<https://www.superseventies.com/sppopiggy2.html>
<Intro>
I remember how and where it all started: January 1980, a lifetime away now. My dad and I were getting into one of our usual two-bit arguments about the usual two-bit teenage crap I'm halfway through high school, so you can just imagine the kind of sparring going on in the kitchen. What do you wanna be when you grow up blah blah blah what are you gonna do with your life blah blah blah have you thought about college yet? blah blah blah what about a summer job? blah blah blah you need better grades to get into a decent school blah blah blah and so on and so forth, so on and so forth, round and round the drain we circle, one more time...
At this point, I get up from my chair. All this (mostly) one-way dialogue is making my head buzz. The white noise of oncoming adulthood is ringing in my ears. Yeah, the discussion's relevant, I tell myself, but not f#cking now! My birthday's Saturday. I don't really care about anything else tonight.
"I gotta go," I announce, without fanfare. I get up briskly, and start heading for my room, to grab my jacket.
"Where are you going?" A flash of worry clouds my dad's face, then my mom, who doesn't typically participate in these discussions.
"Ah, the mall. I'm gonna do the usual, look at the cut-outs, the eight-tracks, the imports..." I fumble around for the keys to our '78 white LeMans. Technically, it's my mom's car, but she's not driving it much lately.
That means I can periodically "borrow" it, to hone my driving to a fine art (or finer nub, depending on my day, and mood). Theoretically, I'm preparing for my driving test, but the trouble is, my learner's permit makes it easier to put off that day of reckoning a little bit longer. Back then,you had to go out with a local cop, armed with a clipboard, ready to check off his list, and all that stuff.
Guess what, though? It's my birthday, and I sure as hell am not doing anything like that. I have other things in mind, like the punk rock/New Wave explosion that's captured my imagination, of which I'm getting a healthy fix via eight-tracks. (More about that momentarily.) I'm sixteen, dammit, and I need a suitable soundtrack.
Within half an hour, I've gotten my latest fix at the mall...something called Lust For Life, by Iggy Pop, somebody I've been reading about a lot lately in Rolling Stone. He curses out out his audiences, cuts himself on broken glass, flicks lit cigarettes at 'em, flips 'em the bird...and that's when they're sufficiently appreciative, and actually paying attention. Imagine what he does when they're spacing out!
Anyway, the various album reviews, live reports and interviews trickling into my vision through Rolling Stone, and whatever mags I'm picking up at the grocery store make all these antics sound interesting. It certainly sounds way cooler than what I'm used to seeing -- hairy guys with pornstaches, hiding banks of amps and keyboards, through which they crank out the lamest, most inoffensive, middle of the road sounds imaginable.
Whatever, I tell myself, as I slide Mom's LeMans into the driveway. At this point, I don't need any convincing. I'm in.
<"He's Nude 'N' Rude..."/The Reckoner>
<ii.>
Here I am now, I'm grooving to Lust For Life in my bedroom. One song, in particular, captures my attention, driven along by a nagging, yet undeniably catchy guitar riff, that goes something like this:
<BUM-BUM-BUM,
BAH-BUM-BUM-
BA-DA-DAH-DUM...>
Cool as it is, that riff wouldn't mean anything without that whomping drum intro that Hunt Sales whacks out on his kit. Every time I hear it, I think, this is how drums should sound, big and strong. Even on headphones, it sounds like you're in the room with him, as brother Tony's bass falls in, followed by the respective rhythm and lead guitars of Carlos Alomar and Ricky Gardiner.
Next come the Burroughs-inflected lyrics ("Here comes Johnny Yen again, with the liquor and drugs/And the flesh machine/He's gonna do another striptease") that Iggy barks out with a staccato urgency ("I've been hurting since I bought the gimmick/About something called love, something called love/Well, that's like hypnotizing chickens"), because he's got somethin' to tell ya, anyhow. Iggy was fresh from two years in the wilderness, following the breakup of his pioneering band, The Stooges, with The Idiot (1977), whose dark narcotic throb propelled him back into the public consciousness.
