5/1/2023 0 Comments Iggy pop the idiot![]() ![]() The song ends with Iggy making bird noises, then segues into the pneumatic and Teutonic funk of “Nightclubbing,” an autobiographical song about Pop and Bowie’s night-time carousing in the decadent clubs of 1970s West Berlin. “Calling Sister Midnight,” sings Pop to the accompaniment of a gargantuan bass riff, “Well I’m an idiot for you.” Meanwhile Carlos Alomar plays a droning guitar solo and Iggy goes all Oedipal over mom, his deep baritone growing more frantic as the song goes on. Opener “Sister Midnight” is based on a riff by guitarist Carlos Alomar and is actually funky, and reminds me, if nobody else, of the music on Bowie’s Station to Station. On a bummer of a note, it was even the soundtrack to Joy Division singer Ian Curtis’ suicide, as it was found spinning in the room where Curtis hanged himself. Most of its songs would be celebrated by proponents of the various genres of post-punk, demonstrating conclusively just how far ahead of its time it was. On The Idiot, the roar of guitars was replaced by a funky and robotic foray into more Apollonian territory, with Pop singing over Kraftwerk-flavored art rock, quieter tunes some with Gothic overtones, and even proto-industrial electronica. The Idiot would have been unthinkable to anyone familiar with Pop’s previous personae as rock’s wildebeest, who flung himself about to the frenetic roar produced by the Stooges, seemingly oblivious to the physical and psychic damage he was inflicting upon himself. Indeed, it was so radical it skipped punk entirely, and disappointed plenty of people who thought Pop should have been taking advantage of a sound and attitude he had helped to foment. As he would say later, “Poor Jim, in a way, became a guinea pig for what I wanted to do with sound.”įortunately for Pop, their creative collaboration-for their sessions were much, much more than Bowie’s simply using Pop as a laboratory animal for musical experimentation-resulted in 1977’s The Idiot, a work of genius and a radical departure from Pop’s frankly self-destructive proto-punk with the Stooges. But before Low he produced Pop, as much out of self-interest as friendship. Pop had been floundering since the Stooges dissolved, and found himself in Berlin with Bowie who, like Pop, was trying to fight both his drug demons and find his way to a new sound, which would emerge in 1977’s Low. David Bowie was a great artist, but he was also an appropriator and opportunist, and was not above exploiting his friends to achieve his own goals. ![]()
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