Lust for Life is Iggy Pop’s second solo release, turns 40 this week!

His second collaboration with David Bowie, following The Idiot earlier in the year. As well as achieving critical success, it was Pop's most commercially popular album to date, and remains his only Gold-certified release in the UK.

The Lust for Life sessions took place soon after the completion of a concert tour in support of The Idiot album, the tour ending on 16 April 1977. Pop has stated, "David and I had determined that we would record that album very quickly, which we wrote, recorded, and mixed in eight days, and because we had done it so quickly, we had a lot of money left over from the advance, which we split."

The singer slept little during its making, commenting "See, Bowie's a hell of a fast guy ... I realised I had to be quicker than him, otherwise whose album was it gonna be?" Pop's spontaneous lyrical method inspired Bowie to improvise his own words on his next project, "Heroes".

Lust for Life reached #28 in the UK Albums Chart and is his second highest-performing release in that country after 2016's Post Pop Depression.  Initially, the album sold well in the US but the death of Elvis Presley caused RCA to quickly reissue Presley's catalogue and any promotional focus for Pop's album was lost. It eventually performed well in America, but only peaked at number 120 on the Billboard chart.

The title track “Lust For Life” was used in the film Desperately Seeking Susan starring Madonna, and in 1996 became the intro and almost theme song for Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting.  

The pair, Pop and Bowie, were life long friends.  Here’s Iggy talking about their work together.

Listen to the great album here on Spotify…