Iggy Pop (50 page)
Authors: Paul Trynka
‘Livin’ On The Edge Of The Night’ . . . didn’t make its intended slot on
Black Rain
.
Although the song appears on the OST compilation, both Don Was and Iggy mentioned that their original song wasn’t used.
‘Did You Evah’.
Helped by a snazzy Alex Cox video, the single reached number 42 in the UK.
‘Everything they did blows me away.’
Taken from ‘Heroes’,
Guitar
magazine 1992, interview by Cliff Jones, as is the Thurston Moore ‘I’d really like to see Nirvana as Iggy’s backing band’ quote.
The American ‘alternative’ and grunge scene of the 1990s.
Thanks to
MOJO
’s Jenny Bulley - who was at the 1989 Nirvana Astoria show - Keith Cameron and Andrew Perry for discussing Iggy and the Stooges’ influence on grunge.
‘You little scumbag!’
Johnny Depp: ‘We actually met in 1989, on the set of John Waters’
Cry-Baby
. But I had already met him long before. We were in a bar in 1980. At this time, I was part of a band who played first part of his show. I was seventeen. It was in Gainesville in Florida. After the concert, we all gathered in a bar and I absolutely wanted to draw his attention to me. When they closed the bar, I was totally drunk and I started yelling obscenities at him. He didn’t react at first, after a while Iggy came close to me, looked me straight in the eyes and said, “You little scumbag!” Then he left. I felt at the top of the world - at least he finally knew I was existing. That was great.’ (Interview by Christophe d’Yvoire.)
‘I think there was a moment where Jim decided that he couldn’t do a fucking article without my name being mentioned - and I don’t think that’s a very comfortable feeling.’
Bowie went on to say, ‘I completely understand - I really, really do. Unfortunately, I think Jim took it personally, and that’s a shame because I would have liked to remain closer to him.’ To Robert Phoenix,
gettingit.com
, October 1999.
Henry Rollins.
Rollins has a hilarious monologue of his admiration for and rivalry with Iggy, based around his attempt to blow him off stage at successive performances; it’s included as an extra on the
Live At Luna Park
DVD.
‘Beside You’.
Of course, the original ‘Beside You’ recorded at Olivier Ferrand’s would have predated U2’s ‘With Or Without You’. The original demo made by the Godfather of Punk and his English lieutenant was apparently strongly reminiscent of a Police song - possibly ‘Every Breath You Take’.
‘[I did] all the wrong things [with Eric]’.
Most of Jim’s quotes here, and other vital information on Jim’s relationship with Eric, come from Garth Cartwright’s excellent interview for the
Times
Saturday magazine in September 1999. Although, to be fair, Eric’s was not a conception planned by his father, Iggy is disturbingly brutal about his son when one considers the devoted support he received from his own parents. Meeting Iggy in 1999, says Garth, ‘What struck me most about him was a certain reptilian quality - he was absolutely cold-blooded when talking about his son, ex-wife or old Stooges.’
The woefully predictable
Naughty Little Doggie.
According to Hal Cragin, Iggy had worked on more adventurous material before retreating into ‘bonehead rock’ in the studio. The songs on the album, while competent enough punk-by-numbers, mostly repeat earlier themes: ‘I Wanna Live’ fuses the chord sequence of ‘Real Cool Time’ with the Kinks’ ‘You Really Got Me’; ‘Innocent World’ evokes ‘Gimme Danger’; the opening of ‘Knucklehead’ sounds like ‘Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell’ spliced with the Monkees’ ‘Stepping Stone’; ‘Pussy Walk’ returns to the subject of
Brick By Brick
’s ‘Pussy Power’. ‘It’s about going to high schools, seeing young girls and thinking about what kind of pussies they have under their skirts,’ says Cragin. ‘He thought it would make a good single.’ The final song, ‘Look Away’, recalling the story of Johnny Thunders and Sable Starr, is one of the album’s more intriguing moments, but as so often on this album, sounds half finished, breaking into a drearily predictable Ramones three-chord sequence. Given the album’s overall sparkling digital clarity, one also wonders why producer Thom Wilson didn’t edit out Iggy’s nervous, out-of-tune vocal takes.
[Iggy’s] music was included in dozens of movies.
There’s a good summary of Iggy and the Stooges’ presence on movie soundtracks at
www.imdb.com/name/nm0006563/
.
