The Idiot is certainly not music for a sunny day at the beach! It is neither for dancing, nor partying. For driving on a rainy night alone in your car, it is the perfect soundtrack. For someone contemplating suicide, it might be dangerous. The Idiot was on the turntable of Joy Division’s Ian Curtis when he voluntarily checked out.
How Iggy Pop and David Bowie arrived at this glorious sonic abomination (recorded July/August 1976, released on March 18, 1977) at the height of the Punk vs. Disco era is one of the great anomalies of music history. Bowie suggested that Iggy sing in a lower register and was probably surprised at how low it was! Treated instruments were used; guitars, drums, sax and one of the earliest synthesizers – the EMS AKS briefcase model – on loan from Brian Eno (also heard on Bowie’s Low sessions). Eno himself gave the album this ‘oblique’ complement, “It’s an experience akin to being encased in concrete.”
The album title (suggested by Bowie) is inspired by Dostoyevsky’s novel (of the same name), whose excessive life on the edge was in many ways parallel with Iggy’s. Iggy embraced the idea, appreciating the genius of calling his brilliant album The Idiot.
The Idiot sounds like nothing of this earth. It is the soundtrack of Iggy’s time in Europe with David Bowie. It is devoid of color, neither black nor white. It is mechanical, ashen, lead gray – a warped, disturbing dream of wartime cabarets, factories, smokestacks, Metropolis, Oedipus Rex. It is murky, dreary, haunting, suffocating and eerily beautiful.
When most early synths were being utilized to create mindless Euro disco, Bowie and Pop wrestled those same sounds into submission. Only Bowie could have slowed wild Iggy down to this numbing and anomalous pace.
“Rock & roll has been really bringing me down lately. It’s in great danger of becoming an immobile, sterile fascist that constantly spews its propaganda on every arm of the media”
– David Bowie, 1976
Writing began at Château d’Hérouville where Bowie had recorded Pin Ups and was now working on Low. The Idiot was the prototype for Low, which was also recorded in France and Germany in 1976. Although Iggy’s album was completed first, Bowie chose to release Low in January 1977 and The Idiot in March, followed by a live tour with Bowie covertly on keyboards.
“Poor Jim, 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, Sound + Vision liner notes.
Bowie’s musicians, Carlos Alomar, Dennis Davis and George Murray played on the album, mixed by Tony Visconti in Berlin at Hansa Studio 1.
Bowie composed, played all instruments and produced demos. Iggy improvised the lyrics on the spot. “There was a power to the music he was willing to provide for me. It was perfect – and I loved it.”
– Iggy Pop, Mojo February 2012
At least one song (mentioned in a Rolling Stone Bowie interview by Cameron Crowe) was never released. It was performed during Iggy’s 1977 solo tour (with Bowie on keyboards). “It’s the best thing I’ve ever done,” drooled Iggy, who then disappeared with a girl he’d been trying to get off with, never to return.”
When I walk through the do-wa.
I’m your new breed of who-wa.
We will nooowwwwwwwwww drink to meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
The album cover photo was inspired by Erich Heckel’s painting of his friend, Roquairol (a known lunatic) which hung in the Brücke Museum, not far from Hauptstrasse 155, Bowie and Iggy’s Berlin residence. They’d secured the rights to use the painting for the cover of The Idiot, but instead used a photo of Iggy imitating the image. Bowie would also mimic the Heckel painting on the cover of “Heroes” in 1978. Iggy is wearing his girlfriend Esther’s jacket. Esther claims that the cover photo is a Polaroid taken by David Bowie.
Like the jacket worn by Frankenstein’s monster, the one Iggy wears on the cover is too small.
“I borrowed that jacket from my girlfriend at the time, Esther Friedmann. It was a woman’s jacket. It was probably French, or it could have been vintage German. The idea was that it didn’t get in the way. The waist was kept short, and the arms were too short so that it emphasized the hand and length of the whole arm.”
– Iggy to Jon Savage, The Flesh Machine – VICE Magazine – 2012
The Idiot is admittedly influenced by the sounds of industrialism in Iggy’s hometown Detroit, as was most of The Stooges material. We hear the buzz of mass production, the drone, clang and repetition of machinery – metal on metal. It is relentless, Germanic, anesthetic, hypnotic…hypodermic! Kraftwerk on Quaaludes.
“I think I functioned as an outlet for his overflow. Because there are things he did with me that he couldn’t do as David Bowie, because it would have slowed him down or might have been a wrong move,” “And then he was also able to use me to practice. … He made an Iggy album first, but watched the engineers there in the studio, learned how they worked, thought about it, had a chance to get to know the desk, and have daydreams about his own record while he worked on mine.”
– Iggy Pop, Uncut 2006
Iggy also described Bowie’s studio methods being akin to a film director. He suggested that Iggy sing like Mae West on ‘Funtime’. He compared their collaboration to Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady.
