Iggy Pop (18 page)

Their conversation, sitting on a hill in Central Park, did not go well. Fields was overwhelmed with grief and jealousy. Danny’s mortification and sense of betrayal was intensified by his conviction that Paul, for all his persuasiveness and eloquence, presided over music that was retrogressive and empty - flashy guitar masturbation. Resolving to himself, ‘If Steve makes Iggy the star I always knew he could be, I’ll kill them both,’ Fields told Paul to go ahead and do whatever he wanted, and that he had no interest in knowing what went on.

Steve Paul’s plan was to unite Iggy with another of his charges, Rick Derringer. Derringer had scored his first number-one single, ‘Hang On Sloopy’, with the McCoys when he was just seventeen and was an adept blues-rock guitarist, who also played with Johnny Winter and his brother Edgar. Today, Paul downplays his ambitions for the ex-Stooge singer, maintaining, ‘It wasn’t a svengali plan. Just an honest instinct about finding a guitar player that he was comfortable with.’ Derringer was open-minded about the partnership, although unimpressed by the fact that a couple of days after moving into his apartment on 30th Street, the singer disappeared to Miami, ostensibly to play golf - although while he was there Iggy called his agent at DMA, Dave Leone, to ask for a hundred bucks for methadone treatment. (Leone sent him the money, and told him never to call again.)

Derringer was unfazed by the evidence of Iggy’s heroin addiction, and found the down-on-his-luck singer pleasant enough to talk to. Rick’s wife, Liz, liked Iggy’s 15-year-old girlfriend, Betsy, who was young, waif-like and vulnerable. After the couple returned from Miami around the end of August, Jim confided in Liz and told her that Betsy had recently had an abortion and needed to rest; she too was invited to stay at the Derringers’ apartment.

To this day, however, Liz Derringer remains disturbed by Iggy and Betsy’s stay. A couple of days in, Liz and Rick had taken Jim to see a movie when Betsy, who’d been left to rest in bed, turned up at the cinema. ‘My first thought was, Oh my God! She’s left my door open. I have to go back. I knew the door would be wide open because she didn’t have a key. Then I walked in and I noticed that something was not right. I think it was a day or later that I was looking for my jewellery and couldn’t find it.’

Liz realised that a jewelled heart, a Star of David, a small diamond and some rings were missing. Convinced that Betsy had stolen them, she went to Max’s Kansas City that evening, and started telling all of those present about the new low to which Iggy Pop and his girlfriend had sunk. Later that evening, Liz, Rick and a friend were at home when they heard the doorbell ring. Looking through the peephole, they saw Iggy. ‘I was terrified!’ says Liz. ‘He has crazy eyes, and I was convinced he was going to stick a knife through my heart and kill me.’

Eventually, Liz’s friend Geraldine opened the door, and Liz emerged from the bedroom where she had been hiding, to hear Jim Osterberg tell her, ‘I need you to tell me exactly what’s happened. ’ Liz told him her jewellery had been stolen and described exactly what was missing; Jim - scarily intense, but coherent and profusely apologetic - promised he would find and return the missing items. Over the next few days he called Liz repeatedly, updating her on his attempts to reclaim most of the jewellery from New York’s pawn shops. Eventually he returned most of the pieces, but by that point any idea of a collaboration between Rick Derringer and Iggy Pop, whether or not it had been a serious prospect in the first place, was dead in the water. The theft represented the death-blow to Jim and Betsy’s relationship, too, and the 15-year-old fled to her parents in Ann Arbor. It’s difficult to track poor Betsy’s progress from then on, for it was scattered and hazy; in later years she called her friend Hiawatha Bailey, telling him that she was suffering from terminal cirrhosis of the liver, and that Jim was the love of her life. Her family, according to Bailey, harbour undying resentment towards Jim Osterberg, and since her death refuse to talk to outsiders.

