Iggy Pop - Lust For Life

Iggy Pop was working fast, but this time it was all natural. After spending his formative years slumming it around Detroit with his band of proto-punks, The Stooges, Pop was now taking Europe by storm. A brief reunion with The Stooges soon broke apart, leaving Pop addicted to drugs and needing serious direction. A stint in a mental institution didn’t help, but one of his only visitors offered him a path to the future. The importance of David Bowie to the story of Iggy Pop’s survival and thriving solo career is either widely overhyped or completely necessary, depending on how you interpret it. Bowie did get Pop out of the asylum (by force, allegedly) and brought him along on his ‘Isolar Tour’ in 1976, providing Pop with the inspiration to get his own career back on track. Bowie also was largely responsible for the material that made up The Idiot, Pop’s first solo album. When it came time to tour behind The Idiot, Bowie decided to forgo his own tour behind the more successful Low to be Pop’s keyboardist. But Pop was adamant about taking control of his next record. The tour for The Idiot saw Pop branded as Bowie’s sidekick, something that frustrated the singer. Pop needed to shed some of the art rock pretences Bowie had saddled him with to establish himself fully. His music needed to return to Pop’s sound’s gritty rock and roll roots. Bowie was still heavily involved, but Pop came into the sessions with his own songs and his own ideas about what he wanted to do.

The result was Lust For Life, Pop’s definitive musical statement. Featuring an exuberant blast of early new wave and classic hard rock, the album was Pop at his absolute apex. For 40 minutes of nonstop energy, Pop leaves no part of his voice uncovered, stretching out his range to include shouts, croons, guttural bellows, and an impressive amount of melody. He sounds comfortable and confident through it all, ready to take his spot as a rock and roll legend. Recorded in just eight days at the Hansa Studio by the Wall in Berlin (the same studio that Bowie used to record “Heroes” a month later), Lust For Life still resonates with the same vitality it had when it was first released 46 years ago. Featuring two of Pop’s most beloved songs, ‘Lust For Life’ and ‘The Passenger’, plus a large collection of his best deep cuts like ‘Some Weird Sin’, ‘Success’, and ‘Turn Blue’, the album continues to be the essential cornerstone to Pop’s impressive musical legacy.
Bowie and Pop gathered an impressive band to help bring the album to life. Holding down the rhythm section were bassist Tony Fox and drummer Hunt Sales, the two sons of children’s entertainer Soupy Sales. Pop was heavily influenced by Sales’ simplicity of words as a child, as he explained in the documentary Gimme Danger, so the ability to work with Sales’ offspring likely added a strong connection to their relationship. Bowie must have been impressed, too, considering how both Sales brothers were eventually drafted into what eventually became Bowie’s 1990s industrial band Tin Machine. Along for the ride were also long-time Bowie guitarist Carlos Alomar, Bowie associate Ricky Gardiner, and singer Warren Peace, who helped contribute to the writing of ‘Turn Blue’. With a relatively modest group of collaborators and the freedom to call the shots, Pop crafted a tight batch of songs that celebrated his own newfound vibrancy and vitality.
The only people who couldn’t seem to catch on were executives at Pop’s label, RCA. Just two weeks before the release of Lust For Life, Elvis Presley kicked the bucket, causing RCA to go into overdrive with reissues and brand management. The same company that put a strong promotional push behind The Idiot did comparatively little for Lust For Life, and the album only topped out at number 120 on the Billboard album charts. Lust For Life did better on the UK Album Charts, peaking at number 28. However, the real momentum behind Lust For Life came when Pop went out on tour. Having built a European audience of curious Bowie freaks and devoted neo-punks, Pop could finally match his legendary live performances with a worthy batch of songs. That didn’t translate to major record sales, but it did help cement Pop’s reputation as a boundary-pushing artist.
Tangible success from Lust For Life would have to wait until the mid-1990s when the title track was prominently featured in the opening to the film Trainspotting. By then, Lust For Life continued to garner praise as an under-appreciated gem. Once it became a part of pop culture, the song and the album would permanently entwine themselves with Pop’s legacy. That’s good because Lust For Life remains Pop’s most fully realised album. Its collection of tracks doesn’t seem to age, having been mostly spared from the generational keyboard sounds that would swallow up his albums throughout the 1980s. There’s a reason why Josh Homme was drafted to give Pop a kickstart on 2016’s Post Pop Depression: he needed to get back in touch with his rock and roll guts, the same ones that were on glorious display throughout Lust For Life.

