Iggy Pop (21 page)

The opening night at Max’s was packed, with old friends like Danny Fields, Leee Black Childers, Lenny Kaye, Alice Cooper and Lisa Robinson in attendance, and a huge queue outside the club. There were problems with the PA, which meant Iggy’s voice was swamped by the huge wall of sound generated by the rented guitar amplifiers, and James’s guitar was occasionally out of tune. Some Stooges old hands sniggered at the clichéd make-up and at their ludicrous costumes, crafted by Hollywood designer Bill Whitten - James wore a glammy Star Trek outfit, while Iggy appeared at one point in a campily ridiculous gladiator costume. Despite the technical problems, the band was magnificent. Bob Czaykowski - Nite Bob - was hired for the Max’s shows to look after the amplifier backline; his job was to get ‘the clang’: the ringing, physically brutal noise that would help beat the audience into submission. Nite Bob sat in for every Max’s rehearsal and show, and realised that ‘even though everything was really raw, you knew there was something going on. That’s why we wanted to work for them. This wasn’t a bunch of fading groovers who were going to fall into oblivion.’

In the confined space of Max’s, the New York audience was transfixed with both excitement and fear, for as Bebe Buell, the Ford Agency model and celebrated girlfriend of Todd Rundgren, points out, ‘There was that element of danger, because everybody had heard about his antics on stage.’ The second night, the club was again packed, and as Iggy walked over the tables and chairs, glaring at the crowd, one chair either wobbled, or was pulled from under him; he slipped and fell onto a table top full of glasses, which shattered under his weight. As Iggy got up again, Nite Bob saw cuts on his chest and chin, and a puncture wound by one of his ribs; as Iggy staggered to the side and crashed into him, Bob noticed his own shirt was covered in blood and shouted, ‘Let’s pull it. Let’s stop it, man. You can’t do this!’

Iggy kept singing, the blood dripping down his chest. He discovered that if he pulled his left arm back, blood would spurt out in a continuous stream. ‘It was horrible, like a Roman arena,’ says Wayne County. ‘I kept running up the stairs to look, going Aaaaggghhhhhhh, then running out again.’ Bebe Buell remembers, ‘We didn’t see him go down, but when he got up there was an enormous amount of blood gushing from what looked like, from where we were sitting, a massive gash.’ Nite Bob recalls, ‘We had this saying that a piece of gaffer tape will fix anything, but he was bleeding so bad the tape wouldn’t even stick.’

As Jim Osterberg explains today, the cut ‘just happened. It was an accident.’ (Evita, alone of the witnesses, is convinced that wound was deliberately inflicted, in grief and guilt at Coral’s departure for England.) But where other singers would have left the stage, Iggy finished the band’s seven-song set, and the blood trickling down Iggy Pop’s chest would become a defining image in his career.

The streams of blood seemed the culmination of a process that had started the first time Iggy had been booed by Cream fans, back in April 1968. In those days, his confrontation of the audience had recalled the savage, physical theatrics proposed by Antonin Artaud in his Theatre of Cruelty - like Iggy, Artaud believed one could achieve a kind of purity by violently confronting or terrifying a desensitised audience. Yet now, revelling in his physical injuries, Iggy seemed to be going further still, into the realms of performance artists like Chris Burden, who had famously had himself shot in his 1971 art piece,
Shoot
. (Burden was later celebrated by Bowie, in ‘Joe the Lion’, from “
Heroes
”.) Without doubt, some of Iggy’s behaviour was calculated, but in his volatile mental state there was no way of knowing how this escalation of confrontation would end.

Within days, it would be reported that Iggy had slashed himself over a star-crossed romance with Bebe Buell. As far as some long time Stooges fans like Dave Marsh were concerned, the celebration of Iggy’s blood was ‘such a fucking cliché. It was like, have we really come to this?’ Scott Thurston remembers the band’s reaction as ‘shock . . . I felt bad for Jim, and felt mad a little bit. It was kind of a protest against himself.’ After this initiation, Thurston realised it was ‘kinda the band vibe to be relaxed under any circumstances. It wasn’t like we panicked . . . but it felt bad, and it was definitely a low point. But there were plenty more low points to come.’

