Lusty Punk: David Bowie’s favourite Iggy Pop song
In 100 years from now, people will look back on the tales of David Bowie and Iggy Pop and consider them to be myths from the rock ‘n’ roll age. Their days in Berlin were like the Epic of Gilgamesh, if the Epic of Gilgamesh happened to be about two musical pioneers trying to get sober in a dilapidated city surrounded by spies and hedonism.
To understand why Bowie ventured such a place to get sober we must first get into his mindset. Decadence and madness ruled the roust for him in the mid-1970s in a way that is only comparable to some fevered feudal lord of old. Behind an artistic purple patch was a cocaine addiction measurable by the tonne, a bizarre exclusive diet of bell-peppers and milk befitting of a cable TV documentary, and an unwavering obsession with the Third Reich. Needless to say, he was in a bad spot.
However, one of the men he admired the most was used to escaping pickles. His friend Iggy Pop had already been institutionalised and was permanently on the feared brink of returning to the dreaded white cloaks of 1970s mental facilities. Famously, Bowie and Dennis Hopper even infiltrated one once to deliver some cocaine to their punk pioneering friend—which did little to help his plight.
The moment that Bowie had the devil exorcised from his own swimming pool by a witch was the sobering eureka, and he knew he had to get the hell out of Los Angeles and leave its gaudy glare and cocaine grip behind. Rather than abscond with Iggy to a safe haven of greenery, incense, and John Denver records, he headed to Berlin, the heroin capital of Europe. Their thinking was that at least they would write well there, even if sobriety evaded them.
What’s more, it had an added benefit for the renegade duo, as would-be Bowie guitarist Carlos Alomar explains: “David went to Berlin with Iggy for isolation. It was to humanise his condition, to say, ‘I’d like to forget my world, go to a café, have a coffee and read the newspaper.’ They couldn’t do that in America. Sometimes you just need to be by yourself with your problems. Sometimes you just wanna shut up.” That’s exactly what happened and high art followed.
High art like Iggy Pop’s classic track ‘TV Eye’. When Bowie presented BBC Star Special, where he was tasked with spinning his favourite songs, it was this classic cut from 1978, which originally featured on The Stooges’ Fun House in 1970, that he put forward on the Iggy Pop front.
The punk anthem is brooding with sexual desire, ‘TV’ standing as a euphemism for staring at something else entirely. “It meant ‘Twat Vibe Eye’,” guitarist Ron Asheton’s sister Kathy would later explain. In fairness, that is a perfectly irreverent explanation for a song that clearly prides itself on searing abandon and a sense of fun. Visceral and enthused, it also clearly appealed to Bowie, who was always keen to flood his music with anything boldly colourful.
Simply put, you could never accuse ‘TV Eye’ of being drab or grey. It is a punchy anthem that exemplified the pure energy of the proto-punk movement that the Stooges kickstarted. In fact, it did this to such an extent that Iggy Pop would go on to choose it as the title of his later live album.
