Marking
its 45th anniversary today is the sophomore solo LP from Stooges
front-man, Iggy Pop, with Lust For Life being released on September 9th,
1977. It followed closely on the heels of his debut solo release, The
Idiot, which was issued in March of that year. After touring to support
that album, Pop and David Bowie, who’d produced the first album and
toured with Pop’s band on keyboards, returned to Hansa Studios in West
Berlin to work on the followup.
While Bowie had exerted
significant control and influence over the first album, writing many of
its songs, Iggy was adamant that he have more creative input on this
one. Iggy wanted to take on that task now that the process of cleaning
up from drug addiction was further along and his musical juices were
flowing. Bowie still helped out with some arrangements, but even here
Iggy had a greater hand. The result is an album that cleaves much
closer to the kind of proto-punk that Pop had done with the Stooges
rather than the cooler “Krautrock” influenced detachment of the previous
record.
The album was recorded throughout May and June,
utilizing essentially the same band which had toured to support The
Idiot. Brothers Tony Fox and Hunt Sales held the rhythm section on bass
and drums, respectively, and guitarist Ricky Gardiner filled out the
band with Bowie returning on keyboards. Bowie & Pop were assisted
with their production duties by engineer Colin Thurston. As previously
stated, the music took on a harder, rawer tone and was, overall, more
favorably received by both critics and fans, who felt Pop had returned
to something closer to the raucous persona they were expecting from him.
After its release, Pop became frustrated with RCA and finished
off his contract with them by issuing a hastily cobbled together live
album. He furthermore moved away from working with Bowie for his next
studio albums, not renewing that working relationship until later in the
next decade. The legacy of Lust For Life has left both the title track
and The Passenger as seminal songs in Iggy’s musical canon.
