Iggy Pop -

Date: 1977
Release: VIRGIN #91343-2
Cover Art: view / download
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Hands down, this is Iggy Pop’s best post-Stooges record as well as one of the hardest rocking pop albums to come out of the 1970s. Along with the legendary live shows of Kiss, Lust For Life rescued American music in 1977 from total disco oblivion. British-born David Bowie was the crucial element here, producing, playing, writing, and singing throughout the record with the drive and delivery of an over-achieving genius.

Still, this is Iggy’s show, as he makes perfectly clear with his classically black-edged vocals on the title track (revived in the heroin-chic film, “Trainspotting”). Drummer Hunt Sales‘ relentless pounding on “Lust For Life” holds a candle to the drumming machine known as John Bonham. Bowie-veteran Carlos Alomar plays a mean guitar that defines much of the album’s sound.

Iggy’s brash and irreverent vocals are inescapably punk, whether he’s cutting his teeth on the R&B styled “Tonight” or thrashing things out with the menacing “Neighborhood Threat.” On “Some Weird Sin,” he and Bowie harmonize to great affect on this autobiographical rant on boredom-inspired moral decadence. “The Passenger” rolls forward with a Jamaican-tinged punk beat, a strangely effective backdrop for Iggy to slip into his weirdly deep singing and aggressive phrasing.

It’s tracks like these that show why Iggy couldn’t be labeled anything but the Godfather of Punk, a title that he has always rejected, no matter how deserving. As the record heats up with his unstoppable energy, his characteristically dark humor, and his in-your-face flamboyance, we understand why Iggy will surely go down as one of the greatest front men in history. A tough kid from the middle class streets of Ann Arbor, Iggy struggled with the vagaries of stardom, a fact that he addresses with “Success.” Whatever price he may have paid for living the life-on-the-edge that he sang about, he still proved with ferociously good records like this, that nothing succeeds like excess.

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