When Iggy Pop and David Bowie took their sabbatical to Berlin, Germany, following an arrest for possession of marijuana in Rochester, New York, their creative sojourn was meant to help the two ween themselves off drugs and reinvent themselves as artists.
In Berlin, the two co-wrote Pop’s post-Stooges solo debut, The Idiot, which Bowie also produced with “Nightcubbing,” “Funtime,” and “China Girl.” Both also co-produced Pop’s follow-up, Lust for Life, with Bowie also penning the title track and several other songs for the album, including “Some Weird Sin,” “Success,” “Neighborhood Threat,” and the closing “Fall in Love with Me.” “
Pop also released his live album TV Eye in 1977, which featured Bowie on backing vocals and keyboards, along with his third album Kill City, later recorded in Los Angeles and co-written and produced with former Stooges bandmate James Williamson.
Following his success of Station to Station in 1976, Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy was also born during this time with his troika of albums—Low and Heroes (1977) and Lodger (1979)—co-produced with Tony Visconti and Brian Eno.
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Once Bowie and Pop left Germany by the late ’70s, they remained linked throughout the early 1980s with Bowie covering some of Pop’s previous songs, including The Idiot track “China Girl,” which was featured on Bowie’s 1983 album Let’s Dance and went to No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100.
[RELATED: 3 Key Songs from David Bowie and Brian Eno’s ‘Berlin Trilogy’ Collaborations]
Bowie also covered several earlier Pop songs on his 1984 release, Tonight, which they co-wrote together, and several others they co-wrote for the album. In 1987, Bowie’s album Never Let Me Down also covered “Bang Bang” from Pop’s 1981 album Party. A year earlier, the two also reconnected to co-write the majority of tracks on Pop’s album Blah-Blah-Blah.
Here’s a look at just four more songs Bowie and Pop wrote together, and for one another, years after their first collaboration on The Idiot.
1. “Tonight” (1984)
Written by Iggy Pop and David Bowie
Originally written and released on Pop’s 1977 album Lust for Life, Bowie later used “Tonight” as the title track of his 18th album. “Tonight” revolves around mortality, and Pop began writing it around the story of a man who finds his girlfriend dead from a heroin overdose: I saw my baby / She was turning blue / I knew that soon, her / Young life was through. Bowie’s version of “Tonight” with Tina Turner transformed into a calypso-bent celebration of love until it ends.
Everything will be alright tonight
Said everything will be alright tonight
No one moves, no one talks
No one thinks, no one walks tonight
Tonight
Everyone will be alright tonight
Everyone will be alright tonight
No one moves, no one talks
No one thinks, no one walks tonight
Tonight
I am gonna love you ’til the end
I will love you ’til I reach the end
I will love you ’til I die
I will see you in the sky tonight
Tonight
2. “Dancing with the Big Boys” (1984)
Written by David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and Carlos Alomar
On Tonight, Bowie also covered Pop’s Lust For Life track “Neighborhood Threat” and “Don’t Look Down” from Pop’s 1979 album New Values. In the middle were two new tracks the two wrote specifically for Tonight, including the closing “Dancing with the Big Boys,” which features Pop on vocals and was co-written with Bowie’s bandmate Carlos Alomar. The guitarist had previously written Bowie’s first U.S. No. 1 “Fame” with him and John Lennon.
Something’s going on in society
(Dancing with the big boys)
You chew your fingers
And stare at the floor
(Dancing with the big boys)
One wrong word
And you’re out of sync
Talking ’bout a hands on policy
Death to the trees
(Dancing with the big boys)
They weren’t bad
They weren’t brave
Nothing is embarrassing
(Dancing with the big boys)
3. “Tumble and Twirl” (1984)
Written by David Bowie and Iggy Pop
Also on Tonight, “Tumble and Twirl” was the second original song written by Bowie and Pop. The reggae-pop, world music-driven “Tumble and Twirl” centers around the duo’s adventures while vacationing in Java and Bali in Indonesia at the end of Bowie’s Serious Moonlight Tour in 1983.
I’ve seen the city
I took the next flight
For Borneo
They say it’s pretty
I like the tee shirts
In Borneo
Some wear Bob Marley
Others in playboy
Or Duvalier
Make the last plane come
Let me rise through the cloudy above
With a book on Borneo
Strangers come and go
It’s such a waste of time
Problems far behind
Another day
But even in springtime
It’s a rich slice of life
So send me a letter
I’ll reply with a broken spear
That dusky mulatto
In nylons and tattoos
Hot juice in coke bottles
We dance in the sand
Well, they twirl and they tumble
Yes, they twirl and they tumble
Well, I’ll twirl and I’ll tumble
4. “Isolation,” Iggy Pop (1986)
Written by Iggy Pop and David Bowie
On Pop’s 1986 release Blah-Blah-Blah, he and Bowie reconvened to co-write the majority of the tracks on the album. Bowie also co-produced Pop’s seventh solo album with David Richards, which also featured two songs co-written with ex-Sex Pistol Steve Jones along with a cover of Johnny O’Keefe’s 1958 hit “Real Wild Child (Wild One).”
Bowie co-wrote the title track, along with “Baby, It Can’t Fall,” “Shades,” “Hideaway,” and “Isolation.”
Needed you, you were only using
Needing you just tore me down
Here I stand in isolation
Feeling emptiness and doubt
Walking down the broken highway
Sucking sugar, plain and sweet
Did your mother ever tell you
That the joyful are the free?
I need some lovin’
Like an inmate needs a dime
I need some lovin’
Like a poet needs a rhyme
Photo: Evening Standard/Getty Images
