Listen to Iggy Pop’s isolated vocals ‘The Passenger’
The frantic image of a topless Iggy Pop leaning powerfully over a swarm of devoted fans has been among the most iconic in rock and roll for over half a century. The so-called Godfather of Punk first rose to fame in the late 1960s, fronting The Stooges, a group characterised by their raw and primitive rock sound. From here, Iggy ducked and dived through stylistic overhauls in a successful and prolific solo career, initially nurtured by David Bowie.
Over the late 1960s and early ’70s, The Stooges’ live performances became infamous for the rife occurrence of indecent exposure, self-mutilation, destruction of property, assault, and on a couple of occasions, the wearing of Nazi uniforms. Iggy would soon be derailed by the all-too-familiar hedonistic tendencies of the rock scene before joining David Bowie in Berlin for pastures new over the late 1970s. These solo endeavours reinvented Iggy as a comparatively clean rocker with more refined music to match.
In 1976, Iggy and Bowie moved to France to distance themselves from their worsening drug habits and work on some new material. At Château d’Hérouville, the residence where Bowie recorded his 1973 covers album, Pin-Ups, Bowie began recording his 1977 masterpiece Low, the first instalment of his critically lauded Berlin trilogy. Meanwhile, Bowie helped Iggy to begin work on his debut solo record, The Idiot.
The Idiot was a resounding success, debuting a more suppressed and moody side to Iggy’s charm with notable hits including ‘Sister Midnight’, ‘China Girl’ and ‘Nightclubbing’. With Bowie’s supporting vocals and instrumental breadth, the songs were more refined and varied than his prior, more heavy work with The Stooges. To match this new sound, Iggy began to employ an anguished croon.
“[The Idiot was my] album of freedom,” Iggy said of the album in Joe Ambrose’s 2004 book Gimme Danger: The Story of Iggy Pop. “I’m not saying that it’s a great album or some fantastic work of art, but I love it, and it means a lot to me.”
While working on The Idiot, Bowie and Iggy Pop relocated once more to Berlin, Germany. Here, Bowie would begin work on Heroes while helping Iggy with his second album, Lust for Life. The album was released in September 1977 and was considered a triumph on par with The Idiot, especially in commercial terms.
The album was famed most for ‘The Passenger’, curiously released as a B-side to the album’s only single, ‘Success’. The song was famously covered by Siouxsie and the Banshees ten years later for their eighth studio album, Through the Looking Glass.
Also worthy of release as a single were the sentimental pop song ‘Tonight’ and the title track, which gained popularity in 1996 after featuring on the soundtrack of Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting.
“When I made ‘Lust for Life’, I really thought America was gonna rock to this motherfucker. And it took 20 fuckin’ years, which is a really long time to wait,” Iggy reflected while discussing the title track in Ambrose’s biography. “I guess what happened is that there was this system that wasn’t gonna fuckin’ give me a break, and I outlived the system. The movies and advertisers have subverted the stranglehold of radio in America, and there are now other ways for people to hear music. All of a sudden – a few years ago when Trainspotting came out – I was walkin’ down the street, and I’d heard ‘Raw Power’ comin’ out of the bars.”
Today, we’re exploring this first chapter in Iggy Pop’s solo career by listening to the isolated vocals from ‘The Passenger’, a song that perfectly showcases Iggy’s distinctive wailing croon.
