Iggy & David, stoleløse!

Fra interview med Iggy i New York Times:

After the tour, Mr. Bowie produced Mr. Pop’s 1977 solo debut album, “The Idiot,” while traveling in France and Germany and working together on songs — often with Mr. Bowie providing music and perhaps a title and Mr. Pop completing it with melodies and lyrics. “He subsumed my personality, lyrically, on that first album,” Mr. Pop said. He compared Mr. Bowie with the character in George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion” and the musical “My Fair Lady.”

At times, Mr. Pop said, it was like having “Professor Higgins say to you: ‘Young man, please, you are from the Detroit area. I think you should write a song about mass production.” (He did: “Mass Production.”)*

Mr. Pop’s “Nightclubbing,” a song on “The Idiot” that reflected postconcert club excursions across Europe with Mr. Bowie, was recorded with a cheap synthesizer and an early drum machine, the only equipment available after a recording session had been packed up. “He said, ‘I can’t put out a record with that,’” Mr. Pop recalled. “I said, ‘But I can.’ And he smiled, and he realized this was a playground for him. I always tried to encourage his worst impulses in those directions. I was a fan.”

When Mr. Bowie moved to Berlin, Mr. Pop occupied a room in Mr. Bowie’s apartment there “over the auto parts store,” he said. The title song for Mr. Pop’s next album, “Lust for Life,” germinated in that apartment.

Mr. Pop and Mr. Bowie, seated on the floor — they had decided chairs were not natural — were waiting for the Armed Forces Network telecast of “Starsky & Hutch.” The network started shows with a call signal that, Mr. Pop said, went “beep beep beep, beep beep beep beep, beep beep beep,” the rhythm, which is also like a Motown beat, that was the foundation for “Lust for Life.” Mr. Pop recalled, “He wrote the [chord] progression on ukulele, and he said, ‘Call it “Lust for Life,” write something up.’”

Mr. Bowie “saw me sometimes, when he wanted to voice it that way, as a modern Beat or a modern Dostoyevsky character or a modern van Gogh,” Mr. Pop said. “But he also knew I’m a hick from the sticks at heart.” (...)

Mr. Bowie made a point of visiting Mr. Pop’s parents in Detroit, where they were living in a trailer. “He came to my parents’ trailer, and the neighbors were so frightened of the car and the bodyguard they called the police,” Mr. Pop said. “My father’s a very wonderful man, and he said, ‘Thank you for what you’re doing for my son.’ I thought: Shut up, Dad. You’re making me look uncool.”

* - det er det vi, inkl. Højholt, kalder poesi, savende gennem alle møbler:

MASS PRODUCTION

Before you go
Do me a favour
Give me a number
Of a girl almost like you
With legs almost like you
I'm buried deep in mass production
You're not nothing new
I like to drive along the freeways
See the smokestacks belching
Breasts turn brown
So warm and so brown

Though I try to die
You put me back on the line
Oh damn it to hell
Back on the line--hell
Back on the line
Again and again
I'm back on the line
Again and again
And I see my face here
And it's there in the mirror
And it's up in the air
And I'm down on the ground

By the way
I'm going for cigarettes
And since you've gotta go
Won't you do me that favour
Won't you give me that number
Won't you get me that girl
Yeah, she's almost like you
Yes, she's almost like you
And I'm almost like him
Yes, I'm almost like him
Yes, I'm almost like him
Yeah, I'm almost like him