2. Iggy PopThe Idiot
Bizarrely enough, my mother got me this for my birthday a couple of years after it came out, from a tiny local record shop. I must have tipped her off that I wanted it, or given her a shortlist. After we begged him too, my poor dad bought Ramones tickets in London for me and my brother where he worked around that time too. It would’ve have been my first gig but it was cancelled because Joey apparently had laryngitis.
I’d bought the live album TV Eye Live and the version of ‘Nightclubbing’ on there was the most raw thing I’d ever heard and I wanted more. I adore the sound of that live album. But The Idiot! What a record! So strange and claustrophobic, I love the way the noise guitar is mixed quite low with the more sinister Bowie keyboards taking over – like the eerie synths on ‘Mass Production’ at the end of the record.
I’d heard the three Stooges albums and they were simply the most exciting and absorbing things I’d ever heard, especially side two of Funhouse, but this was a whole other world. I loved the mid-70s Bowie albums so much too, and everything came together on this one record. There are so many classic songs on here, ‘Nightclubbing’, ‘China Girl’, ‘Funtime’, ‘Dum Dum Boys’, ‘Sister Midnight’. I was such a fan with pictures on my bedroom wall. This album’s still a favourite.
