Iggy's The Idiot

I've been listening to Iggy's The Idiot obsessively lately. I think it has something to do with Iggy's uncanny ability to embody both unlikely success and inevitable disaster.

Iggy was the primal, punk rocker from Detroit, who flamed out with the Stooges and found himself without a band or career. He was walking down Sunset Blvd. in L.A. and David Bowie riding in a limo pulled over and picked him up.

That was the start of a pretty amazing and productive collaboration between two very unique creative souls. Bowie had worked with Iggy previously on the Stooges Raw Power, but it had failed to keep the Stooges together and then they all had a falling out.

Anyway, The Idiot was an experiment for Bowie, he wrote the music for most of the tracks and played guitar, sax, keyboards. Iggy wrote the lyrics and sang. It is dark, cold, icy music, very much influenced by the music coming out of Germany at the time (Faust, Cluster, Kraftwerk).

Very un-Stooge-like. Iggy was kind of wearing a Bowie straight jacket. It is some kind of dark masterpiece. Sort of funny too. It was the beginning of a pretty creative period for Bowie (Low, Heroes, Lodger). Iggy went on to do Lust for Life, another really good disc.

Bowie and Iggy kind of do a mind-meld on The Idiot. Really strange. And cool.