May 1975 It’s four in the morning, Hollywood time, and David Bowie is twitching with energy. He’s fidgeting, jabbing a cigarette in and out of his pursed lips, bouncing lightly on a stool behind the control board in a makeshift demo studio, staring through the glass at Iggy Pop.
Bowie has spent the last nine hours composing, producing and playing every instrument on the backing track, and it is finally time for Pop to do his bit. After all, this is Iggy’s demo.
Bowie touches a button and the room is filled with an ominous, dirgelike instrumental track. The shirtless Iggy listens intently for a moment, then approaches the mike. He has prepared no lyrics, and in the name of improv, he snarls:
You go out at night from your sixty dollar single down in West Hollywood With your ripped off clothes that are bulging at the seams I can’t believe that you don’t know you look ugly. I mean, are you really all that dumb? I mean, I don’t want you to be that dumb you know. But you are You’re just dumb Straight out of the cradle and into the hole with you.
He begins screaming.
When I walk through the do-wa. I’m your new breed of who-wa. We will nooowwwwwwww drink to meeeeeee.
Bowie clutches his heart and beams like a proud father watching his kid in the school play. His whisper is full of wonder. “They just don’t appreciate Iggy,” he is saying. “He’s Lenny fucking Bruce and James Dean. When that adlib flow starts, there’s nobody like him. It’s verbal jazz, man!”
I forget that Cameron Crowe was actually a rock writer.
