The Godfather of Punk, Iggy Pop dedicated the last two hours of the last broadcast of his BBC Radio 6 program “Iggy Confidential” to remembering his friend David Bowie. For this, he chose his favorite songs and talked about the relationship between the two.“The way I chose them was from memory,” Iggy said at the time. “I took out a piece of paper and a pen and closed my eyes and just remembered what I liked at different times… I’m weighing things that are a little more low on the totem pole, but not obscure.”
The story of where their friendship started goes like this: In 1972, Bowie confronted Pop about his worsening addiction to drugs, encouraging him to move to London to work on new music. There, Pop teamed up with James Williamson to compose what would become The Stooges’ great album, Raw Power, which was mixed by Duke himself. Three years later, Bowie and Pop moved to Berlin together. When he was not recording his acclaimed trilogy, the English artist assisted Pop on his solo albums The Idiot and Lust For Life.
Iggy Pop, who wrote a heartfelt message posted by Rolling Stone in 2016:
“The friendship was basically that this guy salvaged me from certain professional and maybe personal annihilation — simple as that,” Pop said. “A lot of people were curious about me, but only he was the one who had enough truly in common with me, and who actually really liked what I did and could get on board with it, and who also had decent enough intentions to help me out. He did a good thing.”
Below are David Bowie’s songs selected by Iggy Pop:
- ‘Boys Keep Swinging’
- ‘Art Decade’
- ‘John, I’m Only Dancing’ (Sax Version)
- ‘Black Country Rock’
- ‘Station To Station’
- ‘What In The World’
- ‘Wild Is The Wind’
- ‘Scary Monsters’ (And Super Creeps)
- ‘The Prettiest Star’ (Single Version)
- ‘Moss Garden’
- ‘Panic in Detroit’
- ‘Dirty Boys’
- ‘Moonage Daydream’
- ‘Sound and Vision’
- ‘Under Pressure’
- ‘Diamond Dogs’
- ‘Criminal World’
- ‘Where Are We Now?’
- ‘I Can’t Give Everything Away’
- ‘Stay’ (US Single Edit)
- ‘TVC 15’
- ‘Young Americans’ (Single Version)
- ‘Golden Years’ (Single Version)
- ‘Aladdin Sane’
- ‘Dollar Days’
- ‘Warszawa’
You can also listen to them on the curated Spotify playlist below: