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.