Iggy Pop - The Idiot

In 1976, the Stooges had been gone for two years, and Iggy Pop had developed a notorious reputation as one of rock & roll's most spectacular waste cases. After a self-imposed stay in a mental hospital, a significantly more functional Iggy was desperate to prove he could hold down a career in music, and he was given another chance by his long time ally, David Bowie. Bowie co-wrote a batch of new songs with Iggy, put together a band, and produced The Idiot, which took Iggy in a new direction decidedly different from the guitar-fuelled proto-punk of the Stooges. Musically, The Idiot is of a piece with the impressionistic music of Bowie's "Berlin Period" (such as Heroes and Low), with its fragmented guitar figures, ominous basslines, and discordant, high-relief keyboard parts. Iggy's new music was cerebral and inward-looking, where his early work had been a glorious call to the id, and Iggy was in more subdued form than with the Stooges, with his voice sinking into a world-weary baritone that was a decided contrast to the harsh, defiant cry heard on "Search and Destroy." Iggy was exploring new territory as a lyricist, and his songs on The Idiot are self-referential and poetic in a way that his work had rarely been in the past; for the most part the results are impressive, especially "Dum Dum Boys," a paean to the glory days of his former band, and "Nightclubbing," a call to the joys of decadence. The Idiot introduced the world to a very different Iggy Pop, and if the results surprised anyone expecting a replay of the assault of Raw Power, it also made it clear that Iggy was older, wiser, and still had plenty to say; it's a flawed but powerful and emotionally absorbing work.

Iggy Pop, godfather of punk. This is a phrase you'll no doubt have heard countless times. This album was released in 1977, the "year that punk broke". What's funny then is that this album is pretty far removed from the typical punk styling’s of The Clash or Sex Pistols, and even further removed from the sound displayed on The Stooges albums...
This is perhaps better explained by the fact that this album was more or less co-written by David Bowie, practically being a collaborative effort. As such, this is definitely not the most representative of Iggy Pop's vast works (follow up "Lust for Life" is often regarded as far more so), but the quality here is undeniable, as under Bowie's guidance Iggy Pop created a near masterpiece that can sit proudly alongside classics such as Bowie's own "Low", also recorded in Berlin. The song "Baby" starts with a repetitive, simple bass drone that undoubtedly had an influence on post-punk bands such as Joy Division (so much of an influence that Ian Curtis chose this album as the soundtrack to his suicide), with Iggy Pop's deep vocals adding that menacing tone to the song, a theme that pervades over the album as a whole. He actually kinda sounds like Bowie on this track. This is a perfect example of the type of music this album undoubtedly influenced to a great degree.
Album opener "Sister Midnight" also displays Bowie’s style, echoing the highlight of "Low" and "Sound and Vision" in the guitar tones and simple, repetitive, yet effective guitar licks. Iggy is basically talking here, kind of sounds like preaching; again creating a distanced, slightly robotic atmosphere which is only offset by the previously detailed guitar, as the drums and bass also plod away with hypnotic uniformity. Following track "Nightclubbing" follows a similar formula, but adds horns and piano into the mix, really expanding the palette of the album, dragging Iggy Pop from The Stooges accidentally seminal fury into the world of art - the song's middle introducing a confused, wobbly guitar part that quite frankly sounds ahead of its time.
One of the clear highlights, for me at least, is the track "China Girl". Pure pop in the Bowie vein, it ups the tempo of the album and even ups the mood with uplifting chimes and that familiar style of guitar running all the way through. This is probably the most conventional song on the album, but, surrounded by examples of Pop and Bowie trying to push the boundaries, this works even better, the mood drops off slightly towards the end, Pop's vocals becoming slightly strained, before again lulling back into his drowsy demeanour. Simply put, this is a classic song.
Penultimate track, "Tiny Girls", is also a standout, the horns and slow, lounging bassline, along with the fitting drum work laying the ground work, the saxophone solo later on really setting this apart - a chilled, jazz inspired ballad exploring doubt in a relationship. This feeling is echoed in the effortless cool of "Dum Dum Boys", finger clicking and all, pronounced bassline accompanying a vocal performance so deep and preacher-esque he might well have been prophesising the release of "Unknown Pleasures" a mere two years later (a claim given more credence by the final tracks ridiculous resemblance to said album, in the opening three minutes at least).
Overall, although this may not be the most representative work in Iggy Pop's back catalogue, it surely has to rank as one of the best, the dark tones, emphasis on the bass guitar and Iggy Pop's vocal style having an obvious influence that still prevails today. There's a collage of sound to be found here (the last track has some kind of warped Elephant like sound, probably made by a synth, check it out) that really keeps the songs fresher and more interesting than many "classic" albums from the decade.