As the Stooges finished their set, Alice Cooper pressed his way into the dressing room and insisted that Iggy needed professional medical attention, delegating his press agent, Ashley Pandel, to take him to hospital for stitches. Jim, stitched and bandaged, returned to the club later that evening, quite possibly to see Bebe Buell; later that evening photographer Lynn Goldsmith snapped a photo of the two together, with Jim staring adoringly at the lofty, WASP beauty. It’s more than likely that the vulnerable singer exploited his injuries to enlist Buell’s sympathy, and even encouraged the rumours that he had slashed himself over his unrequited love for her - which, given that they first met after the Max’s performance, is a little far-fetched. However, Jim pursued his new love interest with his trademark combination of indefatigable charm and a certain craftiness.

Jim’s injuries meant that the next two Max’s shows were postponed, but rather than recuperate, the wounded singer wandered off to see the New York Dolls at Madison Square Garden’s Felt Forum the next evening. The Dolls were fast emerging as claimants to the Stooges’ status as pre-eminent icons of decadence, and that evening Iggy looked a forlorn figure; he collided with a glass door, cutting his head, and New York’s glitterati were literally stepping over him, laughing at his condition. Fortunately, Bebe Buell had persuaded Rundgren along to see the Dolls and she saw the stricken hero leaning against a wall. She kneeled down to minister to him, tenderly wiping off the blood with a towel as Bebe’s companions Cyrinda Foxe and Cindy Lang giggled at her concern, while Todd was plainly getting irritated. His concern was justified, for by now Buell had concluded that Iggy was ‘totally fucking gorgeous. Built like an Adonis. Plus he had these big blue eyes which were like saucers. He was a walking sex machine, he truly was. Maybe a fucked-up one, drooling and falling down, but any girl would wonder, “Hmmm what’s he like after a shower and a good night’s sleep?”’

Rundgren finally tugged Buell, tottering on her platforms, away from the scene, but in their brief conversation Bebe had mentioned where she and Todd lived, confident that in his confused state Jim couldn’t possibly remember. The next day, a few moments after Todd stepped out of their Greenwich Village apartment to replenish his sock supply for a trip to San Diego, Bebe heard a knock at the front door and ran down to open it, thinking her boyfriend had forgotten his wallet. And there, bouncing with vitality, was Jim Osterberg, in a thin T-shirt and pants, smiling: ‘You said fifty-one Horatio, right?’

Not long after Jim sat down and explained, with almost excessive politeness, how he had no money and needed a place to stay, Todd returned from his shopping expedition. Rundgren was rightfully suspicious of the rival musician, but it was too late to cancel his trip - a trip on which, Bebe believed, the revered producer and multi-instrumentalist was planning his own romantic assignations. Unable to do more, Rundgren issued a stern order to Bebe: ‘Do not, under any circumstances, leave him in the place by himself. He’ll steal everything we’ve got to buy drugs. And whatever you do, lock up the third floor, and don’t let him anywhere near it.’

Assuring her boyfriend he had no reason to be concerned, and that she wouldn’t let Jim near the third-floor studio where Todd kept his guitars and valuable studio gear, Bebe bade him farewell. She settled down with Jim to what would be a romantic few days, going to see
Paper Moon
, that summer’s feelgood movie, walking around Greenwich Village, sitting in the park, or eating burgers laced with Tabasco at PJ Clarke’s, the bustling mahogany-panelled saloon over on the Upper East Side. Jim was fortunately the same build as Todd, even if he was a good few inches shorter, so Bebe cut the legs off the lanky guitarist’s pants so that her new beau would have fresh clothes to wear.

On 6 August the Stooges returned to Max’s Kansas City to fulfil their two postponed midnight performances. Nite Bob had spent the intervening time assembling a huge PA system, and for the last shows Iggy’s voice was finally audible, and the band were brutally honed, their energy levels almost unendurable in the confined space of Max’s upper floor. Whatever Ron’s disenchantment at being demoted to playing bass, he was one of the greatest exponents of the instrument before or since; melodi cally inventive, ruthlessly aggressive, he locked in faultlessly with brother Rock Action’s clattering sturm und drang; his bass guitar leading the assault for extended instrumental passages during which the adrenalin never flagged. Over those two nights, the Stooges were in their pomp, their magnificence undimmed by their obvious travails. ‘They were at their peak, like an American Stones in their
Exile On Main Street
period,’ says Bob Czaykowski. Over those final two midnight performances, they continued to develop their new material, still in hope of working towards another album on Columbia; by the final night, ‘Open Up And Bleed’ was reworked with new lyrics and became an anthem of the band’s turbulent residence. ‘It was something special,’ muses Steve Harris, who relished almost every aspect of what would be the band’s last appearance in Manhattan. ‘[But] what’s important was that it didn’t make a dent in record sales.’