Iggy claimed [the ROAR] tour offered the opportunity of playing to bigger crowds.
Iggy justified the ROAR tour by telling Colin McDonald: ‘It has always been to my regret that I’ve never had the opportunity to play places like Pittsburgh, Davenport, Milwaukee, Huntsville on a good stage with good sound. I’ve never had that chance and I wanted to show people what I do before I can’t do it any more.’ Considering the conviction with which Iggy Pop can propound the most outrageous arguments, one suspects our hero already realised the game was up.
ROAR tour.
Skoal originally announced that the ROAR tour would reach forty cities across the USA. The actual number of dates played, recorded at drummer Larry Mullins’
www.tobydammit.com
, is twenty. ROAR information here comes from Pete Marshall, Hal Cragin, Whitey and Larry Mullins; the information about Jim’s suspected nerve damage comes from Ron Asheton. For another band’s recollections of the doomed ROAR tour go to
http://www.baboonland.com/sstories_iggy1.htm
Jos Grain.
Grain now has his own following on the web, thanks to the hilarious eighteen-page rider he wrote for the Stooges, which you can find at
www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/1004061iggypop1.html
.
‘Furthermore, I don’t have to.’
From the interview with Colin McDonald, 1997.
Iggy . . . seemed simply to lose his nerve.
I’ve dealt with
Avenue B
briefly here, as it’s an album that seemed to sink without trace, although to me the work seems one of the biggest missed opportunities of Iggy’s later career. Coincidentally, during a few recent interviews with Jim we had discussed Nick Cave, Tom Waits, Kurt Weill and Sinatra’s
Only The Lonely
, debating how an intense, stripped-down, piano-led album could pack as much emotional muscle as an electric recording. In this instance, I do believe Don Was’s attempts to make the album more tasteful diluted the appeal it might have had.
For the
Avenue B
tour that autumn.
From this tour, Whitey’s brother, Alex Kirst, took over on drums from Larry Mullins, who was now playing for a variety of people, including the Residents.
David Bowie used the word ‘obsessive’ about Iggy’s compulsion to tour. ‘
I think he does far, far more touring than I do. I like touring, but I don’t like it quite so obsessively as [he does].’ Bowie to Robert Phoenix,
gettingit.com
, December 1999.
‘Listen, dude,’ he retorted.
The quote is from the San Francisco
Chronicle
, April 2001.
The same old fights . . . were even worse when confined to a tiny private jet.
Whitey: ‘We were playing in the Pyrenees mountains so Jim rented a helicopter. We looked down over these mountains and saw wild horses and chased the wild horses. That was super cool. Then for a while he wanted to fly in private jets, which seems like a cool idea, but when you take four sweaty guys half out of their minds, Jim’s got his head cut from God knows, and stick them in a box together and keep feeding them all wine it gets pretty nutty.’
CHAPTER 18: THE REPTILE HOUSE
Main sources. The interview described at Jim’s house took place on 26 April 2005, just as I started work on this book, and was commissioned by
MOJO
magazine. Sad to say, the Tiki Hut was demolished by Hurricane Katrina.
Murray Zucker diagnosed Jim Osterberg with a bipolar disorder, but now wonders . . .
‘I always got the feeling he enjoyed his brain so much he would play with it to the point of himself not knowing what was up and what was down. At times he seemed to have complete control of turning this on and that on, playing with different personas, out Bowie-ing David Bowie, as a display of the range of his brain. 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 Osterberg since confirmed that his apparent bipolarity was a product of his lifestyle, and that the condition seems to have disappeared.
Superhuman strength of will.
Eric Schermerhorn was one of many who observed, ‘This guy cleaned up on his own, he had this inner strength, and bam, simply stops drinking . . . it was incredible.’ Schermerhorn went on to discuss more about Jim, including his superhuman metabolism, before simply concluding, ‘He’s a freak!’
