1977Released
5:13

Did You Know?

Interesting facts and trivia about Lust For Life. By Songfacts®.

This song is about Iggy Pop's lifestyle as a hard-living heroin addict. The title is taken from the 1956 film of the same name, which itself is an adaptation of Irving Stone's 1934 biographical novel about the Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh.

The song makes several references to Johnny Yen, a character in American writer William S. Burroughs' 1962 novel The Ticket That Exploded. References to the novel also account for the lyrical preoccupation with stripteases, drugs, and hypnotizing chickens.

David Bowie co-wrote this song with Iggy Pop, with Bowie composing the music on a ukulele. Musically, it was inspired by the opening to the American Forces Network News, which the pair listened to in Berlin. Iggy recalled to Q magazine April 2013: "Once a week the Armed Forces Network would play Starsky & Hutch and that was our little ritual. AFN would broadcast an ID when they came on the air, a representation of a radio tower, and it made a signal sound, 'beep-beep-beep, beep-beep-ba-beep.' And we went, 'Aha we'll take that!'. David grabbed his ukulele, worked out the chords, and away we went."

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Song Analysis

Key, BPM (tempo) and time signature of Lust For Life.
AKey
MajorMode
4/4Time Signature
203BPM

Album

The album Lust For Life is released on.

Released By

The record label that has released Lust For Life.
Virgin Records
© 1977 Virgin Records America, Inc.
℗ 1977 Thousand Mile Inc.

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5.8MArtists
73.6MSongs
12.3MAlbums
6.3KGenres
2.5MLabels
493KPlaylists