<"Come In, Nipper (You've Met Your Match At Last...)/
The Reckoner>
<iii.>
Sure, he'd spent much of those two years struggling with drugs, and sleeping on peoples' couches, surfing the margins without a record deal. But this time around, he's determined to do better, as he tells you later: "Yeah, I'm through sleeping on the sidewalk/No more beating my brains, with liquor and drugs/No more beating my brains, with liquor and drugs." Lawd have mercy!
Making those promises is one thing, of course. Making them stick would take a decade and a half or so, but no doubt about it, "Lust For Life" signaled a new attitude, a notable shift of priorities. From my perspective, it's getting the job done. My head's no longer buzzing with arguments about college or grades or summer jobs or what I "should" be doing with my life. The white noise of oncoming adulthood is no longer ringing in my ears. I've forgotten all about what Dad said.
Right now, I'm just sitting on my bed, savoring another song that's caught my ear. It's "Sixteen," your classic ode to teenage jailbait, more or less ("Sweet 16, in leather boots/Body and soul, I go crazy/Baby, I'm-a hungry'), driven along by a nagging cowbell and trash can-sounding guitar.
Iggy's normal baritone croon is now a cracked-sounding yelp that ripples through my primitive eight-track player speaker ("I'm an easy mark, with my broken heart"), and I couldn't care less about anything else. I'm turning 16, listening to a song called "Sixteen," and right now, nothing else matters, full stop. This is how that unholy duo of Iggy Pop and Lust For Life entered my home.
http://www.collectorscum.com/8tracks/
Not mine, obviously, but nice to see...
<iv.>
No doubt about it: how you perceive the likes of Lust For Life depends on when and where you first came across it. In Iggy's case, I imagine countless millions found out through Trainspotting's opening sequence of its junkie trio dashing through Edinburgh's mean streets, or that Royal Caribbean Cruises ad, to name two of the higher-profile corners that they've probably heard "Lust For Life," the song.
My experience was different, as I've noted. Scoring Lust For Life on eight-track wasn't my goal, but I couldn't always fork over the $6.98 list price that most new releases normally commanded then. But sometimes, you could scoop up the eight-track version for at least a couple bucks off, making them an attractive fallback, even if the format restrictions (11.5 minutes per track, 46 minutes total) meant that your favorite song often got chopped in half.
They weren't always in great condition, either. Sometimes, you'd get only get half a dozen or so plays before the tape broke, forcing you hunt down another copy, if you felt motivated enough. Even so, I'd just gotten an eight-track player for a Christmas gift, so I needed to feed that particular beast, anyhow. Without eight-tracks, I wouldn't have heard the likes of Elvis Costello (Armed Forces, My Aim Is True), Bob Marley (Babylon By Bus, Burnin', Natty Dread), The Police (Outlandos D'Amour), Talking Heads (Remain In Light)., and -- Lust For Life, to name a few.
Eight-tracks also exposed me to less obvious fare, like UK's self-titled debut album, for instance, and a lot of '60s-related fodder, such as The Best Of The Electric Flag (1971), which marked my first taste of Mike Bloomfield's supernatural guitar wizardry, and inspired me to track related albums, like Live At Winterland (1969), and My Labors (1970), on dust-coated cutout cassettes. (Both tapes broke quickly, though, so I wouldn't get to hear them in full until 20- or 30-odd years later.)
You had oddities, too, like this tape of off-brand Saturday Night Fever soundtrack covers I got that Christmas, along with my eight-track player. Hearing those journeymen Bee Gees wannabes struggling to hit those high notes on something like "Night Fever" ("We know how to do it for-EHHH-VERRR, can't you feel it?"), and never quite making it, provided hours and hours of cheap yuks. Nice try, boys, I'd chuckle, but no cigar. And then came Iggy.
