Iggy Pop (26 page)

Jim Osterberg was fortunate to have landed up at one of the world’s leading psychiatric facilities. For the next few weeks, his life was conducted according to a rigid but bracing regime. He slept in a simple eight-by-four-foot room, with an unfinished wooden cot, one pillow, one sheet and one blanket. It was bare and clinical, with no running water, and a shared bathroom. Most mornings Jim would get up early and walk into a common room, where he would be allowed to play records; his anthem for the day would usually be James Brown’s
Sex Machine
album, which he’d play all the way through. After a breakfast of Cheerios, his day would usually involve group discussions, psychoanalysis, walks in the gardens or games of basketball.

Although Jim avoided most of the shrinks at NPI, he formed a bond with Murray Zucker, the resident who’d been on call when he was first admitted. Zucker was young, smart, open and interested; he liked Jim, respected his intelligence and creativity, and would subsequently keep a close eye on his career. Murray found his patient ‘extremely likeable’ - not because of the bravado that those who knew his music might expect, but because he was ‘very sweet, charming, personable, had a great sense of humour and was very perceptive. There was always this intensity about him. Also there was this little boyish quality, that engendered other people wanting to take care of him.’

It was impossible for any of the NPI psychiatrists to diagnose Jim until he was stabilised and all traces of drugs had disappeared from his system; once that was done, the diagnosis was that his underlying condition was hypomania, a bipolar disorder characterised by episodes of euphoric or overexcited and irrational behaviour, succeeded by depression. Hypomanics are often described as euphoric, charismatic, energetic, prone to grandiosity, hypersexual and unrealistic in their ambitions - all of which sounded like a checklist of Iggy’s character traits. Bipolar disorders are genetic, and it has often been suggested that the condition has survived because it confers an evolutionary advantage on the population. Dr Kay Jamison, professor of psychiatry at John Hopkins University, is one of the leading US experts in bipolar disorders; she was also a sufferer from the condition, and indeed was an intern at UCLA during the period Jim was admitted, and later wrote a fascinating memoir of her time at NPI. Dr Jamison has written extensively about the links between creativity and mood disorders, citing the histories of poets from William Blake to Ezra Pound, writers from Tolstoy to Tennessee Williams, and artists from Michelangelo to Van Gogh, all of whom are thought to have suffered from bipolar and other mood disorders. Manic or hypomanic behaviour, with the exalted state it brings, has huge creative upsides - but there are huge numbers of case histories illustrating the downside: depression, confinement to the asylum, and suicide.

Despite Jim’s travails, his addiction to a variety of drugs, his wild mood swings and distress that his musical career was washed up, there is little self-pity evident in his own or anyone else’s memories of his time at NPI. Instead, even today he demonstrates an affecting empathy with his fellow inmates, who he says included a couple of delusional teens, two full-blown manic depressives, a baseball player who’d thrown himself out of the window while high on LSD and ‘saddest of all, lots and lots of those American housewives who just break down. They’re the big mental cases in the US, who just break down from loneliness and general mental neglect, they get on pills or alcohol and one day they just lose their orientation.’

Today, Dr Zucker remembers his former patient well; but, intriguingly, he questions the initial diagnosis of hypomania - which normally gets more serious with age - and speculates that Jim’s problems were more specifically related to his drugs use, his creative lifestyle and the complexities of the personae he’d chosen to harness. ‘At times he seemed to have complete control of turning this persona on and that one on, playing with different personae as a display of the range of his brain,’ says Murray. ‘But then at other times you get the feeling he wasn’t in control, he was just bouncing around with it. It wasn’t just lack of discipline, it wasn’t necessarily bipolar - it was God knows what!’

Jim was such an intriguing psychological specimen that he was presented at what was known as the Grand Round, when a visiting professor would interview NPI’s most interesting or challenging inmates. ‘It was fascinating,’ remembers Murray, ‘you had this world-famous professor, a very small guy, wan and intense, sitting nose to nose with Jim and asking him psychoanalytic-type questions.’

Hugely expert in manipulating his interviewers, Jim was both charming and forthcoming, but Murray looked on in fascination as the professor got down to some ‘very hardcore psychoanalytical questions. It was intriguing to watch a showman who’s so bright and charming and perceptive that he can parry any situation and put on any persona at will deal with a world-famous psychoanalyst - who wasn’t having any of it.’