His record contract at Virgin was under review
. I didn’t want to include the full story of
Skull Ring
here, as in my view it’s a fairly disposable guest-led album. His songs with the Stooges, I would suggest, are messy and unfocused; for how they really can sound, the listener should check out the two versions of ‘You Better Run’, their superb contribution to
Sunday Nights
, the Jr Kimbrough tribute album. Jim explains their reunion thus: ‘Virgin also had gone through a restructuring and parted ways with a lot of artists and that time I didn’t want to leave there . . . so I proposed that I do a guest ménage! You should have seen their faces when I said, I want Justin Timberlake, I want Puff Daddy! But I was serious! They never pursued those. So the Stooges looked better and better to me. And I didn’t anticipate the reaction, nobody did, the A&R was sort of allowing it to happen grudgingly and was only gonna give us a tiny budget for one song, then he got a call in his A&R office from
Rolling Stone
. . . everything changed! Suddenly back-slapping cos he was getting attention and he realised there was interest here . . . and before we were done mixing we had a gig offer. I kept turning them down . . . but they wouldn’t go away so I gave up and we did the [Coachella] gig.’
Watt had been doubled up in agony in the lead-up to Coachella.
There is an enthralling diary, which covers Watts’s shows with the Stooges, at
www.hootpage.com
. For Watts’s own fascinating recollections of the first Coachella performance, including Iggy’s suggestions on how to play and instructions what to wear, go to
www.hootpage.com/hoot_thecordthat-tourdiary4.html
.
Speaking to the Christ-like figure a few weeks later.
Jack White was interviewing Iggy for
MOJO
magazine in May. Thanks to Andrew Male for providing the full transcript of their conversation.
DISCOGRAPHY
1. THE STOOGES ★★★★★
Recorded:
Hit Factory & Mastertone studios, NYC, 1-10 April* 1969;
Released:
Elektra, August 1969 (US), September 1969 (UK);
Chart Peak:
- (UK), 106 (US);
Personnel:
Iggy Stooge (v), Ron Asheton (gtr), Dave Alexander (bass), Scott Asheton (drums);
Producer:
John Cale;
Engineer:
(Mastertone) Lewis Merenstein.
Rock music stripped down to its most vital essentials, this album still sounds fresher and more extreme than most of the punk and alternative material it has inspired over the decades. The lyrics reject intellectualism for a documentary depiction of boredom and anomie, delivered deadpan over an imposing, monumental backing. It sounds simple, but each element of this monolithic structure has been hoisted into place with painstaking care, most notably Ron Asheton’s precise, memorable riffs on songs like ‘No Fun’, ‘1969’, ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ and ‘Not Right’.
2. FUN HOUSE. ★★★★★
Recorded:
Elektra Sound Recorders, La Cienega, LA, 10-25 May 1970;
Released:
Elektra, August 1970 (US), December 1970 (UK);
Chart Peak:
- (UK), - (US);
Personnel:
as
The Stooges
, plus Steve Mackay (tenor sax);
Producer:
Don Gallucci;
Engineer:
Brian Ross-Myring.
For their album debut, the Stooges felt they’d been railroaded by Elektra and restricted by their own inexperience into recording ‘drippy, drippy little songs’, says Scott Asheton. For their second release, Ron Asheton’s guitar playing progressed from charming primitivism to something much more powerful and concise. Thanks to an inspired production from one-time ‘Louie Louie’ organist Don Gallucci, who decreed the band would perform their customary set as if playing live, Iggy working the floor with a hand-held microphone,
Fun House
captured all the elemental power of the Stooges in full flow. Yet while the album revels in exquisitely dumb riffs - ‘Loose’, ‘1970’ - there’s a confident, sophisticated swagger to the sound, too. When Mackay weighs in on saxophone five songs in, for ‘1970’, the aural onslaught is as thrilling as rock ’n’ roll ever gets.
3. RAW POWER ★★★★★
Recorded:
CBS Studios, Whitfield St, London, 10 September to 6 October 1972;
Mixed:
October 1972, Western Sound Recorders, LA;
Released:
CBS, May 1973 (US), June 1973 (UK);
Chart peak:
- (UK), 182 (US);
Personnel:
Iggy Pop (v), James Williamson (gtrs), Ron Asheton (bass), Scott Asheton (drums);
Producers:
James Williamson and Iggy Pop;
Mixed:
David Bowie;
Remix:
Iggy Pop at Sony Music Studios, NY 1996.
