David Bowie and Iggy Pop in Berlin (Berlin One Twenty) A Moonage Daydream

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David Bowie and Iggy Pop in Berlin.
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A Thursday night in the divided city of Berlin in 1977: Iggy Pop and David Bowie are sat together on the floor of their Schöneberg apartment, having come to the conclusion that chairs are unnatural. They are watching their television set, waiting for the Armed Forces Network telecast, which will deliver them their beloved Starsky & Hutch. Before the show begins the network blasts out a series of beeps in an urgent rhythm that sounds almost like a Motown beat. Inspired, Bowie writes a chord progression on a ukulele and turns to Iggy. “Call it ‘Lust for Life’,” he says. “Write something up.”

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Iggy, sensibly, did as he was told. The two albums he released that year under Bowie’s guidance, ‘The Idiot’ and ‘Lust for Life’, were the lizard-skinned punk icon’s first venture into solo territory since his band The Stooges had imploded in a hail of beer bottles, eggs and jelly beans at the Michigan Palace in Detroit three years earlier.
“He was looking for a different outlet,” says Mez Sanders-Green, frontman of Hull punks LIFE. “I think those two albums were his way of growing while battling his demons. His lyrics are so potent and haunting, and he was expanding what he could offer, which you hear on both ‘The Idiot’, with its krautrock influences, and ‘Lust For Life’, which is a bit more rock’n’roll.”
LIFE aren’t alone in their love for ‘The Idiot’ and ‘Lust for Life’. 43 years on, those two records have become inspirational touchstones for a whole generation of young British bands. This week both albums will be reissued in remastered form, along with a seven-disc box set called ‘The Bowie Years’. On the ‘Edits + Outtakes’ disc, you’ll find a cool old recording of Iggy recalling all the things he learned about from his mentor, including expressionism, impressionism and “what happened in Zurich with Tristan Tzara and the Dadaists.” He adds, modestly: “I didn’t know anything about any of this stuff. He knew how to choose a wine – and what the hell is an entrecôte?”
“Those albums were Iggy’s way of growing while battling his demons” – LIFE’s Mez Sanders-Green
That’s not to say the influence only flowed one way. There was plenty that Iggy could teach Bowie, and plenty of things Iggy could do musically that Bowie couldn’t get away with. When the pair came up with ‘Nightclubbing’, a song about their wild nights out across Europe, they used a cheap synthesizer and a Roland drum machine. Bowie wanted to replace the Roland with a real drummer because he didn’t think he could put out a record that sounded like that. Iggy, on the other hand, realised he was bound by no such rules. “That story is really interesting because it shows Iggy had nothing to lose,” says Cam Sims of south London pub rockers Hotel Lux. “I think he saw it as a fresh start.”
That one drum loop from ‘Nightclubbing’ has gone on to be referenced by everyone from Nine Inch Nails (on ‘Closer’) to Oasis (on ‘Force of Nature’), and its impact is still being felt today.
If we had a penny for every time we’ve tried to rip off ‘Nightclubbing’, we’d be able to hire Iggy for our birthday party,” admits Callum Parker, guitarist with Coventry rabble FEET, who adds that he admires the way the records transport you to a specific time and place “Everyone’s recording on laptops nowadays, so it’s harder to get your own sound. When you listen to those Iggy and Bowie in Berlin albums. it’s very apparent where they were and what kind of place and situation they were in at the time.” The tension of that particular place and situation, a city still divided by the Berlin Wall, is something Bowie specifically sought out. In the years before their move, Bowie and Iggy had both lived in Los Angeles, where they’d been off the rails even by the standards of ‘70s rock stars. Iggy got to the point where he checked himself into a mental asylum to get clean, until Bowie turned up with some coke, which seems counterproductive. “This was very much a ‘leave-your-drugs-at-the-door’ hospital,” Bowie remembered later.
It’s safe to say a change of scenery was called for. In 1976, Bowie invited Iggy along for the ride on his mammoth ‘Station to Station’ tour, during which they were arrested for marijuana possession in Rochester, New York. “I was very nervous, all the way until we got to court,” Iggy told me, remembering his friend fondly. “David was always looking out for me. He bought me a suit! I paid back everything I ever owed him later on, but at the time I just didn’t have enough dough.” When Bowie suggested relocating to west Berlin, Iggy was game.

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