<http://www.collectorscum.com/8tracks/>
Never saw THIS ONE gracing
any bargain bin...oh, well. <iv.>
"Lust For Life," of course, is only one jewel on an album brimming with them. As he'd done on The Idiot, Bowie played a major hand in the music -- co-writing six of the eight songs here. But Iggy also took a more direct musical role than he'd done on The Idiot, with crucial support from the band. This policy led to a looser, more collaborative ethic, with Iggy improvising lyrics with each take. (Bowie would borrow this technique, like he did so many things, for his next album, Heroes.)
Gardiner supplied the insistently catchy riff for "The Passenger," which falls into the "I Am A Camera" sub-genre of Iggydom. Basically, it's Iggy Pop as observer of the human condition ("He sees the stars come out tonight/He sees the city's ripped back sides/He sees the winding ocean drive"), as he casts a frown around the cityscapes that excite (and oppress) him at the same time.
Gardiner, along with Bowie, also co-wrote one of my other personal favorites, "Success," a rollicking throwdown to the joys of going for it ("Here comes success/Here comes my car/Here comes my Chinese rug"). Like "Lust For Life," it's built around a rollicking call 'n' response riff, with the band repeating each lyric to increasingly hilarious effect, as Iggy ups the ante near the end: "I'm gonna out into the street and do anything I wanna...OH, SHIT!" Hearing the boys struggling to keep up, as Iggy sings those lines faster and faster, still cracks me up, all those 40-odd years later.
Gardiner's blunderbuss guitar style also lends an air of throbbing menace on two other rockers -- "Neighborhood Threat," and "Some Weird Sin," whose dark, droning chord sequences (E-flat, F-sharp, G-sharp, B-flat) complements its "If you're skating on thin ice, you might as well dance" sentiments. The mood darkens considerably on "Tonight" ("I saw my baby/She was turning blue/I knew that soon her young life was through"), which offers a loving tribute to a partner about to expire from an apparent overdose ("I will love her till I die/I will see her in the sky/Tonight"). It's powered by a piercing lead break from Gardiner, and swirling keyboards from Warren Peace (a/k/a Geoff MacCormack).
"Give the keyboard guy some" seems to have been the primary reason for Warren Peace's sole co-write, "Turn Blue," seven minutes of slow-burning, spleen-baring that I'd appreciate more, if I only knew what Iggy's actually going on about. At various points, he pants over a woman in a black El Dorado ("That black girl in the back looks pretty good"), then rapidly free associates through references to Jesus ("You might as well come with me"), and drug abuse ("Oh, Momma, I shot myself down"). Is he victim or villain? Who knows? I can listen to this song, if I'm in the right mood, but to put it another way...I didn't mind seeing this one cut in half. (For more info, see the Pushing Ahead Of The Dame links below -- both being must reads!)
"
Fall In Love With Me" -- the other epic here, at six and a half minutes -- works way better, due to its conceit of making each musician play an instrument they didn't already know. (Bowie also borrowed this idea for "Boys Keep Swinging," on his '79 album, Lodger.) Hence, Gardiner deputizes on drums; Hunt Sales, bass; and Tony Sales, guitar, burnishing the "fall apart any minute" mood at work here. It's a celebration of Iggy's German girlfriend of the time, Esther Friedmann, so there's nothing to think about too deeply, but it's a fine ending to a fine album.
<Dutch single, 1977: RCA Records>
<v.>
For all his newfound purpose and creativity, Iggy found himself in his usual spot: ahead of his time, and falling between two chairs at the box office. Lust For Life received little promotion from RCA on its release (August 29, 1977), a mere three weeks after the death of Elvis Presley, whose catalog received far greater attention (to put it mildly). Once its first pressings sold out, the album became hard to find, as Tony Sales told Iggy's biographer, Paul Trynka: "Lust For Life just disappeared from the shelves, and that was it."
As a result, Lust For Life peaked at #120 US, a considerable notch down from The Idiot (#72 US). RCA pulled only one single ("Success"/"Sixteen") in September, that made no impression whatsoever, and called it a day. Reactions overseas proved predictably stronge -- including the former Yugoslavia, of all places, and Holland, "Lust For Life" earned a #3 chart placing. The parent album peaked at #28 UK -- just two places above The Idiot, which had given Iggy his first Top 40 foothold.
