Lust For Life

Iggy Pop

VCT, 1977

http://iggypop.com

REVIEW BY: Benjamin Ray

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 09/22/2012

Is there a better opening drum riff in rock history than the one on “Lust For Life?” Not to give short shrift to John Bonham or Bill Ward, but Hunt Sales’ whomping yet swinging beat has no equal. That he keeps it up for five minutes is a testament to discipline; it also is this drum riff, more than the occasional guitar fill or the bass, which truly drives the song.

Iggy Pop hadn’t sounded this alive in years. His time in Germany with David Bowie and his resulting sobriety resulted in The Idiot earlier in 1977. Bowie wrote much of that album and writes more than half of the music on Lust For Life, but where the previous record was more serious (in keeping with Bowie’s own Low, recorded around the same time), this one is more exuberant and outgoing, in keeping with Iggy’s personality.

The Iggy of the Stooges days had a bit of a punk snarl, a get-drunk-and-howl-from-the-depths approach. This Iggy is more glam, looser, more sardonic and perhaps a bit jaded, but at least he’s smiling. The music on my_heart_sings_the_harmony_web_ad_alt_250 Lust For Life has little to do with the Stooges, choosing instead a glam rock approach without the feminine side, à la Mott the Hoople.

The whole thing is summed up perfectly in the title track musically, but Iggy’s lyrics really sell it, a wounded survivor of the depths getting a second lease on life. “Yeah I'm through with sleeping on the sidewalk / No more beating my brains / With the liquor and drugs,” he sings with a strut, and you believe him. Also of note is the hilarious reference to “Something called love / Well, that’s like hypnotizing chickens”).

“Neighborhood Threat” has Bowie overtones; indeed, the man himself covered it in 1984, but the original is a little better, Iggy doing his best Ian Hunter to tell the story of those struggling to make it on the streets: “Somewhere a baby's feeding / Somewhere a mother's needing / Outside her boy is trying / But mostly he is crying / Did you see his eyes?” It’s a fantastic early punk song, told with conviction and strength but still finding time for a snarling joke: “Everybody always wants to kiss your trash,” Iggy wails.

Just as good is “The Passenger,” with a jaunty guitar progression by Rick Gardiner underlining the story of riding in a car and preparing to do some after-hours deeds (read: drugs and such) once the sun goes down. Instead of celebrating it, Iggy takes a more detached view, his jaded singing style suggesting boredom with this lifestyle and an inability to stop living it because it’s all he knows.

The rest of the album doesn’t hold up to these three highlights, especially the overlong “Fall In Love With Me” and the slow crawl of “Turn Blue,” where Iggy’s attempt at blues is completely undone by the high caterwaul of his voice. “Success” is moderately successful musically (an obvious Bowie written track) but pretty good lyrically. “Some Weird Sin” is also pretty good and “Sixteen” could have been better (gotta love cowbell) had Iggy tried to sound more like himself and less like Ian Hunter.

Lust For Life, despite the handful of weaker tracks, remains the best example of Iggy Pop’s work post-Stooges and a testament to how one can reinvent himself after a dark period in his life.

Rating: B

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