The Idiot is the debut solo studio album by the American musician Iggy Pop, released on March 18, 1977, through RCA Records. It was produced by David Bowie and primarily recorded at the Château d'Hérouville in Hérouville, France. The album followed the break-up of Pop's band the Stooges in 1974 and a period of drug addiction for both Pop and Bowie, after which the two moved to Europe in an effort to kick their addictions.

Described by Pop as "a cross between James Brown and Kraftwerk", The Idiot marks a departure from the proto-punk of the Stooges to a more subdued, mechanical sound with electronic overtones. Recording for it began at the château in June 1976 and continued into July. Further sessions took place at Musicland Studios in Munich in August. Bowie composed most of the music and contributed a major portion of the instrumentation. Pop wrote most of the lyrics in response to the music Bowie was creating. The album's title was taken from Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel of the same name, while Erich Heckel's painting Roquairol inspired its artwork.

After the album was completed, Bowie began recording his next album Low, which features a sound similar to The Idiot. Low was released in January 1977 and was a commercial success, compelling RCA Records to release The Idiot two months later. Upon its release, the album received divided, albeit largely positive reviews from music critics, many of whom noted a change in musical tone from Pop's earlier work with the Stooges. It charted in the US, the UK, and Australia. It was accompanied by the release of two singles, "Sister Midnight" and "China Girl", in February and May 1977, respectively; Bowie later issued his own version of "China Girl" as a single in 1983.

Pop supported The Idiot with a tour in March and April 1977, with Bowie as his keyboardist. Afterward, the two collaborated again on Pop's second studio album, Lust for Life (1977). Retrospectively, The Idiot has continued to be received positively, with many noting Pop's artistic evolution. However, because Bowie largely created it, fans do not generally consider the album as being representative of Pop's output. It has influenced post-punk, industrial, and gothic acts, including Joy Division.

Background From the late 1960s to the early 1970s, Iggy Pop was the frontman of the proto-punk band the Stooges. He became known for his wild on-stage behavior and helped garner a cult following for the band. During their tenure, the band had little commercial success and almost all members, including Pop, suffered from drug addictions. In 1971, Pop met musician David Bowie and the two became friends. Bowie was hired to mix the band's 1973 album Raw Power. Soon after its release, the band broke up in 1974 because of infighting, lack of major label support, and Pop's drug addiction, causing Pop and Bowie to stop collaborating. After the break-up, Pop recorded tracks with fellow Stooges member James Williamson, but these were not released until 1977 (as Kill City, credited jointly to Pop and Williamson). Pop tried to establish himself as a solo artist and auditioned to join other bands such as the Doors and Kiss, but these ventures were unsuccessful. Realizing his heroin addiction was destroying him, Pop checked himself into the Neuropsychiatric Institute at the University of California in Los Angeles for help to get sober; Bowie was one of Pop's few visitors during his stay. Pop recalled: "Nobody else came... not even my so-called friends in LA. But David came." Pop and Bowie reunited in mid-1975 and attempted to record a few tracks, but both men were deep into their drug addictions, so the sessions were mostly unproductive. Bowie commented, "He'll never make it to the recording studios in time. Iggy's doomed."

Pop's stints in rehab in 1974 and 1976 were unsuccessful, and Bowie's biographer, Thomas Jerome Seabrook, described Pop as reaching his "lowest point" in 1976. Knowing he had to become sober, Pop accepted an invitation to join Bowie on his 1976 Isolar Tour. By this point, Bowie also wanted to rid himself of his drug addiction. During the tour, Pop was impressed with Bowie's work ethic, later stating that he learned all of his self-help techniques through Bowie on the tour. There were further talks of Pop recording a solo album with Bowie as producer. Bowie and the guitarist Carlos Alomar had written a new song, "Sister Midnight", and offered it to Pop; Bowie occasionally performed it live on the tour. Toward the end of the tour, both Bowie and Pop knew they wanted to avoid the drug culture of Los Angeles, and decided to move to Europe. At its conclusion, Bowie was initially keen to produce "Sister Midnight" in Munich, Germany, for release as a single. After visiting the Château d'Hérouville in Hérouville, France, the same place Bowie recorded his 1973 album Pin Ups, he instead decided to produce an entire album for Pop there. Bowie booked two months of studio time at the château for later in the summer of 1976.

Recording Bowie and Pop arrived at Château d'Hérouville in June 1976 to record an album. Bowie bonded with the studio's new owner, Laurent Thibault, the former bassist of the French band Magma, and asked him to play bass and act as engineer; Thibault hired the Frenchman Michel Santangeli to play drums. Bowie composed, using keyboard and guitar, much of the music that ended up on the album. After Santangeli's arrival, Bowie played the tracks for him using a Baldwin electric piano. For two days, with minimal guidance, Santangeli played to the rough tracks (which he assumed were demos), the first takes often becoming part of the final mix. Bowie dismissed Santangeli at the end of the second day, leading him to believe his playing was inadequate, and he would not appear on the album; Santangeli later expressed regret over the final drum sound. Subsequently, Bowie began adding guitar parts. Overall, Bowie contributed guitar, electric piano, synthesizer, saxophone, and backing vocals to the album.