Raw Power
was a desperate, final assault on the music industry that had proved so impervious to the Stooges’ charms, a last gasp which, the lyrics told us, was irrevocably doomed. Bad-boy guitarist James Williamson brought a new Detroit aggression to the sound, his cranked-up Les Paul sounding more manic, if more conventional, than his predecessor. Ron Asheton, demoted to bass, became one of the instrument’s greatest exponents, even if his comrades cared so little about the rhythm section that they didn’t bother to record them properly. The album followed a strict structure suggested by MainMan supremo Tony Defries, with an uptempo opener (‘Search And Destroy’, ‘Raw Power’) on each side, followed by a ballad (‘Gimme Danger’, ‘I Need Somebody’). Despite Defries’ efforts, the album was a mess, with guitar piled on guitar, screamed, semi-coherent lyrics and those inaudible drums. But it was a magnificent, inspiring mess, its confusion the perfect metaphor for its makers’ increasingly deranged state. In 1996 Iggy remixed the album, meaning that the original Bowie-mixed version, which did so much to launch the UK punk scene, is shamefully unavailable.
4. METALLIC KO ★★★★
Recorded:
Michigan Palace, 6 October 1973 and 9 February 1974;
Released:
Skydog Records, September 1976;
Chart Peak:
- (UK), - (US);
Personnel:
Iggy Pop (v), James Williamson (gtr), Ron Asheton (bass), Scott Asheton (drums), Scott Thurston (pno).
A magnificent ruin.
Metallic KO
depicts the pathetic but nonetheless grandiose spectre of the Stooges on their doomed last tour, magnificently documenting the expiration of all their energy and ambition: ‘we don’t hate you - we don’t even care.’ Features awesome, powerful renditions of ‘Raw Power’ and ‘Search And Destroy’, inspiring, desperate new songs such as ‘I Got Nothing’, potty-mouthed throwaways like ‘Rich Bitch’ and a brilliantly numbskull ‘Louie Louie’. This recording spooked Iggy Pop for many years, convincing him there was a hex on the Stooges; released as punk exploded in Europe, it would signal his rehabilitation.
5. THE IDIOT ★★★★★
Recorded:
Chateau d’Herouville, Paris, Musicland, Munich, Hansa 1, Kurfürstendamm, Berlin and Cherokee Studios* LA (for ‘Sister Midnight’), mostly June-July 1976;
Released:
RCA, March 1977;
Chart Peak:
30 (UK);
Personnel:
Iggy Pop (v), David Bowie (Baldwin electric pno, gtr, Arp Axe synth, Roland drum machine), Phil Palmer (gtr, most songs), Carlos Alomar (gtr, ‘Sister Midnight’*), Laurent Thibault, George Murray (bass), Michel Santageli, Dennis Davis (drums);
Producer:
David Bowie;
Engineer:
Laurent Thibault;
Mixed:
Tony Visconti, Laurent Thibault*.
The Idiot
seems an album that is praised rather than treasured, but it ranks as some of Iggy and Bowie’s best and most under-appreciated work, its humour, courage and inventiveness rendering it easily the equal of Bowie’s own
Low
, for which this album, recorded in Paris, Munich and Berlin, was a dry run. The staging is relentlessly stark and severe, with dark synthesisers and doomy, gothic guitar, but practically every song is a jewel - ‘China Girl’ an affecting ballad that warns away his intended, ‘Dum Dum Boys’ a warped tribute to the Stooges, ‘Nightclubbing’ all deadpan restraint, delivered impossibly slow, but robotically joyous.
6. LUST FOR LIFE ★★★★★
Recorded:
Hansa Tonstudio 3, Köthenerstrasse, Berlin, June 1977;
Released:
RCA, September 1977;
Chart Peak:
28 (UK), 120 (US);
Personnel:
Iggy Pop (v), Carlos Alomar, Ricky Gardiner (gtr), Tony Sales (bass), Hunt Sales (drums), David Bowie (pno);
Producer:
David Bowie;
Engineers:
Edu Meyer, Colin Thurston.
From its joyous opening groove, now familiar via the movie
Trainspotting
and a host of commercials,
Lust For Life
proclaims itself Iggy Pop’s most effervescent, optimistic album - one that saw his collaborator David Bowie at a towering peak in his songwriting - accompanied by a stunningly inventive band. Where
The Idiot
had been a Bowie-influenced experimental affair,
Lust For Life
was determinedly an Iggy album, recorded in two weeks of schnapps and cocaine-fuelled sessions at Hansa Tonstudio 3 by the Berlin Wall. The optimism and electricity generated in the sessions is exemplified by the closing fade-out of ‘Success’, where Iggy ad-libs about buying Chinese rugs, while the Sales brothers, singing impromptu backing vocals live, try not to break into hysterics.