Cast adrift once more, Jim called Danny Fields, who found him a refuge with Terry Ork, who happened to be housesitting an elegant Upper East Side apartment and had already taken in Gerard Malanga - another member of the Warhol circle, best known for his exquisite photos of Edie Sedgwick and for his leather-clad appearances cracking a whip on stage with the Velvet Underground. Jim was an ideal houseguest; he travelled light, with just the jeans and shirt he stood up in, and came and went quietly, sleeping in one of the penthouse’s two bedrooms while Malanga took the couch. Those few days, sitting around as the sun streamed in through the penthouse’s large windows, were a brief respite from the mayhem that had surrounded Iggy, and one morning, as he emerged from the bedroom, he sashayed over the living room’s parquet floor and started moving and stretching, going through the exercises he’d always used to limber up before his stage performances. Seeing him caught in the mid-morning light, Malanga picked up his Nikon and clicked off four or five frames as Iggy cavorted, throwing shapes. Iggy peeled off his shirt as Malanga moved around him as if in a ballet, then Malanga instructed him: ‘Strip down to nothing.’ Iggy obliged; posing naked and calm in front of the white wall; thin, but physically fit, vulnerable, but unbowed, confident in the face of all his travails.

A couple of days later Jim moved in with Danny Fields, who was delighted to resume the ‘don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything’ regime to which they’d both become accustomed. They were both watching TV, on 7 September 1971, when the phone rang. It was Lisa Robinson, the rock writer who with producer husband Richard made up Max’s hippest rock ’n’ roll couple. She told Danny, ‘We’re here with David Bowie.’

‘Oh, David Bowie,’ Fields drawled in reply. ‘He’s the only person outside of the United States ever heard of Iggy.’ Danny registered something about the fact they were on their way to Max’s Kansas City, and David wanting to meet Iggy, before he dozed off again.

Appropriately enough, David Bowie had discovered Iggy on his first trip to America the previous February, when he’d alighted in San Francisco looking disconcertingly like Lauren Bacall, according to writer John Mendelssohn, who’d been persuaded by a friend at Mercury Records to write a feature on the then-unknown English singer. Mendelssohn felt protective towards this exotic, fragile creature, carrying his luggage and accompanying him to San Jose for a radio interview. After a brief, unenlightening chat with the disdainful hippie DJ, Bowie was asked to choose a record to play; Mendelssohn spotted a copy of the Stooges debut album, and suggested they cue up ‘No Fun’. Bowie was instantly ‘amused’. That December he nominated Iggy as his favourite singer in
Melody Maker
. When he hit New York early in September, Bowie was ‘absolutely intrigued’ by Iggy, according to Robinson, who was at the centre of this social nexus.

The phone rang again. Again, it was Lisa and Richard, telling Danny they were waiting for him. Danny dragged Jim away from his TV movie,
Mr Smith Goes To Washington
, cajoling him, ‘C’mon, he’s been nice to us, we’d better be nice to him.’ And they stepped outside for the four-block walk to Max’s.

CHAPTER 7

Street-walking Cheetah

No one could work the back room at Max’s like Iggy. And when he walked in to sit down at a table with David Bowie, Tony Defries and Tony Zanetta, with Richard and Lisa Robinson looking on, there was no doubt as to who was the high-voltage character. Iggy Pop was living like a cat, staying on couches across town, trying to kick heroin; his girlfriend had just split after being accused of stealing a prominent New Yorker’s jewellery. And he was on top of the world, ma. He walked into the room ready to impress, according to Tony Zanetta, who was sitting by Defries: ‘He knew they were waiting for him. And he was Up For It. He was immediately entertaining. He practically did a tap dance there and then.’ For the first time, but not the last, Iggy Pop showed himself unbowed by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. In fact, he traded on his travails, turned them into his own narrative - one in which he was the indefatigable hero.