Iggy Pop - Zombie Birdhouse

Released on Chris Stein’s Animal label in 1982, Zombie Birdhouse is an absolutely delicious car-crash of a record, all twisted metal and noxious fumes. It’s undoubtedly the noblest kind of failure, the result of two drug-damaged, burned-out rock ‘n’ roll casualties turning to a mediocre songwriter to cook up a set of classics. It was never going to work out exactly how they wanted, but it does almost work out. What’s most frustrating about Zombie Birdhouse is how close it is to being a fantastic record. It’s agonisingly close. Most songs only needed one or two more passes to turn them around. There are heavily processed beats drawn from Latin and Afrobeat rhythms, roaring synth drones, chiming guitars and ominous piano chords – in addition to the dependably hilarious lyrics, but there’s a distinct lack of flavour... There’s nothing that makes Zombie Birdhouse an essential Iggy set, except for its wonderful sleeve art and couldn’t-make-it-up trash-bag sound.

 

Iggy Pop - New Values

From the time the Stooges first broke onto the music scene in 1967, Iggy Pop was rock's most remarkable one-man freak show, but by the mid-'70s, after the Stooges' messy collapse, Iggy found himself in need of a stable career. The rise of punk rock finally created a context in which Iggy's crash-and-burn theatrics seemed like inspired performance rather than some sort of cry for help, and in 1979, with everyone who was anyone name-checking Iggy as punk's Founding Father, he scored a deal with Arista Records, and New Values became his first recording since the new rock gained a foothold. These days, New Values sounds like Iggy Pop's new wave album; while former Stooges associates James Williamson and Scott Thurston worked on the album, the arrangements were dotted with synthesizer patches and electronic percussion accents that have not stood the test of time well at all, and the mix speaks of a more polite approach than the raw, raging rock of Iggy's best work. But the growth as a songwriter that David Bowie encouraged in Iggy on The Idiot and Lust for Life is very much in evidence here; "Tell Me a Story," "Billy Is a Runaway," and "How Do Ya Fix a Broken Part" are tough, unblinking meditations on Iggy's war with the persona he created for himself, and "I'm Bored" and "Five Foot One" proved rock's first great minimalist still had some worthy metaphors up his sleeve. If New Values wasn't a great Iggy Pop album, it was a very good one, and proved that he had a future without David Bowie's guidance, something that didn't seem so certain at the time.