Sadly, much of the optimism dissipated as the album suffered death by cheeseburger in the US, when RCA diverted its pressing plants to churning out Elvis Presley albums after the King passed away on his toilet at Graceland.
7. KILL CITY ★★★★
Recorded:
Jimmy Webb’s home studio, Encino, LA, plus two tracks recorded at Scott Thurston’s apt, Venice Beach, December* 1974;
Released:
Bomp, November 1977;
Chart Peak:
- (UK), - (US);
Personnel:
Iggy Pop (v), James Williamson (gtrs), Scott Thurston (gtrs, kbds, bass), Brian Glascock (drums), Hunt and Tony Sales (backing vox, plus drums and bass on ‘Lucky Monkeys’, ‘Mastercharge’);
Producer:
James Williamson;
Engineer:
Gary Webb.
Desperately sad, yet perversely inspiring,
Kill City
was recorded for a pittance at a home studio at a time when Iggy Pop was a pariah, seemingly doomed to forever wander Los Angeles as a pathetic lost soul. Songs like ‘Kill City’, ‘Beyond The Law’ and ‘I Got Nothing’ unblink ingly documented this life on the edge. Although scrappy in places, thanks to its origins as a demo for Rocket Records, with a subdued mix courtesy of James Williamson - who had, says Iggy Pop, ‘gone Hollywood’ - it’s an affecting, late-period work. According to
Creem
writer Ben Edmonds, who bankrolled the sessions, the original, lost mix ‘rocked like a mother’.
8. TV EYE LIVE ★★
Recorded:
Cleveland, 21-22 March, and Chicago, 28 March 1977 (I); Kansas, 26 October 1977 (II);
Released:
RCA, May 1978;
Chart peak:
- (UK), - (US);
Personnel:
Iggy Pop (v), David Bowie (pno, I), Hunt Sales (drums) Tony Sales (bass), Ricky Gardiner, Stacey Heydon (gtr, I and II respectively), Scott Thurston (pno, II);
Producer:
Iggy Pop.
An adequate live album that shamelessly flaunts its origins as a contract-filler. Recorded for a pittance, it temporarily solved its maker’s financial problems, but left its purchasers feeling cheated and thus frittered away all the momentum Iggy Pop had built up over the preceding two years.
9. NEW VALUES ★★★★
Recorded:
Paramount Studios, LA, 1978;
Released:
Arista, March 1979 (UK), October 1977 (US);
Chart peak:
60 (UK), 180 (US);
Personnel:
Scott Thurston (gtr, kbds), Jackie Clark (bass), Klaus Kruger (drums), James Williamson (gtr, ‘Tell Me A Story’, only);
Producer:
James Williamson.
The last successful collaboration between Iggy Pop and ex-Stooge James Williamson, this stripped-down, minimal album is filled with subtle pleasures. Its atmosphere recalls
Kill City
, the pair ’s last collaboration, but revels in optimism and coherence rather than despair and confusion; ‘Five Foot One’, ‘I’m Bored’ and ‘Endless Sea’ rank among the best Pop songs of any era. Frustratingly, Williamson extracted fine performances from all concerned, yet hampered the album with an MOR mix, which means that otherwise fine material, including ‘Angel’ and ‘Don’t Look Down’, occasionally sounds subdued or cloying.
10. SOLDIER ★
Recorded:
Rockfield Studios, Wales, July-September 1979;
Released:
Arista, March 1980;
Chart Peak:
125 (US), 62 (UK);
Personnel:
Iggy Pop (v), Glen Matlock (bass), Barry Andrews (kbds), Klaus Kruger (drums), Steve New (gtr), Ivan Kral (gtr, kbds);
Producer:
James Williamson (initial recordings), Pat Moran.
A mess.
Soldier
started out seemingly without any masterplan bar the vague idea of uniting Iggy with a bunch of English New-wavers. The singing is generally dreadful, the bass and drums leaden, the songs are a bunch of disparate ideas in search of a theme, while the guitar seems entirely missing in action - the result, says bassist Glen Matlock, of an act of self-sabotage by Iggy after an argument with guitarist Steve New. ‘Play It Straight’, directed by Bowie, was intriguing, but inspired a final bust-up between Iggy and long-term collaborator James Williamson.
