Iggy Pop: The Idiot [BACK TO BLACK/VIRGIN]

Why you'll love it

This Back to Black edition is pressed on 180g vinyl in the EU and comes with a download card. Pop called it a cross between James Brown and Kraftwerk, and its cool, mechanical sound went on to shape Joy Division and a generation of post-punk, industrial and gothic acts.

This edition

• Back to Black series
• 180g vinyl
• Download card included
• Pressed in the EU

About the album

After the Stooges fell apart in 1974, Iggy Pop and David Bowie moved to Europe to get their lives back in order. They set up at the Château d'Hérouville in France in June 1976, carried on into July, and finished the job at Musicland Studios in Munich that August.

Bowie wrote most of the music and played much of it, and Pop wrote his lyrics in response to what he heard. "Sister Midnight" opens on a slinky, slowed-down funk groove, "Nightclubbing" stalks along on a drum machine, "Funtime" is gleefully deadpan, and "China Girl" is the original of the song Bowie took into the charts in 1983. "Dum Dum Boys" looks back at the Stooges, and the eight-minute "Mass Production" grinds the album to a close. The title comes from Dostoevsky's novel, and Erich Heckel's painting Roquairol inspired the cover.

It charted in the US, the UK and Australia. Bowie went straight on to make Low, which shares much of its sound, and Pop toured The Idiot in the spring of 1977 with Bowie on keyboards. Few backing bands have had a keyboard player with quite that CV.

Also at Kops: more Iggy Pop on vinyl · browse Punk

Tracklist

Listen

On RCA / Virgin, a reissue of the 1977 album.