Iggy Pop & James Williamson - Kill City

To say Iggy Pop had hit bottom in 1975 is an understatement; after the final collapse of the Stooges, Iggy sank deep into drug addiction and depression, and he eventually checked himself into a mental hospital in a desperate effort to get himself clean and functional again. At the same time, James Williamson, his guitarist and writing partner in the last edition of the Stooges, still believed their collaboration had some life in it, and he talked his way into Jimmy Webb's home studio to record demos in hopes of scoring a record deal. Iggy checked out of the hospital for a weekend to cut vocal tracks, and while the demos they made were quite good, no record companies were willing to take a chance on them. The tapes sat unnoticed until 1977, when Bomp! Records issued the 1975 demos under the title Kill City after Iggy launched a comeback with the David Bowie-produced The Idiot. Kill City never hits as hard as the manic roar of the Stooges' Raw Power, but the songs are very good, and the album's more measured approach suits the dark, honest tone of the material. The sense of defeat that runs through "Sell Your Love," "I Got Nothin'," and "No Sense of Crime" was doubtless a mirror of Iggy's state of mind, but he expressed his agony with blunt eloquence, and his sneering rejection of the Hollywood street scene in "Lucky Monkeys" is all the more cutting coming from a man who had lived through the worst of it. And in the title song, Iggy expressed his state of mind and sense of purpose with a fierce clarity: "If I have to die here, first I'm going to make some noise." Considering Iggy's condition in 1975, his vocals are powerful and full-bodied, as good as anything on his solo work of the 1970s. The music is more open and bluesy than on Raw Power, and while Williamson's guitar remains thick and powerful, here he's willing to make room for pianos, acoustic guitars, and saxophones, and the dynamics of the arrangements suggest a more mature approach after the claustrophobia of Raw Power. Kill City is rough, flawed, and dark, but it also takes the pain of Iggy's nightmare days and makes something affecting out of it, and considering its origins, it's a minor triumph.

Sadly, though, original CD versions of Kill City are taken off of vinyl, making one wonder just what may have happened to the master tapes. A remixed and remastered Kill City (not unlike what Iggy did to Raw Power) wouldn’t be bad thing at all, but one wonders if the tapes have merely disintegrated under the weight of their own existence. Judging from the fact that Iggy himself barely survived that period of his history, it wouldn’t be at all surprising.

It's fair to say, that with fifty years in show business, everything Iggy Pop has done has been scrutinised to a fine point. The man has more back-story than Jesus, and there have been a few biographies written about him. Paul Trynka's 'Open Up and Bleed' is perhaps the best, most in-depth account on the life of Iggy Pop. It's a fascinating read from cover to cover, and gives a little extra perspective on his life from before the Stooges up to their semi-recent reformation. It also covers the recording of Kill City, Iggy's 'lost' album between the disaster that was the end of the Stooges the first time around and his peak period working with Bowie on The Idiot and Lust For Life. Originally recorded as a demo in stop start spurts as Pop was ferried by an erstwhile Stooges guitarist James Williamson from the psych ward to Jimmy Webb's home studio for vocal takes, Kill City really is the missing link between Raw Power and The Idiot.

Or rather, it would be if it hadn't been released already. The original recording was overdubbed and remixed by Williamson, long after he and Pop re-appropriated the original tapes, and was roundly panned by critics after being released on Bomp at the same time that two infinitely superior Iggy albums were on the shelves. As such Kill City doesn't represent a hidden diamond lost in the sands of time. Instead it stands as more of a black mark against the names of both men, and that is why this re-release has significance to the average Iggy Pop fan. After the sterling work done on The Stooges reissues, the chance for audible improvement on the original recording is tantalising. Will shifting some of the sonic grime afford the album a new status after the public gets a chance to hear it as it should have been?

There's no escaping the psychotic dynamism of 'Kill City', a song about living fast and potentially dying young. When Iggy suggests that LA is a "loaded gun" and that you could end up "overdosed and on your knees", he's reading out what could have been the end of his life story. The riff is one of Williamson's very finest, too. As Iggy was burning out, Williamson was just burning, and here he nails down the kind of solo that most rock guitarists would give their eye teeth just to be able to play. And the mix is well and truly fixed too, with vocals and guitars prominent, but the separation between the best of the rest of the instruments is noticeably improved from the thin sounding and tinny original.

