It's interesting to imagine what sort of solo career
Iggy Pop would have had if
David Bowie had not stepped in to offer him help in 1976, or if he would have had one at all.
Pop was all but a pariah in the music business after the disastrous crash and burn of
Iggy & the Stooges, his mental and physical health was shaky, and there was no significant audience awaiting his next move. By volunteering his services as a producer and member of his road band,
Bowie gave
Pop a new lease on life in more ways than one, and provided a new creative direction that gave him a place to start again. The two 1977 albums
Bowie produced with
Pop,
The Idiot and
Lust for Life, are still highlights of
Pop's catalog, and 2016's excellent
Post Pop Depression (produced by
Josh Homme) was, in many ways, an homage to that era. Anyone wanting to study this brief yet vital moment in
Pop's career will find all the major artifacts collected in 2020's
The Bowie Years, a seven-disc set documenting their work together. Both
The Idiot and
Lust for Life are included in full, and both still satisfy, the former with its doomy voyage through the wreckage of
Pop's life as projected through the Krautrock influences of
Bowie's Berlin period, and the latter a smart but combustible return to full rock & roll strength with no loss of the intelligence he gained on
The Idiot. The rest of the box is devoted to a single disc of rarities (primarily devoted to alternate mixes), and four discs of live material. 1978's
TV Eye: Live 1977 was a concert album that included a few cuts from
Bowie's dates with
Pop, while other 1977 gigs from London, Cleveland, and Chicago with the Thin White Duke on keyboards fill out the set. While very little of the material has been unreleased until now,
The Bowie Years gets solid marks for completeness and presentation. ~ Mark Deming
