober! I want to finish with some critical impression of The Idiot. AllMusic observed this in their review:
“In 1976, the Stooges had been gone for two years, and Iggy Pop had developed a notorious reputation as one of rock & roll's most spectacular waste cases. After a self-imposed stay in a mental hospital, a significantly more functional Iggy was desperate to prove he could hold down a career in music, and he was given another chance by his longtime ally, David Bowie. Bowie co-wrote a batch of new songs with Iggy, put together a band, and produced The Idiot, which took Iggy in a new direction decidedly different from the guitar-fueled proto-punk of the Stooges. Musically, The Idiot is of a piece with the impressionistic music of Bowie's "Berlin Period" (such as Heroes and Low), with it's fragmented guitar figures, ominous basslines, and discordant, high-relief keyboard parts. Iggy's new music was cerebral and inward-looking, where his early work had been a glorious call to the id, and Iggy was in more subdued form than with the Stooges, with his voice sinking into a world-weary baritone that was a decided contrast to the harsh, defiant cry heard on "Search and Destroy." Iggy was exploring new territory as a lyricist, and his songs on The Idiot are self-referential and poetic in a way that his work had rarely been in the past; for the most part the results are impressive, especially "Dum Dum Boys," a paean to the glory days of his former band, and "Nightclubbing," a call to the joys of decadence. The Idiot introduced the world to a very different Iggy Pop, and if the results surprised anyone expecting a replay of the assault of Raw Power, it also made it clear that Iggy was older, wiser, and still had plenty to say; it's a flawed but powerful and emotionally absorbing work”.
To finish off, I want to highlight Pitchfork’s review of The Idiot. In a year where Iggy Pop put out the magnificent Lust for Life, and David Bowie released Low and “Heroes”, The Idiot arrived. Low came out a couple of months before The Idiot, and it is amazing to think how fertile and productive Bowie was in 1976/1977! This is what Pitchfork say:
“The Idiot, Pop’s solo debut, decisively shut the gates on his time with the Stooges. Where once he was infernal and freewheeling, he now became cool and restrained by Bowie’s careful, calculated producer’s hand. He still sang in a tone of abjection, still retained his sense of being a debased and decrepit subject, but where he once showed a grimace he now wore a smirk. His Cold War surroundings provoked icy, glib reflections; taking cues from Kraftwerk over in Düsseldorf, Bowie and Pop adopted cool detachment as a primary artistic mode.
Predictably, The Idiot enraged those who championed the Stooges for their unhindered squalls; the legendary music critic Lester Bangs called it “phony bullshit.” And it’s easy to see how a voice beloved for its fire would turn fans cold after dimming its spark. But by reining in Pop, Bowie and his effete European sensibilities drew out a new range of nuance in the singer. The Idiot may lack fury, but it compensates with sardonic humor and perfectly tuned melodrama—both tools that would become wildly popular across all artistic media in the 1980s.
Against clipped percussion, whining guitars, and thin synthesizer tones, Pop’s voice turns barbed and sour on The Idiot. The closest he comes to unfiltered emotion is “Dum Dum Boys,” an elegy of sorts for the Stooges, and even there his keening is ringed with a sneer. Mostly, he sounds distant; the sleazy, hilarious “Nightclubbing” is less an ode to Berlin’s vibrant nightlife than it is a monument to alienation—the numbness of being among people in their moments of joy and sharing none of it. Pop’s circular lyrics reveal the song’s emptiness: “We see people/Brand new people/They’re something to see”.
A remarkable album that turns forty-five on 18th March, I wanted to spend a bit of time with Iggy Pop’s incredible solo debut. Inspiring artists such as The Smashing Pumpkins and Grace Jones, The Idiot will go on to influence so many other artists. If The Stooges was all about anger and this Punk energy, then the more inward-looking The Idiot was different…
TO anything he has recorded before.