'Sell Your Love', a Rolling Stones tribute is also definitely better, the sax work pulled away from the main body to provide depth instead of clutter, and the backing vocals are also far better defined. If I was a gambling man, I'd wager that Williamson had bad reviews ringing in his ears from the Seventies and had given improving the album some serious thought well before rejoining the Stooges. All speculation aside, there are improvements everywhere. 'No Sense Of Crime' is saved from the gutter and the savage percussive beating it took from stray bongos in the original mix, while 'I Got Nothin', a late era Stooges cast-off is given a boost by having the drums pushed up and the backing vocals taken down a touch. The song loses some of the sloppy brutality that the Stooges gave it live, and gets a bit more of a Rolling Stones makeover. In fact, Mick and Keith cast a long shadow over most of the record.

Working within the boundaries set by another (better) band like the Stones is a comfort but also a hindrance here, and highlights the lack of truly original, sharp songs actually recorded during the sessions. 'Consolation Prizes' is a throwaway Stonesy romp, and will please and infuriate in equal measure. 'Night Theme' and 'Night Theme (reprise)' are excellent spooky, spare instrumentals, but in total come in at two minutes 30 seconds. If you were to remove them from the track listing altogether you have nine tracks that run to about half an hour. If it weren't for their high quality, a cynic might suggest that they were padding, making the album look like it contained more material than it really did. There are a couple of old Stooges tracks in there, and the rest generally doesn't have the aggression of old, or the subtle verve of the later Bowie-era work.

'Johanna' is another Stooges chestnut, but is also the one instance where the new mix doesn't improve anything. Unless you really like cheesy Seventies sax poured over everything, in which case, this is the song for you. 'Beyond The Law' uses sax more sparingly, and works much better, with a bit more in the way of tempo and genuine defiance when Iggy screams out that "the real scene is out beyond the law". In balance, Kill City has never sounded better, and is about to be unleashed as it should have been at the time. Sadly, it's going to let everyone know that it, give or take a couple of highlights, was a stop-gap record all along. The mythos that surrounds the recording of Kill City may give it a little more interest and flavour for fans, but unless you're a die hard, this is one reissue that you can probably afford to miss.

Iggy Pop - I'm Bored 7”

You know? I’m never sure when posting rubbish (not that this is rubbish, but..) if there’s a collective sigh with the involuntary mouthing of the words “WTF is this?” Then there’s the saying that one man’s rubbish is another’s gold. Also the number of hits a post gets when the artist isn’t well known. Challenge yourself to listen to at least one new artist per month, it might be rubbish…it could also be gold.

Iggy And The Stooges - Raw Power

In 1972, the Stooges were near the point of collapse when David Bowie's management team, MainMan, took a chance on the band at Bowie's behest. By this point, guitarist Ron Asheton and bassist Dave Alexander had been edged out of the picture, and James Williamson had signed on as Iggy's new guitar mangler; Ron Asheton re-joined the band shortly before recording commenced on Raw Power, but was forced to play second fiddle to Williamson as bassist. By most accounts, tensions were high during the recording of Raw Power, and the album sounds like the work of a band on its last legs -- though rather than grinding to a halt, Iggy & the Stooges appeared ready to explode like an ammunition dump. From a technical standpoint, Williamson was a more gifted guitar player than Asheton (not that that was ever the point), but his sheets of metallic fuzz were still more basic (and punishing) than what anyone was used to in 1973, while Ron Asheton played his bass like a weapon of revenge, and his brother Scott Asheton remained a powerhouse behind the drums. But the most remarkable change came from the singer; Raw Power revealed Iggy as a howling, smirking, lunatic genius. Whether quietly brooding ("Gimme Danger") or inviting the apocalypse ("Search and Destroy"), Iggy had never sounded quite so focused as he did here, and his lyrics displayed an intensity that was more than a bit disquieting. In many ways, almost all Raw Power has in common with the two Stooges albums that preceded it is its primal sound, but while the Stooges once sounded like the wildest (and weirdest) gang in town, Raw Power found them heavily armed and ready to destroy the world -- that is, if they didn't destroy themselves first. 

The Ig. Nobody does it better, nobody does it worse and nobody does it, period. Others tiptoe around the edges, make little running starts and half-hearted passes; but when you're talking about the O mind, the very central eye of the universe that opens up like a huge, gaping, suckling maw, step aside for the Stooges.