After the backing tracks were composited with guitar, keyboards, and drums, Bowie had Thibault add bass to them with little guidance. In July 1976, Bowie brought in his own rhythm section consisting of the bassist George Murray and the drummer Dennis Davis to provide overdubs on a few tracks, including "Sister Midnight" and "Mass Production". While Bowie composed much of the music for The Idiot, Pop wrote most of the lyrics on the studio floor, often in response to the music Bowie was composing. Pop was also keen to improvise some of his lyrics while standing next to the microphone, something that fascinated Bowie, who later used this method when recording "Heroes" (1977).

Recording continued in August 1976 at Musicland Studios in Munich, which was owned by Bowie's future collaborator, the electronic dance music producer Giorgio Moroder. Here, Pop recorded most of his vocals, along with additional guitar overdubs provided by the guitarist Phil Palmer who, like Santangeli and Thibault, re-recorded some of Bowie's guitar parts with little guidance. Palmer described the creative collaboration with Pop and Bowie as "vampiric" because he never saw the artists during the daytime and the collaboration was stimulating but disquieting. Bowie's original choice for guitarist was former King Crimson member Robert Fripp, who later worked with him on "Heroes". The last track recorded for The Idiot was "Nightclubbing" with Bowie playing the melody on piano using an old drum machine for backing. When Pop pronounced himself happy with the result, Bowie protested they needed real drums to finish it. Pop insisted on keeping the drum machine, saying "it kicks ass, it's better than a drummer".

When recording was completed, Bowie and Pop traveled to Berlin to mix the album at Hansa Studio 1 (not, as is often incorrectly reported, the bigger Studio 2 by the Berlin Wall). Because his former producer Tony Visconti was already in line to co-produce Bowie's next album, Bowie called upon him to help mix the record, so as to familiarize him with Bowie's new way of working. Given the almost demo quality of the tapes, the post-production work was, in Visconti's words, "more of a salvage job than a creative mixing".

Styles and themes The Idiot marks a drastic departure for Pop from the aggressive proto-punk sound of the Stooges, reflecting a more subdued, inward-looking sound featuring elements such as "fragmented guitar figures, ominous basslines, and discordant, high-relief keyboard parts" as well as his "world-weary baritone." At the time of its release, Pop described The Idiot as "a cross between James Brown and Kraftwerk". Retrospectively, commentators have described The Idiot as an "ambitious art rock" album, an essential punk album and a proto-punk classic. They have also noted the presence of gothic rock, industrial rock, with the album described as "totally out of step" with the punk sound birthed by the Stooges and credited with having "invented" post-punk. In 1981, NME editors Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray suggested that The Idiots electronic sound had been "pioneered" on Bowie's Low (1977), whereas in 2016, Nicholas Pegg described it as "a stepping stone between Bowie's Station to Station and Low". According to the critic Simon Reynolds, the album's "mechanistic grooves, brittle drums and harsh guitar textures" anticipated Bowie's Berlin Trilogy and allowed Bowie to explore his fascination with German electronic sounds inspired by Neu! and Cluster. Wesley Strick of Circus magazine described the music as "mechanized", similar to Bowie's "Fame", but "with rhythms keyed off a quickened pulse", while Creem Richard Riegel called it "professional studio metal, with occasional German-electronic overtones". NMEs Nick Kent described the music as "totally rivetted and fettered to a thoroughly unhealthy aroma of evil and twilight zone zombie-time unease". Bowie biographer David Buckley called The Idiot "a funky, robotic Hellhole of an album".

Side one

"Sister Midnight" is similar to the funk style of Bowie's tracks "Fame" and "Stay", described by critics Thomas Jerome Seabrook and Chris O'Leary as the song most representative of Bowie's pre-Berlin period. Its lack of overtly electronic instrumentation belied what the critic Dave Thompson described as a "defiantly futuristic ambience". Bowie wrote the first lyrics of the opening verse of "Sister Midnight" while on tour; Pop completed them in the studio. Reviewers have compared Pop's vocal performance to Jim Morrison of the Doors. The author Peter Doggett writes the identity of "Sister Midnight" is irrelevant, explaining that "she was merely a cipher, who could send [Pop] soaring to the moon or falling to Earth... without either journey seeming to register on his emotions". The Krautrock-influenced "Nightclubbing" is considered a forerunner to what Bowie would explore on Low. The riff has been described as a mischievous take on Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll". Kris Needs described it as "the bleak sound of the 1985 disco, as ghostly electronic washes sky-write phrases over an unsettling, distorted disco pulse". Lyrically, Pop described "Nightclubbing" as "my comment on what it was like hanging out with him every night" and "about the incredible coldness and deathly feeling you have after you've done something like that and how much you enjoy it. It could be Los Angeles or Paris or New York or anywhere, really."