Unsurprisingly, the psychoanalyis would also cover the subject of narcissism, and one gets the impression from Dr Zucker that what would be excessive for the average individual is unsurprising in a singer. At any rate, Murray’s explanation of narcissism - ‘this unending emotional neediness for attention, that’s never enough’ - would eventually inspire a song, ‘I Need More’, that was a ‘brilliant exploration of the subject,’ says Zucker.

While Dr Zucker’s psychological counselling and an enforced break from drugs would begin a healing process, it would take years to be completed. Without doubt, Zucker helped banish the sense of failure that haunted Jim, launching an era that would see him harness his exuberance, helping transform him from the man who sang about death trips to one who celebrated his lust for life. But life at NPI could still be boring and frustrating, with few visitors to relieve the tedium. Don Waller, Phast Phreddie and some friends from
Back Door Man
attempted to visit their stricken hero; the door staff decided Jim’s well-wishers were drug-dealers and refused them admission - the admirers couldn’t even leave the flowers they’d brought, in case they concealed illicit substances. David Bowie was one of the few who gained admittance - according to Jim the doctors were star-struck and admitted Bowie, who was, says Jim, off his face, and clad in a spacesuit - accompanied by the actor Dean Stockwell.

But this was a very different David Bowie from the efficient, almost studious character Jim had known in London. David’s opening question was: ‘Hey, want some blow?’ A later visit was less crazed; this time Bowie brought his new regular companion Ola Hudson - who’d designed his
Man Who Fell To Earth
costumes - and Hudson’s nine-year-old son Saul (later better known as Slash, the top-hatted, guitar-slingin’ founder of Guns ’N’ Roses). By now it was obvious Bowie had problems of his own, but it would turn out that his sympathy, and respect, were valuable assets as Jim attempted to rebuild his battered self-esteem.

Ultimately, the intervention of the LAPD, and Jim’s stay at NPI, had probably saved him from a descent into complete mental breakdown, and possibly from death. Yet there was one more, equally crucial therapy, one witnessed by Doug Currie in the autumn of 1974, when Currie sat down in James Williamson’s living room at the Coronet and listened as Iggy sang his way through a collection of around eight songs, while Williamson accompanied him on his Gibson Les Paul Custom, plugged into a tiny Pignose amplifier. Even in this raw, unadorned state, the songs had a stark beauty. A few, including ‘I Got Nothing’ and ‘Johanna’, were familiar from the old Stooges set, but there was a new simplicity and focus to their delivery. The new songs were mostly affecting but defiant depictions of life on the edge in Los Angeles. ‘Beyond The Law’, Jim mentioned, described his relationship with Manzarek - ‘the straights all hate the sounds we make’ - while ‘Kill City’ was a forensic description of his own predicament, living ‘where the debris meets the sea. It’s a playground for the rich, it’s a loaded gun for me.’ These haunting songs exemplified Iggy’s predicament. Powerful and uncompromising, they would languish unreleased for many years, yet they illustrated how, even in the absence of any interest from the outside world, Jim Osterberg was compelled to make music - and transform his own life, with all its inspiration, stupidity and suffering, into great art.

Around the same time, the two played these songs for John Cale, who preserved their acoustic performance on his tiny cassette recorder and promised he’d try and find them a deal. Then Cale ran into delays, but Ben Edmonds, a long-term Stooges fan, who’d previously been an editor at
Creem
but had recently moved out to LA, offered to fund some recordings. Edmonds was convinced that Williamson and Pop could make a great record that would embody the legacy of the Stooges ‘but show people the Stooges could make something that resembled music’; he was doing some publicity work for songwriter Jimmy Webb, of ‘McArthur Park’ and ‘Wichita Lineman’ fame, and managed to hire Webb’s home studio in Encino on a costs-only basis, the only fee being for Jimmy’s brother, Gary, who would engineer the sessions.

