How David Bowie saved Iggy Pop’s life: “He resurrected me”
Iggy Pop and David Bowie magnetically gravitated towards each other. The two rock heroes were cut from the same cloth, and music offered them a source of escape as well as a ticket to superstardom. However, in both cases, their success didn’t stop their problems.
Both Bowie and Iggy Pop struggled with substance abuse issues throughout their lives, which brought them closer. Their paths first crossed in 1971, and the following year, Bowie produced The Stooges’ seminal album, Raw Power, which proved to be the start of a beautiful relationship which would put Iggy back on the right track.
Although Raw Power is now viewed as an album everybody should own, public opinion was largely scathing upon release. It failed to receive the love it deserved, leading to The Stooges falling out of the limelight and deciding to part ways in 1974.
After the demise of The Stooges, Iggy’s drug use spiralled out of control, which led to the singer checking himself into a psychiatric facility in a bid to improve his well-being. Bowie was a confidante during this dark time and regularly visited his friend. Following Pop’s return to civilian life, Bowie brought him along to his Station to Station tour, bringing them closer.
However, while Bowie may have seemed to have his life under control compared to Pop, he was also being consumed by his own drug addiction issues. Rather than check in to a rehabilitation centre, Bowie and Iggy instead chose to move to Berlin to escape drugs. Not only did this inspired decision help them in a personal capacity, but it also led to the creation of arguably the greatest art-rock albums of all-time.
The duo lived together while staying in the German capital and were inseparable as a fearlessly creative musical dynamo. Aside from their time in the studio and on the road, the pair became the closest friends. With their deviousness and devotion to their craft and one another, Bowie and Iggy were a tour de force who needed each other for basic survival.
If it wasn’t for Bowie, Iggy is aware that his career would likely look irrecognisable, and he’s forever thankful to his late friend for picking him out of the gutter.
“The friendship was basically that this guy salvaged me from certain professional and maybe personal annihilation — simple as that,” Iggy said following Bowie’s death. “A lot of people were curious about me, but only he was the one who had enough truly in common with me, and who actually really liked what I did and could get on board with it, and who also had decent enough intentions to help me out. He did a good thing.”
“He resurrected me.” Pop added. “He was more of a benefactor than a friend in a way most people think of friendship. He went a bit out of his way to bestow some good karma on me.”
Iggy was struggling with a crippling heroin addiction before moving to Berlin, and the new surroundings allowed him to get his mojo back. Being in a new country, on the other side of the world from his troubled past life, proved the perfect antidote to his problems. Most importantly, it re-lit his creative spark that had burned out following the death of The Stooges.
Speaking to MTV News in 1990, Iggy Pop discussed his resurrection in more detail: “Well put it this way, before I made that record (The Idiot), I was a street person in LA basically,” he said. “I’d been kind of stymied by the entire music business and a really disastrous manager in general, drug problems and drinking, general carousing. So at the time, I could have put together a stock-rock band, something glam, something tasteless, but I didn’t want to do that.”
The rock legend continued: “It was really timely that he basically suggested two things, getting out of LA, which was great and making an album together, which was a good idea. I think if he had not come along with that proposal, I’d probably not be talking to you now. I’d be playing somewhere, probably 42nd Street or something like that. It was a good stroke, y’know.”
Although they were vital components in one another’s lives, sadly, their friendship eventually deteriorated. Bowie did attempt to sign Iggy to his record label, but contractual obligations stopped their creative reunion. Furthermore, Iggy was unable to participate when Bowie invited him to perform at the Meltdown Festival in London, which he curated in 2002.
Sadly, their friendship didn’t last the test of time as their lives diverted down different avenues. However, there was never a falling out or loss of love between them; instead, they simply lost touch. Furthermore, Iggy’s solo offerings, The Idiot and Lust For Life, remain a reminder of the magic they created in Berlin.
If it wasn’t for Bowie, Iggy might have become another jaded, faded, one-time rock star, playing in a dive bar in Los Angeles for beer tokens. Moreover, the act of immense kindness and his relationship with Iggy likely helped Bowie during his battle with his own demons. For a period, they desperately needed each other, and fate brought them together.