Nonetheless, the shows were seen as a triumph, widely praised by the critics, whose reviews Jim always studied minutely, although some of the New York writers, in particular Lenny Kaye, did have a sense that the Max’s shows indicated the Stooges ‘couldn’t go much further . . . except by damaging themselves’. There was the odd dig, notably in
Rock Scene
, the hip photo-heavy magazine launched by Lisa Robinson - those in the know could infer the influential editor’s feelings about James Williamson by the fact his photo was captioned ‘Jones’ Williamson. In the wake of the shows, Jim enjoyed a blissful New York summer holed up with Bebe Buell at Horatio Street. For their first couple of days together they simply talked and talked, with Jim acting cute in his puppy dog way, treating Bebe as if she were some pure-blooded Scandinavian princess before the inevitable happened and Bebe embarked on what would be her first affair since she’d moved in with Todd: ‘When we finally made love it was, I don’t want to sound like a sap, but it was incredibly beautiful, storybook. Then we were like, Oh my God! All we did was shag, seven times a day, everywhere, anywhere.’

Todd was an influential figure in the New York music industry, but Jim and Bebe were oblivious to his inevitable wrath. They were like awestruck adolescents, enjoying moments of what seemed like rare purity amid the chaos that threatened to engulf Iggy. In the mornings Bebe would sit on the huge round waterbed with him, admiring his ballet dancer’s body - ‘breathtaking, like a work of art’ - while he would improvise songs, serenading her with smoochy lyrics in his best Frank Sinatra baritone. Over those waking hours, Jim Osterberg was the most considerate houseguest - cooking omelettes, vacuuming, keeping the place tidy, attending to Bebe’s two dogs - although as time went on, Bebe noticed that sometimes after Jim disappeared in the afternoons for an unspecified rendezvous, Iggy would return in his place. And Iggy could be ‘creepy and mean and nasty’. It seemed to Buell that Jim could switch on his Iggy persona easily enough, but he could-n’t always switch him off: ‘That is the problem; you can conjure the demon, but you can’t always get rid of it.’

One morning Bebe had to rise early for a modelling assignment; Jim had been such a troublefree guest she felt it was safe to ignore Todd’s specific orders, and she left Jim asleep, alone in the house. On her return in the afternoon she looked around, but Iggy had obviously left for one of his assignations. Seizing the opportunity of a good rest, Bebe walked up to the second-floor bedroom, sprawled out over the big round waterbed and within moments was fast asleep.

It wasn’t long afterwards that Bebe was woken by the insistent splashing of water dripping on to the bed, and realised that water was seeping through the ceiling. Running up the stairs to the forbidden third floor, she entered the bathroom to see Jim fast asleep in the tub, his head resting gently on an inflatable pillow, his toes blocking the overflow, with Bebe’s two dogs cradled one on each shoulder, both of them out cold.

Bebe pulled Jim’s toes away from the overflow, then noticed a neat little row of blue pills lined up on the toilet cistern. She shook him awake.

‘Jim, what have you done?’

‘Nothing,’ he replied, dreamily, ‘just a little Valium, relax!’

‘So what’s wrong with Puppet and Furburger?’

‘I just gave them a little Valium . . .’

Incandescent with rage and fear for her dogs, Bebe slapped Iggy hard, before gathering Puppet under one arm, Furburger under the other, and running out of the house. It was a two-minute sprint to St Vincent’s hospital, up the ramp and into the emergency room.

‘Help! Help! My dogs have OD’d!’

‘Miss, we don’t treat dogs here. This is the emergency room. This is for people . . . What did they take?’

‘Two and a half milligrams each of Valium.’

‘Don’t worry, they won’t die,’ the helpful ER medic assured her. ‘Take them home, and they’ll wake up.’

Back on Horatio Street, an angry Bebe berated Jim, telling him he could have killed her precious dogs. ‘I’m a dog lover!’ he replied, soothingly. ‘I know a lot about animals.’

Once her anger had subsided, Bebe did reflect that Jim obviously had a good working understanding of canine anaesthesia. And today she acknowledges that Jim did look cute, asleep with his furry bedmates, although it would be the next morning before Puppet and Furburger - both of them, fortunately, hardy and lively mutts - regained full use of all their faculties. Danny Fields located a handyman who repaired the damaged ceiling, leaving Todd unaware that his new love rival had trespassed onto the sacrosanct third floor.