The last time David Bowie had visited the US he had been an apparently fragile creature, travelling alone. This time he had an organisation with him, in the form of Tony Defries, a one-time solicitor’s clerk who boasted the most brilliant improvisational management style to hit the Big Apple in years. Defries had an acute mind and a fearless negotiation technique: he would go straight to the chief executive of whatever company he was dealing with, unintimidated by anyone’s reputation, would score a great deal - and make the other guy feel good about it, too. Earlier that evening, Defries had blitzed through the social scene of New York, wining and dining RCA’s executives at the Ginger Man restaurant, guided by the proprietors of all that was hip in New York, writer Lisa Robinson and her husband Richard, the producer who as A&R at RCA had brokered the deal with Bowie. At the Ginger Man, Defries and Bowie had also met up with David’s other American musical obsession, Lou Reed, and talked about a production deal.

That night at Max’s, David Bowie seemed low-key in comparison to Iggy and Defries. He was sympathetic, curious, a good listener: ‘very canny; self-possessed - and a not unkind person’ was Iggy Pop’s first impression. David asked intelligent, incisive questions, drawing out the star-crossed singer in a manner that was almost innocent. In comparison, Iggy was the one who seemed more calculating, but that impression was counterbalanced by the fact he was so engagingly honest. He simply enjoyed charming people. To Tony Zanetta, who’d met Bowie and Defries while playing Andy Warhol in a London production of the play
Pork
a few weeks before, and had instantly been recruited to what would become the MainMan circus, it seemed like David was trying to impress Defries with this exotic, exciting creature, almost as if Iggy were a work of art the two could add to their collection.

In retrospect, to many people this meeting seemed calculated, a collaboration hatched via mutual exploitation. It would indeed profoundly affect the lives of both David Jones and Jim Osterberg. In reality, there was an innocence about the encounter between the two 24-year-olds, one seemingly down and out, one on the way up. On Bowie’s part there was an almost naive enthusiasm, a fascination for rock ’n’ roll and theatre - and Iggy represented a one-stop shop for both of those interests. For Iggy, the main attraction was that of joining the circus and simply seeing where it would take him. So he readily agreed when Defries and Bowie asked him to come round the next morning for breakfast at their tenth-floor suite in the Warwick Hotel. (Although a favoured haunt of Liz Taylor and Cary Grant, the Warwick was chosen by Defries for the symbolism of its association with The Beatles, who had stayed there on their all-conquering debut American tour.)

The next morning, over one of Defries’s habitual drawn-out English breakfasts - he’d sit around half dressed, smoking cigars, taking several phone calls at once - the manager made his pitch. Iggy’s performance was as classic in its way as anything seen at Ungano’s or the Electric Circus. Defries was a tower of strength, an operator who left his audience in no doubt he could take care of business; Iggy was flip, entertaining, and knew instinctively how to trade on Bowie and Defries’s fascination with Americana, telling them how he grew up in a trailer park, or describing his methadone treatment in minute detail. Bowie, in turn, discussed the music, and how he could find Iggy a new backing band over in London. Even before Defries was fully dressed, the manager guaranteed he could negotiate a new record deal, and Iggy agreed to sign to Gem, the management company for which Defries handled business affairs. Defries instructed Jim to return to Ann Arbor and continue his methadone treatments, and that he would be ‘summoned’ when a record deal was imminent.

Linking up with Bowie and Defries was a risky throw of the dice - Bowie had enjoyed just one quirky hit single - ‘Space Oddity’ - in the UK and star status in America for such an unconventional artist was anything but guaranteed. But there was an irresistible energy about Defries, his love of showmanship, his conviction that he could beat the system. And a showman loves a showman.

Ironically, at the end of September Jim Osterberg was sent a letter from Bill Harvey, care of Danny Fields, telling him that Elektra wanted to retain his services as a solo artist. Elektra’s move was possibly a reaction to Defries’ interest in Iggy, but by the time Danny received the letter, it was irrelevant. Jim was back in Ann Arbor, plotting his MainMan career with James Williamson. Ron Asheton would hear the news just a few days later, when he’d gone into town to see a Fellini movie but ended up instead at a party for the SRC. His friends James and Jim were there, but they avoided talking to him. Later in the evening he heard that Iggy had a new contract with David Bowie’s people; he told his informant, ‘Someone take a shotgun and blow my head off,’ before walking home, crying all the way.