They hadn't appeared on record since the Funhouse of two plus years before. For a while, it didn't look as if they were ever going to get close again. The band shuffled personnel like a deck of cards, their record company exhibited a classic loss of faith, drugs and depression took inevitable tolls. At their last performance in New York, the nightly highlight centred around Iggy choking and throwing up onstage, only to encore quoting Renfield from Dracula: "Flies," and whose mad orbs could say it any better, "big juicy flies ... and spiders...."

Well, we all have our little lapses, don't we? With Raw Power, the Stooges return with a vengeance, exhibiting all the ferocity that characterized them at their livid best, offering a taste of the TV eye to anyone with nerve enough to put their money where their lower jaw flaps. There are no compromises, no attempts to soothe or play games in the hopes of expanding into a fabled wider audience. Raw Power is the pot of quicksand at the end of the rainbow, and if that doesn't sound attractive, then you've been living on borrowed time for far too long.

It's not an easy album, by any means. Hovering around the same kind of rough, unfinished quality reminiscent of the Velvets' White Light/White Heat, the record seems caught in jagged pinpoints, at times harsh, at others abrupt. Even the "love" songs here, Iggy crooning in a voice achingly close to Jim Morrison's, seem somehow perverse, covered with spittle and leer: "Gimme Danger, little stranger," preferably with the lights turned low, so "I can feeeel your disease."

The band is a motherhumper. Ron Asheton has switched over to bass, joining brother Scott in the rhythm section, while James Williamson has taken charge of lead; the power trio that this brings off has to be heard to be believed. For the first time, the Stooges have used the recording studio as more than a recapturing of their live show, and with David Bowie helping out in the mix, there is an ongoing swirl of sound that virtually drags you into the speakers, guitars rising and falling, drums edging forward and then toppling back into the morass. Iggy similarly benefits, double and even triple-tracked, his voice covering a range of frequencies only an (I wanna be your) dog could properly appreciate, arch-punk over tattling sniveler over chewed microphone.

Given material, it's the only way. The record opens with "Search And Destroy," Vietnamese images ricocheting off the hollow explosions of Scott's snare, Iggy secure in his role of GI pawn as "the world's most forgotten boy," looking for "love in the middle of a fire fight." Meaning you're handed a job and you do it, right? Yes, but then "Gimme Danger" slithers along, letting you know through its obsequiously mellow acoustic guitar and slippery violin-like lead that maybe he actually likes walking that tightrope between heaven and the snakepit below, where the false step can't be recalled and the only satisfaction lies in calling your opponent's bluff and watching him fold from there. Soundtrack music for a chicken run, and will it be your sleeve that gets caught on the door handle? Hmmmm ...

Cut to "Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell," first called "Hard To Beat" and the original title ditched in favour of Funhouse's "1970." If it didn't seem like such a relic of the past, the Grande Ballroom would have to be resurrected for this one, high-tailing it all the way from Iggy's opening Awright! through James' hot-wired guitar to a lavish, lovingly extended coda which will probably be Iggy's cue to trot around the audience when they ultimately bring it onstage. "Penetration" closes off the side, the Stooges at their most sensual, lapping at the old in-out in a hypnotic manner that might even have a crack at the singles games, Clive and Columbia's promotion men willing.

"Raw Power" flips the record over, and the title track is a sure sign that things aren't about to cool down. "Raw Power is a boilin' soul/Got a son called rock 'n' roll," and when was the last time you heard anything like that? "I Need Somebody" builds from a vague "St. James Infirmary" resemblance to neatly counterpoint "Gimme Danger," Iggy on his best behaviour here, while "Shake Appeal" is the throwaway, basically a half-developed riff boosted by a nice performance, great guitar break, and some on-the-beam handclaps. Leaving the remains for "Death Trip" to finish off, the only logical follow-up to "L.A. Blues" and all that came after, crawl on your belly down the long line of bespattered history as the world shudders to its final apocryphal release.

I never drink ... wine.