The final time David Bowie and Iggy Pop shared a stage
The godfather of punk, Iggy Pop, first rose to fame in the late 1960s as the lithe, wild figure fronting The Stooges, a group characterised by their raw and primitive rock sound. From here, Iggy defied the odds to metamorphose through a stint in a mental hospital and several stylistic overhauls in a successful and prolific solo career, initially nurtured by David Bowie.
Bowie and Iggy first met in 1971 at the Max’s Kansas City nightclub in New York City. After hitting it off with yarns of mutual admiration, Bowie agreed to produce Raw Power, The Stooges’ third and final studio album released in 1973.
In 1974, The Stooges disbanded in disarray as Iggy’s mental state spiralled in tandem with a worsening relationship with hard drugs. This dark patch for the vocalist reached a nadir as he checked himself into a Californian mental institute for a period to get his head straight. In 1976, the ever-loyal Bowie visited Iggy at the institute, urging him to join him on his Isolar Tour.
It appears Bowie had Iggy’s best interests at heart and felt therapy outside of the asylum might work to Iggy’s advantage. Duly, the pair agreed to distance themselves geographically from their addictions by travelling to Château d’Hérouville, the French location where Bowie had recorded his covers album, Pin-Ups, in 1973.
Here, Bowie began recording Low, the first instalment of his acclaimed and experimental ‘Berlin Trilogy’. Meanwhile, Bowie supported Iggy’s triumphant return as a solo artist, beginning with The Idiot. This marked a pivotal moment in Iggy’s career as he returned to the rails and welcomed a more intricate edge to his trademark sound.
“The friendship was basically that this guy salvaged me from certain professional and maybe personal annihilation — simple as that,” Iggy said in a tribute following Bowie’s death in 2016. “A lot of people were curious about me, but only he was the one who had enough truly in common with me, 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,” Iggy 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.”
For his tour of The Idiot in 1977, Iggy welcomed Bowie to his band as a stable member. After that, the pair remained in one another’s pockets for a couple more years, collaborating again on Iggy’s late ’77 follow-up album, Lust for Life.
Despite remaining close over the following four decades before Bowie’s tragic death in 2016, the pair only shared the stage in a public setting on two further occasions: April 1980 and November 1985.
In April 1980, Bowie was recording Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) in London and decided to return to Berlin to pay Iggy a visit. At the time, Iggy was touring in support of Soldier. During his show at the Metropol, Bowie surprised the audience as he jumped on stage to play the keyboard for several songs.
Just over five years later, Iggy reunited with Bowie at his hotel suite in New York City. They showed each other some new demo tracks, and Bowie offered to help Iggy finish a couple of ideas to round out his seventh solo album, Blah-Blah-Blah. Bowie would later produce the 1986 album.
On November 19th, 1985, Bowie was in a New York studio recording for Labyrinth with session drummer Steve Ferrone. Ferrone told Bowie he was filling in for the sick drummer of the local band Ipso Facto later that evening. Bowie accepted an invitation to the gig at Manhattan’s China Club and brought bassist Carmine Rojas, guitarist Carlos Alomar, Steve Winwood, and Iggy Pop with him.
Following Ipso Facto’s set, Bowie suggested that he and his friends put on a late-night impromptu show. First, they called in The Rolling Stones’ Ronnie Wood, who took about 20 minutes to travel to the club. Allegedly, at around 2am, Bowie, Iggy, Wood, Ferrone and several others stunned a small audience with a 30-minute set. While the setlist is unknown, it featured Iggy and Bowie’s classic collaboration ‘China Girl’. Afterwards, the one-off band returned to Wood’s flat to hear material from the forthcoming Stones album, Dirty Work.
Listen to ‘China Girl’ as heard on Iggy Pop’s The Idiot below.