In hindsight, it's hard to think of fewer albums that I liked better, yet weren't so celebrated at the time. RCA's apparent indifference is all the more grating, when you consider the purple patch of creativity that Iggy and Bowie were experiencing in '77. That stretch kicked off in January 1977, with the release of Bowie's album, Low -- followed by The Idiot (March '77), the Lust For Life sessions (May to June '77), and album release.
Appropriately, the year ended in November '77, with the release of Kill City, overseen by former Stooges guitarist James Williamson. He'd recorded it two years earlier with Iggy, who did his vocals on weekend leaves from a mental hospital where he was staying, to beat his long -standing heroin addiction.
The pair had intended it as a demo, in hopes of striking a new record deal, but no takers emerged -- until The Idiot and Lust For Life provided the obvious cues. Add in the usual ongoing tasks of demoing, rehearsing, and touring, and you're left thinking:
For guys who wanted to convince you they were decadent vampires, it's tough to imagine a pair of night stalkers who worked as hard.
<Iggy Pop Versus The World, Take I/
The Reckoner>
<Coda/Over 'n' Out...>
But all the commercial metrics of Lust For Life's performance obscure one other reality -- while mainstream audiences largely shrugged, those who bought it became ardent converts, who often became became groundbreakers themselves. For example, Paul Westerberg briefly played in a band called Neighborhood Threat, on his way to becoming the Replacements' frontman and songwriter.
Bowie also recorded "Neighborhood Threat" and "Tonight" -- as a duet with Tina Turner, minus the drug references -- to no particularly great effect on Tonight (1984), which ties the inappropriately-named Never Let Me Down (1987), for the Starman's worst piece of platinum-seeking cow poop -- but the results reportedly bailed Iggy out of a tax debt to Uncle Sam. Even if the results were excruciating, I could support that cause, and if you notice a drop in quality, son, that's neither here nor there.
Not surprisingly, much of that action has revolved around "Lust For Life," the song -- which first began appearing in films like Spetters (1980), a gritty Dutch language dirt biker drama, and Desperately Seeking Susan (1985). "On Lust For Life, the drums sound not huge, but massive!" New Order's drummer, Stephen Morris, noted with vivid enthusiasm:
"The loudest cymbals known to man, that riff! I wanted to sound like that, still do."
It's hard to imagine a better tribute, though I honestly don't need it to validate my experience, anymore than I need the Royal Caribbean or the Trainspotting images, nor all the various covers that have emerged over the years, nor all the assorted documentaries and TV shows and videos purporting to have uncovered that proverbial 800 feet of tape that somehow explains it all.
Maybe Iggy and company didn't have work that hard to win me over, because by this point, I was actively reading magazines like CREEM and Rolling Stone, not to mention more highbrow establishment bastions like TIME, trying to get more and more of my hands on a piece of this so-called punk 'n' New Wave action that was firing my neurons into eternal overdrive.
But it's hard to imagine fewer records that hit me harder -- once the Clash and the Sex Pistols dropped that potential aitch-bomb into my brain -- or grabbed me tighter by the throat. Lust For Life stands up, simply because it reminds you of what's possible, and then proceeds to deliver on that promise, rather than reneging it, like so many releases did (and still do). Copout isn't on the agenda, full stop.
And once that realization drops, like it did it for me on that rickety eight-track speaker so long ago, one other realization hits: No more looking back, because this is the real deal. Once you're in, you're all in, and whatever you do, don't settle. That's the moral of the story here, as far as I'm concerned.
So much for my history lesson; what you do with it is your business. Now, if you'll excuse me, that flesh machine needs my urgent attention. And I've really gotta get back to hypnotizing me some more of those chickens. --Chairman Ralph
Links To Go
(Lots of cool eight-track pics, plus some neat related stuff --
Pushing Ahead Of The Dame: Lust For Life:
