Lust For Life

Released by Iggy Pop, Lust For Life, 1977

w hen Bowie first hooked up with Iggy Pop, the question had to be asked: who’s supposed to be saving whom? Obviously, Iggy had been going through problems, but Bowie was only just emerging from a coke maelstrom of his own. Where Iggy’s The Idiot had been the dark, gothic, industrial flip side of Bowie’s “Heroes”, Lust For Life’s opening title track sounded like triumph, a celebration. Hunt Sales’s explosive drum tattoo springboards a nagging circular riff Bowie originally wrote on a ukulele, while Iggy’s lyric – liquor, drugs, chickens, having it in the ear – is pure Iggy. Who saved whom? Who cares? That they were saved is all that matters.