Jim seemed humbled compared to his former self, but was earnest about proving he could be relied upon; he would meet Ben at lunchtime at a café by Edmonds’ office at Record World, and they’d work on lyrics and discuss arrangements. There would be lapses, still, where Jim would be beset by doubts; at one point he went into the McDonald’s next to the apartment his current girlfriend had rented for him on Pico, and picked up an application form for a Mcjob. He never filled it in, though, presumably deciding that another stint in NPI was more enticing than a job flipping burgers, and he elected to return as a voluntary patient to try to get straight. Hence James would oversee the demo sessions, while Iggy would overdub his vocals on day release from NPI. Fortuitously, Louella Osterberg, who with Jim Senior remained anxious for the welfare of their son, regularly sending him cash, had kept up his Blue Cross health insurance, which covered his attendance at NPI.

Recording was brisk; James and Scott Thurston called in favours from all the musicians they knew, and the band revolved around Williamson and Scottie, who played keyboards and bass on half the tracks, augmented by bassist Steve Tranio and English drummer Brian Glascock, a friend of Scottie’s who later joined the Motels. (James’s friends Hunt and Tony Sales would also play on a couple of tracks.) All of them played for free. For the two or three days when Iggy added his vocals, James would drive down to collect him in the rickety blue MG Midget he’d just bought - a recent insurance payout meant he was free to devote himself to music - and take him back in the evening. Although Jim was occasionally woozy as the NPI doctors experimented with the dosage of what was probably lithium, his singing in retrospect seems perfect, its slight weariness and air of desperation perfectly suited to the material; and the initial mixes, says Ben Edmonds, were rough, raw and thrilling. One night during a mixing session, Art Garfunkel dropped into the studio on the way to see his friend Jimmy Webb and sat and listened to a couple of songs. For months afterwards, Edmonds found it hard to erase the memory of Garfunkel’s frizz-crowned head bopping respectfully up and down to the crazed sound of the Michigan lost souls, whose career seemed the perfect antithesis of his own.

Although there was no immediate reaction from Rocket, whom they regarded as the most promising contender, Edmonds was optimistic about the tapes, particularly when he played them to Seymour Stein in January 1975. Stein was already a respected industry exec, but he would soon become even more celebrated with his signing of the Ramones, and later discovery of Madonna. Stein loved what he heard. ‘These aren’t demos - this is an album!’ he told Edmonds. But when Edmonds returned to Los Angeles he discovered that, in traditional Stooge style, Williamson and Pop had conspired to sabotage their own career once more, and swiped the master tape from the studio.

Today, Williamson says that he and Jim were advised to take the tapes by Bennett Glotzer, an entertainment attorney who was planning to take over Iggy’s management. ‘Bennett said to us, “Go up there and get the tapes and I’ll do what I can to shop them.” So we drove up to Jimmy Webb’s house and said, “Hi, can we have our tapes?” and they said, “Sure.”’ Ultimately, says Williamson, Glotzer despaired of dealing with Iggy, who was ‘too frenetic’ for him. Meanwhile, Edmonds had shelled out his entire savings from his measly journalist’s salary with no return - although, with admirable
sangfroid
, he saves most of his resentment for the limp remix that Williamson would perform on the tapes a couple of years later.

Glotzer’s lack of progress in shopping the tapes paled alongside some darker news on 11 February 1975, when Jim received a phone call telling him that Dave Alexander had died in Ann Arbor’s St Joseph Mercy hospital the previous day. Jim rushed to Ron’s apartment, telling him, ‘Zander’s dead and I don’t care!’ Ron was outraged and felt like beating Jim up; James, who was shocked by the news, calmed things down. But Jim’s reaction was a kind of denial: he was deeply troubled by Alexander’s death. ‘He liked to pretend he had no emotions, or only superficial emotions,’ says Michael Tipton, who had long conversations with Jim about the dead Stooge, ‘but you could tell it really bothered him, and that he was deeply depressed.’ Alexander’s death was caused by pulmonary oedema, brought on by pancreatis - inflammation of the pancreas - a condition which is often caused by alcohol abuse. Indeed, the autopsy also noted ‘severe’ alcohol-related damage to the liver.

By the summer of 1975, Williamson had once more drifted apart from Jim, perhaps because of an argument after the guitarist tried to get him to sign a contract covering their work at Webb’s studio. James had also concluded that he was never going to make it as a guitarist; he’d cut his hand during a violent argument at an Alice Cooper recording session ‘that took a long time to heal, and it was just one more thing in a long sequence of crap’. He spent his time learning audio engineering at Paramount Recorders, by which time Jim’s musical ambitions seemed to be once again focused on David Bowie.