For Ron and many of his Ann Arbor buddies, Iggy Pop’s abandonment of his high-school friend was a cold-hearted betrayal which would take decades to erase. It would mark the point at which Iggy first became a solo singer, rather than a member of a band. This move was partly inspired by Tony Defries, who only dealt with singers; his plan was to build a studio of stars, like MGM, and in this plan musicians were expendable, mere technicians. For Iggy, dropping the Ashetons was simple pragmatism; he had a musical manifesto to advance. Still, one senses echoes of the ambitious child who’d dropped his elementary-school pals when they’d outlived their usefulness. In the meantime, Jim and James plotted together; Iggy had not mentioned Williamson at September’s breakfast meeting, but the two agreed that Iggy would go to work on persuading Defries to bring over his new songwriting partner.

Over that autumn, Defries worked at fulfilling his guarantee that he would find Iggy a record deal, and his best prospect turned out to be Clive Davis at Columbia. Davis was well on his way to becoming a legend in the American music industry. He had doubled Columbia’s market share with a raft of new signings including Santana and Janis Joplin, and would later go on to found Arista Records. It was an easy sale - Iggy was well known in New York, and the notion, perhaps broached by Defries, that Clive Davis could succeed where Jac Holzman had failed appealed to the Columbia boss’s ego. Defries sent Jim a plane ticket to New York so that Davis could meet Iggy in person. Iggy would dine out frequently on his description of how he won over Davis, recounting it thus:

Davis: ‘Will you do Simon and Garfunkel?’

Pop: ‘No, I won’t.’

Davis: ‘Will you be more melodic?’

Pop: ‘No, I won’t.’

Davis: ‘Will you do what anybody asks you to?’

Pop: ‘No, I won’t . . . but I can sing, wanna hear?’

At which Iggy sprawled over Davis’s desk, crooning ‘The Shadow Of Your Smile’. Iggy maintained that at that moment Davis called his legal advisers and told them to draw up the paperwork, but according to Zanetta, who was present, ‘The meeting was a formality. This wasn’t Iggy the operator, on high voltage. When we walked in it felt like it was a done deal already, that it had already been sorted between Defries and Clive Davis.’ The Columbia advance - which was for Iggy Pop alone, with no mention of the Stooges - was widely quoted as totalling $100,000; but this was typical Defries grandstanding, for that figure was almost certainly an advance against several albums.

Over the next couple of days Zanetta babysat Iggy in the Warwick Hotel while Defries attended to other business; although Defries wasn’t particularly interested in Iggy’s music, he focused on emphasising his star quality, and gave Zanetta $500 to take the singer out and buy him a pair of silver leather pants Defries had spotted uptown at North Beach Leather. Then the two sat around for a couple of days in a suite at the Warwick, before Defries concluded his business and was able to spend more time with Iggy. It was probably during this trip that Iggy persuaded his manager to let him bring James Williamson - ‘the only man who understands me’ - on his trip to London early the next year.

London in the spring of 1972 was thrilling, sleazy, glamorous and stoned on Mandrax and hashish. David Bowie and Marc Bolan were together sprinkling the final touches of fairydust to what would become glam; the charts were also full of the pompous college whimsy of outfits such as Jethro Tull, while in the clubs, bands like the Pink Fairies and Hawkwind purveyed trippy but tough hippie rock. And new boy on the scene Iggy Pop walked the streets, convinced he was better than any of them.
New Musical Express
writer Nick Kent, who had been in awe of the Stooges ever since he’d heard their debut album on John Peel’s BBC Radio 1 show, wangled an introduction to his hero and realised that Iggy’s sense of self-belief was ‘staggering. There he was, walking round London, working out his plan to take over the world. He’s one of those people. He believed he had this manifest destiny to throw his shadow across the world on a major level.’

