The infectious riff on the title cut, “Lust for Life” was inspired by the Morse code opening to the American Forces Network News in Berlin while David and Iggy were waiting for 70s buddy cop series Starsky and Hutch to start. In the studio, Bowie would sit at a piano and name famous rock songs and say, “Okay now we’re going to rewrite ” and knock it out while Iggy would record it.ģ: Bowie composed most of the music on a kid’s ukulele while lying down While The Idiot sounds more atmospheric and experimental for Iggy, Lust for Life sees him return to straightforward rock’n’roll.
#LUST OF LIFE PROFESSIONAL#
As Iggy later told the New York Times, “The friendship was basically that this guy salvaged me from certain professional and maybe personal annihilation – simple as that”. Theirs was a mutually beneficial relationship, with Bowie helping to pull Pop back from the brink and Iggy helping to restore Bowie’s creative wellspring.
It’s impossible to talk about this period of Iggy’s career and not mention David Bowie. After the success of Lust For Life, the smaller label Bomp! Records jumped at the chance to put it out in November of 1977.Ģ: David Bowie’s fingerprints are on it, but less so than the previous release During this time, Iggy had also made a third album, Kill City, a demo he recorded in 1975 but most labels were hesitant, due to Pop’s reputation at the time.
Not even half a year had passed since the release of The Idiot and there was a new rock n’ roll record from Iggy. Recording for Lust for Life started in April and ended in June, with the album hitting the shelves on September 9, 1977. On tour, they’d been playing The Idiot and old Stooges cuts but during sound checks, the band started experimenting with ideas. The band went on tour and shortly after, they jumped into the studio to write and record. The album was a collaborative effort with David Bowie(who had previously mixed The Stooges last album, Raw Power) and was heavily influenced by German culture, as both musicians were living in Berlin at the time. Lust For Life came out on the heels of Iggy’s first post-Stooges release, The Idiot. ADVERTISEMENT 1: Iggy’s first three solo releases all came out in the same year – 1977