They're something to see

When we're nightclubbing

Bright-white clubbing

Oh isn't it wild?

The scenario of The Idiot is bleak. As Iggy sings in "Baby," "We're walking down the/Street of chance/Where the chance is always/Slim or none/And the intentions unjust." Iggy seeks escape in the arms of "Tiny Girls," but he cannot find innocence. He is tempted by death and unredeemed by love, entangled by illusions which prove to be not just one mirror of his desires, but a veritable Versailles of them, gleaming and arching to infinity. The peace of death lies only at the end of the passage.

The torment of that infinite reflection is strikingly evoked in "Mass Production." An ominous score by Bowie sets the scene, a sensitive juxtaposition of electronic machine-like sound in insistent rhythm with Iggy's plaintive vocals:

Before you go

Do me a favor

Give me a number

Of a girl almost like you

With iegs almost like you

I'm buried deep in mass production

You're not nothing new

The music evokes a futuristic, endless landscape of highways and smoldering refinery stacks. Although some of the instrumental passages could be briefer, the song represents a brilliant synthesis of Bowie's and Iggy's talents. A low sinister drone ends the tune in an effective, chilling fade.

MUSICALLY, THE IDIOT is irregular in quality. Some cuts, like "Sister Midnight," "Funtime," and "Tiny Girls" offer little melodic variety and feature complaisant, braying vocals. Though the use of dissonance departs from the usual rock modes, the novelty isn't enough to carry the songs. The device of monotony, appropriate to many of the lyrics, succeeds only when it is mated with variation in texture.

One tune emerges, though, as Iggy's musical and emotional salvation. The love song, "China Girl," shows off the richness and flexibility he can achieve. A tinny xylophone riff wraps around the lead guitar in beautiful counterpoint, and the use of electronic media is sensitive and restrained. Carefully punctuated, many-layered, "China Girl" unfolds to a solo guitar fadeout which mimics the beginning theme, in the most cohesive track on the album. As the China Girl soothes him at the end of the song, I began to wonder if she had the secret that Iggy, in the dum dum daze of the Stooges, was looking for all along.