It seemed appropriate that James Williamson, rather than the sweet, laid-back Ashetons, would become Iggy’s accomplice for his new assault on the unsuspecting music industry. Like Iggy, James had become even more intense since the dying days of the Stooges, and was determined to leave his own imprint on the world. Tall, thin, pale-skinned and black-haired, with scars from childhood acne, James reminded a few people of Keith Richards’ more evil, more manic twin. He wasn’t the product of a warm loving environment, but he would get his own back. He had no track record, but was hell-bent on building one.

Iggy and James were roomed together at the Kensington Gardens Hotel, a sprawling stucco-fronted Victorian building set in a leafy west London square. They spent their time writing songs, chasing schoolgirls or watching TV, with equal intensity. On a couple of occasions they were invited to David and Angie Bowie’s gothic headquarters in Beckenham, just outside London; Jim was impressed with Bowie’s eclectic, Arts Lab-style operation. Angie was also somewhat taken with James Williamson, although as time went on she’d come to resent Iggy’s demands on Defries’ time and, as she saw it, David’s money. Occasionally James and Jim would drop into parties or gigs, surveying London’s ‘counterculture’ with general disdain, loftily dismissing most musical rivals apart from Marc Bolan. Back in the hotel, Williamson would sit in their room, continuously spitting out riffs on his Gibson B25 acoustic guitar, a six-string stream of consciousness. When he hit on something memorable, he’d play it to Jim for his approval and together they’d work it into a song. As always, Jim, the boy with the knack for a memorable phrase, seemed adept at crafting arresting lyrics, although over this period his style changed, becoming perhaps more conventional, but certainly more intense, with more powerful imagery packed into every line. David Bowie was true to his word, calling around London’s leading rhythm sections and asking them to audition for Iggy; often, like Pink Fairies drummer Twink, they would call up and be told the vacancy was already filled - for, as far as Williamson in particular was concerned, no English rhythm section was aggressive enough.

Early in 1972 ex-child actor Michael Des Barres was preparing his own grandiose rock ’n’ roll project, Silverhead, at the subterranean Kings Road rehearsal complex ACM when he encountered Iggy in the studio corridor. With bare-faced effrontery, Iggy asked him, magisterially, ‘Do you want to watch my rehearsal?’ Des Barres walked into the damp, dingy studio, with old Pink Fairies posters peeling off the wall, and was dazzled by the sheer noise and spectacle. ‘It was truly a life-changing moment. He was standing there in jeans, no shirt, he grabbed the microphone . . . then this raw, this three-dimensional noise hit me.’ Where London’s decadent cliques affected a kind of Edwardian dandy-ism, to Des Barres this was a much tougher spectacle, delivered with unprecedented aural brutality. ‘They made everything else sound effete.’ Des Barres was just as taken with the image of James Williamson, who was determined to make his mark. ‘He was an unbelievable guitar player. And also he had a huge cock, by the way, that was the thing about the Stooges. That’s why the girls liked them.’

Williamson, according to most who met him in London, was more openly arrogant than his singer. According to Jim, it was Williamson who invariably objected to the musicians Bowie suggested, telling the singer, ‘These English people wear funny clothes, these are not serious musicians, there’s no groove!’ By now, David Bowie’s career was taking off in the wake of
Hunky Dory
, and Defries was maddeningly distracted, branching out with his own artists, principally Bowie, to launch MainMan - a Defries-owned offshoot of Gem, in which Gem owner Laurence Myers retained a slice of the turnover. But by the early summer MainMan were planning a showcase performance for all their acts, with Iggy Pop playing back-to-back with Lou Reed’s first performance in London. And it was James’s idea, fatefully, to reunite the Stooges by bringing Ron and Scott Asheton over to London. James had been close to Scott - they had been, after all, drug buddies at University Tower - and was taken with his musicianship, if not his brother’s. ‘Then I suggested that Ron get moved to bass,’ says Williamson. ‘So this is where there’s sour grapes about it from Ron’s perspective. But at the time he was damn happy to have a job.’