“He subsumed my personality, lyrically, on that first album,” Iggy said it was similar to “…having “Professor Higgins say to you, ‘Young man, please, you are from the Detroit area. I think you should write a song about mass production.”
On ‘Sister Midnight’ Iggy has the dream to end all dreams. Wham bam, thank you MOM!! Oh no – father’s after me with his six-gun! “What can I do about my dreams?”
”Damn, listen to what Dennis Davis is playing on ‘Sister Midnight’, it’s a triple-time on the cymbal and a half-time on the ‘whack’ – it’s insane!”
– Iggy Pop, Mojo April 2016
The line ‘Can you hear me call’ originated on the Iggy Pop/James Williamson Kill City album track ‘Beyond the Law’ (1974).
Can anybody hear me when I call?
The real scene is out beyond the law
‘Nightclubbing’ is the dance of the dead, romantically slow-dancing to the mechanized drumbeat of the Nuclear Bomb. Iggy sings like an automaton. It was the last day of the sessions. He and Bowie were goofing around as workers were taking away the equipment. ”
“David put on a fright mask – a plastic hideous monster and sat at piano and played that ‘Nightclubbing’ music. His assistant put on mask jumping around. I said, ‘That’s IT that is IT’ !! I knocked up a lyric for it in 20 minutes based on my experiences tagging along to discos of Europe with him The only thing left to augment it in the room was a little Roland drum machine. He said, “I can’t put out something with THAT as a drum track.” And I said, ‘But I can!!!’ That beat is samples in a lot of successful hip hop records now.”
– Iggy to Kurt Loder – SiriusXM Volume interview September 2019
Some of the lyrics had been written by Bowie at the time of his Station To Station album for the title track. His cross-outs reveal the rough ‘Nightclubbing’ lines,
“You look like a bomb / You smell like a ghost”
‘Funtime’ is the continuation The Stooges ‘No Fun’ – in Germany! Iggy got the idea for the song when he heard the Sex Pistols’ cover version of ‘No Fun’. The song is Iggy’s zombified version of ‘The Monster Mash’. Iggy is down in the lab with Dracula and his crew, having fun. Some great screams and visceral growls get you into a ghoulish groove. You can hear the main inspiration on ‘Lila Engel’ by Neu! on their album NEU! 2. ‘Funtime’ is also influenced by in Harmonia’s track ‘Monza’ which was also copped by Bowie for ‘Red Sails’ on his 1978 album Lodger.
You can also hear it in the beat of Neu’s’ ‘Hero’ on which Michael Rother joined Iggy to play live in June 2022 in Hamburg!
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTB0lpDFbkY
‘Funtime’ was featured in scenes from The Hunger (starring David Bowie). The band Bauhaus also had their song ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’ in the film. Their singer Peter Murphy covered ‘Funtime’ in 1988. There are also covers by The Cars (1981), R.E.M. (1992) and Boy George (1995).
The guy behind the inspiration for ‘Funtime’ got in touch with me upon reading my story:
Hi Madeline, like your stuff.
…Last night I was down at the lab was about the time Iggy lived with me in my apartment about 1975 before he went off to his solo career. We would go out at nite to pick up chicks, he would always score, of course, but he would usually attract two, one for me :). Anyways, we sometimes went to the ‘lab’, my workplace where we studied drug addiction at U. of Michigan with monkeys that were addicted to various drugs. He was fascinated with the addicted monkeys. I had a reputation for sleeping at sunrise until noon or so before I went to work, so I am not sure if Iggy was referring to me as Dracula or one of the monkeys was named Dracula and rest were the ‘crew’. His 1st recording came out after he left my apartment, with ‘Funtime’ on it, so everybody started calling me dracula because they knew I worked at the “lab” and they knew Iggy lived with me. This was later verified by best friend Scott Asheton (rock action).
– George
Iggy performed ‘Funtime’ along with ‘Sister Midnight’ with Bowie on keyboards on The Dinah! show to promote The Idiot album’s release in 1977. He ended the song with an extra long roar, which leads him to fall on the floor. A hilarious tow-segment long interview ensues with Dinah Shore and Rosemary Clooney in which Iggy proudly proclaims,
“I think I helped wipe out the 60s.”
Horrified housewives across America witnessed this! The band also includes Tony and Hunt Sales (sons of Soupy) on bass and drums, and Ricky Gardiner on guitar – all of whom were members of Iggy’s touring band for The Idiot.
Watch here:
Iggy Pop & David Bowie – The Dinah! show – Complete – 1977
Iggy croons two odd, bleak ballads ‘Baby’ with its ‘Street of Chance’ right out of a William Burroughs book, and warbles ‘Tiny Girls’ with sad desperation. Bowie provides a gorgeous, woeful sax solo on the latter.
