Every song is crammed with unforgettable moments, every chorus instantly recognisable. Far and away Iggy’s most well-loved solo album, and unanimously praised as one of the greatest albums of all time, it (like its predecessor) does not waste a single second. It appears as though The Idiot waited for its completion for decades – a narrative of Lovecraftian proportions.īut Lust For Life is going to be the star of the show for most of the people coming to this box. Its black tendrils are everywhere – even in Iggy’s own later albums like Zombie Birdhouse, and especially with Post Pop Depression and Free, with which it forms an unholy trilogy. Its legacy, certainly as a cornerstone of the post-punk, Gothic rock and industrial genres, is impossible to accurately depict and impossible to overstate. Stepping off a plane, in Berlin, at night, in the rain, with “Nightclubbing” banging around in your mind is an unforgettable experience (and one I’ve been lucky enough to summon into existence). In “Baby” and “Nightclubbing”, it also has two utterly unforgettable Doors-ian oddball skronks that are as disturbing as they are funky – both paeans to the Cold War bacchanal that Iggy and Bowie were drawn to in those frozen years at the end of the '70s. In its primal, lurching thud and bleeding, woozy throb are the seeds that made the thread that ties thousands of bands together, from the Sisters of Mercy to Ministry, from The Cure to Queens Of The Stone Age, from Bauhaus and Joy Division to Depeche Mode.Īlthough it draws its name from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 1874 philosophical novel, it is much closer in style and execution to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or more particularly, the Promethean work of the title character.Īcross its eight tracks, it draws from schmaltzy jazz (“Tiny Girls”), steals from NEU! (“Funtime”), pre-empts post-punk (“Dum Dum Boys” and “Mass Production”), and contains a track so far ahead of its time that it only became a hit six years later (“China Girl”). In its finished form, “Sister Midnight” kicks off The Idiot with Oedipal lyrics and a sinister undercurrent that only grows as the album develops. The genesis of The Idiot, and the rest of Iggy’s post-Stooges career, begins in earnest with “Sister Midnight”, which was first performed by Bowie in the rehearsals for the Isolar tour, but never finished, and never committed to tape. What it is, for sure, is an underrated classic – and it’s waiting, patiently, to be heralded as one of the greatest albums of all time. It’s also not strictly a ‘Berlin’ album, as the sessions were split across the Château d'Hérouville in France, Musicland in Munich and the Hansa Studios in Berlin. It’s an album that, according to Siouxsie Sioux, confirms Ig as a “genius”. It also brings with it a Dionysian energy that (thankfully very few) people feel when at their very lowest: a demonic urge to keep yourself drunk and high and smiling against the pain, when you’d really rather be in a hole somewhere. It’s almost impossible to define exactly what it is, but famously, it’s the album Ian Curtis was listening to when he died - which is sadly not surprising when you consider that it’s an album built around themes of existential crisis, loss, and pain.
The Idiot is many things, to many people. In the liner notes that accompany this box set, we get an in-depth look at the creation of the album, which includes the semi-tragic story of how guitarist Phil Palmer was there for the birth and tracking of the album, but saw his contributions removed or replaced entirely by the time the thing was released. It was recorded before the sessions for Low took place but released afterwards, to make it seem as though Bowie was laying the foundations for Iggy, not the other way round. The Idiot was written with, and tracked by, Bowie’s Low band (Carlos Alomar, Dennis Davis and George Murray) as well as Michel Santangeli and Laurent Thibault. He also rolled up both sleeves and decided that he’d have another go at making a superstar of his buddy Jimmy, too. In those four years, Bowie produced his Berlin trilogy ( Low, “Heroes” and Lodger), and its capstone, the pièce de résistance of his career to that point, Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps). Bowie had deftly begun to weave the sounds of German experimental and progressive music into his own, producing a funk-soul-progressive-electronic hybrid that he would go on to master, and define, over the next four years. Almost every seat was filled, and new ground was broken in Western popular music. The Station to Station tour – Isolar – was a juggernaut, producing some of the best shows and worst moments of Bowie’s career (especially his flirtation with Nazi imagery and gestures, which did not go unnoticed or ignored).
and David Jones were already fierce friends of course – but that’s a story about a separate album, a different time.
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