The Iggy Pop song inspired by his time in Berlin with David Bowie
In 1976, David Bowie and Iggy Pop knew they both needed to do something about their respective drug addictions, a spiralling problem that was beginning to completely destabilise their lives. Thus, the pair upped sticks and moved to Berlin, hoping to find creative renewal, sobriety and a new sense of self.
They both settled into the divided city and called it home for several years, creating some of their most profound work. Bowie once explained: “Well, both Iggy and I felt like it might be time to clean up, so — we were very smart about it — we went straight out of LA, to the heroin capital of Europe: Berlin. But you know something? We were totally unaware of that.”
During this world, Pop created two of his most successful records, his debut album, The Idiot, and its follow-up, Lust for Life. Both were produced by Bowie, who found the opportunity to focus on someone else’s work refreshing. These albums now remain staples of Pop’s discography, spawning some of his most popular songs, including ‘Lust for Life’, ‘The Passenger’ and ‘Nightclubbing’.
However, Bowie would soon get the creative urge to make his own music again, which resulted in his ‘Berlin trilogy’, deemed a career highlight. Low, Heroes and Lodger formed the three-album run, with Bowie taking inspiration from electronic and ambient genres, as well as the country’s native krautrock.
Bowie has often discussed this period. He once said: “For many years Berlin had appealed to me as a sort of sanctuary-like situation. It was one of the few cities where I could move around in virtual anonymity. I was going broke; it was cheap to live. For some reason, Berliners just didn’t care. Well, not about an English rock singer, anyway.”
Despite the creativity that flourished for the pair, Pop recalled in an interview with Tagesspiegel: “I only let myself go toward the end of my time there. The city was changing, and the people, too. From one day to the next Berlin was flooded with drugs, and I did not always make the best decisions. To cut it short: I came to Berlin totally fit and left it as a wreck.”
Still, Pop has looked back at his time there as a hugely important period of his life. He partly described his 2016 album Post Pop Depression as a retrospective, telling the same publication, “I am looking back, but I am also looking ahead.” One of the best examples of Pop’s foray into nostalgia on the album is ‘German Days’, where he sings about “Garish and overpriced/ Champagne on ice.”
The song features Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme and Arctic Monkeys’ Matt Helders. Homme explained to Mojo: “I was thinking about Iggy living in West Berlin, in such a dramatic moment of history, and we talked about German culture, the Cabaret drama. There’s a Bugs Bunny cartoon, it’s Bugs with Elmer Fudd and they’re doing Wagner – ‘Kill the rabbit!’ – and it’s so dramatic, but it’s funny. This song was the epitome of a primitive-native mix that we were talking about, and he just said, ‘This could be ‘German Days.” It’s got the ‘Kill the rabbit!’ drama. It’s confusingly jarring. But groovy as fuck.”