In 1983, Bowie wrote a guitar line and turned Iggy’s dual themed song (a veiled allusion to heroin) into a pop song about an Asian heroine – transforming Iggy’s Chinese rock into a ‘China Girl’. Iggy’s a mess without ‘her’. (Kuelan was actually Vietnamese). The song was originally titled ‘Borderline’. Bowie on toy piano and Iggy on toy drums adds sweetness to the brooding tune. The children’s instruments sound vaguely oriental as the China Girl talks the singer down from his escalating demented thoughts of world domination and destruction with a whispering, ‘Shhhhh.’
“‘China Girl’ has a beautiful obligato melody at the end echoed by gypsy guitars. Bowie wrote that on guitar then he’d want somebody better to play his idea – his thought and somebody else’s fingers. That melody progression is lovely. “
– Iggy, SiriusXM Volume – September 2019
Iggy spoke about Bowie ten months after his passing;
“At first I didn’t process it. I thought, They must be talking about someone else. But then I got it. I went to a rehearsal, and when we ran through “China Girl,” there’s a guitar theme at the end of that, that was written by that person, with a guitar, with his hands. I can see the person, I can see the hands, I can see the guitar. And he’s not on this plane anymore. That came up several times that day.”
– Iggy Pop, The New York Times November 30, 2016
Bowie’s simple sax on ‘Tiny Girls’ is innocently beautiful, adding a touch of warmth to the robotic opus. The musicians borrowed from Bowie’s Low sessions enfold us in reverie, along with Iggy’s ghostly / ghastly crooning vocals.
It is seldom that anyone pays respect to former band members in a song (they’re usually happy to be rid of each other). David Bowie had the idea that Iggy should talk about his former band mates on ‘Dum Dum Boys’. After all, Bowie had written about his own fictional band The Spiders From Mars in the song ‘Ziggy Stardust’. David even suggested the song title, after the dumdum bullet.
This is a continuation of a song about The Stooges on the Kill City album, ‘Beyond the Law’.
Some people say we’re negative
They say we take and never give
They say our lives are a mistake
But the truth is in the sound we make
On his ode to the Stooges, Iggy pines, ‘Where are you now when I need your noise?’It was inevitable that the surviving members would reunite decades later, and how joyous it was in 2003 when the Asheton brothers (and later – after the Ashetons passed away – James Williamson) reunited The Stooges to tour with Iggy again. They are still relevant fifty years on!
The hypnotic ‘Mass Production’ (with its warped guitar sounds and wonky melody) is punctuated by a factory smokestack whistle. To Iggy, these are the sweet sounds of home – the car manufacturing state of Detroit. The riveting repetition sends us into a monolithic trance, akin to the enslaved workers in Fritz Lang’s ‘Metropolis’. “Though I try to die they put me back on the line…”The song illustrates monotony in uniformity, and the cheapening of products and people through mass production – conveying the same message as the art produced in Andy Warhol’s Factory.
“She’s almost like you / and I’m almost like him”
The Idiot was an abnormality and also a departure from Iggy’s own approach to music, thanks to his friend Bowie. It is one of his finest moments, never to be compared to anything he’s ever done, or to anything at all.
Iggy considers The Idiot to be his album of freedom.
“I’m not saying that it’s a great album or some fantastic work of art, but I love it, and it means a lot to me.”
To Joe Ambrose, Gimme Danger: The Story of Iggy Pop (2004)
He quickly emerged from the murky depths of The Idiot a mere six months later, wearing a goofy smile on the cover of his next album, declaring a ‘Lust For Life’.
“He was playing a kind of a cross between an upright and a spinet, it was a very small piano. It wasn’t treated or anything, It actually had electrified hammers on it, and it was very distorted and kind of beautiful. It lent itself to overstatement and gave a sustain that allowed him to do things.”
Iggy spoke about Bowie after his passing in The New York Times (November 30, 2016)…
“At first I didn’t process it. I thought, They must be talking about someone else. But then I got it. I went to a rehearsal, and when we ran through “China Girl,” there’s a guitar theme at the end of that, that was written by that person, with a guitar, with his hands. I can see the person, I can see the hands, I can see the guitar. And he’s not on this plane anymore. That came up several times that day.”
“He resurrected me.
He was more of a benefactor than a friend in a way most people think of friendship.
He went a bit out of his way to bestow some good karma on me.”
UPDATE:
On The Idiot 2020 remaster, they have respectfully and tastefully enhanced the sound quality, highlighting the fact that this is basically an electronic album. While there are several real instruments present, the majority of sounds are synthetic. These automated sounds now come to life with more buzz, more sizzle, more hiss, more vibration… This is great, because I Need More!!! The song that benefits most from this is ‘Funtime’. Now it resembles its inspiration even more;
Neu – ‘Lila Engel’
Thankfully, Iggy’s vocals (though a little bit further up-front) remain deep, haunting and cadaverous.
My favorite part is the wonky section in ‘Mass Production’ where the synth goes, ‘Why-Yo-Why-Yo-Why-Yo’… and the smokestack whistle has never sounded better! So there you have it!Lust For Life is slightly improved as well. Brighter, more clarity, more vibrant cowbell (haha!)
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