{"id":1016294,"date":"2026-06-09T22:58:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T22:58:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1016294\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T22:58:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T22:58:17","slug":"the-1973-stooges-album-david-bowie-failed-to-understand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1016294\/","title":{"rendered":"The 1973 Stooges album David Bowie failed to “understand”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"David<\/p>\n

Credit: Far Out \/ British Lion Films \/ Alamy<\/p>\n

Tue 9 June 2026 21:00, UK <\/p>\n

No one could tame Iggy Pop<\/a> in the early part of the 1970s. There was simply not a band on the planet who were more ferocious and unpredictable than The Stooges, and Iggy was their wild and uncontainable leader.<\/p>\n

Iggy\u2019s waltz on a knife-edge was entertaining for the music world, and moreover, it boldly took punk into a brave new era. But really, it wasn\u2019t sustainable. He was on an unrelenting crash course<\/a> that was set to end in a blaze of drama, and so the world wondered who would be able to intervene and shepherd Iggy\u2019s vital artistry into a more structured outlet. <\/p>\n

In a bizarre twist of fate, that person ended up being David Bowie, not only the most famous man on the planet at the time, but an artist with a similar penchant for chaos and whose dangerous levels of hedonism made him what you would think was a match made in hell for Iggy\u2026and the rock and roll anecdotes prove it \u2013 the pair got into\u00a0their fair share of unruly drama<\/a>\u00a0in their friendship, but behind it all was a crucial creative relationship that changed music.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Iggy met Bowie during a period when the Londoner was exploring producing, as something of a side hustle. In \u201872, he had just delivered Lou Reed\u2019s seminal record\u00a0Transformer<\/a>,\u00a0and so his stock was even higher than it was as an artist, and despite feeling as though introducing Iggy to Bowie was like petrol and fire, The Stooges sought to get in on the act.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The band\u2019s guitarist, James Williamson, co-wrote most of the record with Iggy before meeting Bowie with a set of roughly produced demos. \u201cBowie was on tour in the US then, so he had to do it fairly quickly,\u201d he remembered. <\/p>\n

Adding, \u201cIt was my first album, so I wasn\u2019t going to be too critical in the studio. Bowie had done a lot of albums, so we figured he knew what he was doing. But the problem was this was not a Bowie style of music \u2013 it wasn\u2019t tune-y or anything that he usually does.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Bowie and Iggy began what would become a decade-long brotherhood<\/a> in the studio that day, Williamson left unconvinced. He wanted to bring a harder edge to these songs, stepping ever so slightly away from the subtle groove that informed the first two Stooges records and to his mind, Bowie didn\u2019t quite grasp that and instead gave a thin layer of gloss that contradicted the intent. <\/p>\n

Further reading: From The Vault<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI think he didn\u2019t really understand the music,\u201d Williamson claimed. \u201cAnd he put a real arty overlay on it. There\u2019s been a lot of criticism about it over the years, but you\u2019ve got to give him credit that nothing sounded like it before or since.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maybe Bowie\u2019s lack of understanding is exactly what made it the album it was. Here Williamson was, with a catalogue of full-blooded punk tracks under his arm that Bowie transformed into something completely unique. The blending of sensibilities from these three musicians with different approaches converged to make a rock and roll mutt that the world, and maybe The Stooges, weren\u2019t ready for.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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