Iggy Pop (34 page)

For a moment I don’t recognise James Williamson, the famed and feared Dark Lord of the Stooges. It’s not the grey hair, or the sport jacket over a blue shirt, or his low-key demeanour, it’s more a general sense that this organised, efficient-looking businessman could surely not be the person responsible for the ruthlessly aggressive guitar riffs or the revolver-waving antics that so many people remember.

We had been warned, though, for this is the Dum Dum Boy who, Iggy told us, ‘has gone straight’, as if it’s the ultimate indictment. Yet, as we sit in a San Jose hotel in February 2006, in the heart of Silicon Valley, where he now works, incongruously discussing the horrendous, relentless train of disasters that assailed his band, James Williamson’s career move seems like an eminently sensible act of self-preservation. For all his legendary ruthlessness, it became obvious that Williamson, a smart and ambitious kid whom his bandmates described as ‘a wild, on the street speed-shooting guitar-playing maniac’, was nowhere near as cutthroat as the business, or the singer, that employed him. For all the toughness he put on from the moment his illiberal stepfather sent him to a juvenile home, James always judged himself by results. Which, in his terms, seemed to be a failed band, and a best friend who betrayed him. ‘Maybe the Ashetons already knew it, but I found out that Jim was very ambitious - that he didn’t care how he had to do it. And when he threw me under the bus for the sake of his career at MainMan, I guess it showed me I had to develop my own independence.’

It seems to be the consciousness of his own vulnerability that contributed to James’s intimidating demeanour. Called back in by his friend Jim for one last production job, James knew it was ‘a terrible idea’. But when he’s asked about his antics in the studio, waving around a revolver, he winces, looking terribly hurt that anyone would have felt threatened by what they surely knew was only a replica air pistol, before observing, ‘I guess I have a very different internal view of myself than apparently my external effect is.’

Of all the ironies in the Stooges’ history, perhaps the most supreme one is that James Williamson, a man whose work was revered by generations of guitar players, simply didn’t believe he was that good. It’s somehow sad when you realise this; then, as you have a reassuringly normal conversation with James, talking about family, Japanese food or the buildings in the area, you realise how liberating it can be, turning your back on the narcissism, selfishness and childish behaviour of the music business. And how, of all the masks we can wear, that of being normal and efficient can be the best protection of all.

CHAPTER 14

The Long, Long Road

The first trial of Iggy Pop had been the last stand of the Stooges: nine months of disasters interspersed with the odd inspiring performance, followed by humiliation, oblivion and then a year of sleeping rough. But even in those dark times, the music had been something he could cling to.

The second trial of Iggy Pop would last a full four years. Over this period there was a certain amount of love and support to nurture him, there was just enough money to survive, and there was always the prospect of respect or acclaim, somewhere like Paris, or Helsinki, or Sydney. But none of these luxuries could quite erase the consciousness that, this time around, the music was simply Not Very Good. Only one thing numbed that consciousness: alcohol, but the alcohol made the music worse still. This simple equation defined a downward spiral, suffused with a new emotion, fear. And again, madness awaited.

Almost immediately after Jim returned from his long, tortuous sessions in Wales, he drove to London with his band to rehearse for an American tour to promote
New Values
, which was finally being released in the US. It seemed a ludicrous predicament, being rushed into recording a new album before its predecessor was even released in its biggest market, but if it bothered him he didn’t show it. Meeting his latest guitarist, Brian James, the formidable British player, who was an adherent of James Williamson’s tough guitar style, Jim seemed the epitome of professionalism: conscientious, abstaining from alcohol or cigarettes in order to get his voice in trim, polite but always specific about what he wanted. The only surprise about meeting Jim was the subtle, Bowie-esque Cockney accent he seemed to have picked up in London. Fortunately, Brian James had been schooled in what to expect by his friend Nick Kent, who told him about how to deal with Jim, and how to deal with Iggy. ‘He told me, Jim is like a scholar, he’s the one talks about interesting things. Then, at the drop of a hat, he’s Iggy, and he’s an animal.’ Brian soon realised Iggy had always had a close relationship with his guitar players, and had developed a range of techniques to handle them, sometimes treating them with intimate affection, at other times catching them off their guard to generate aggression that he could tap into.

For the first few days of rehearsal, Jim drank only water. Around five days in, he had a large mirror placed in the rehearsal studio near London Bridge, to practise his moves. On the last couple of days he started drinking Brian James’s Scotch whisky and walking around stark naked. And then they were off.

Brian James had played with the Damned for two frenetic years, but his three months with Iggy would be among the most gruelling experiences he’d ever encounter. ‘A total blur, fly into town, check in the hotel, soundcheck, play, back to the hotel, wake up, fly. It was like being in a bubble, every hotel a Holiday Inn, and you never know where you are, or even what time it is.’ This was the bubble that would envelop Iggy for the next four years.

Ivan Kral, the tour ’s other new recruit, would share that bubble for two of those years. After arriving at Rockfield Studios for the closing days of the
Soldier
sessions, he’d spent an evening being interrogated by David and Coco, who asked about every aspect of his life. This was one of David’s classic gambits; he liked to find how people ticked, and of course if he got to ask the questions he could maintain his own privacy. But Ivan thought there was a specific motive to David’s questioning. ‘I felt that David wanted to dump Jim on me. It was like, “I’m trying to help him, but he always screws up, so maybe, Ivan, you could be his buddy and spend time with him.”’

A talented musician with European good looks, Kral had been a key member of the Patti Smith Group but had ultimately become frustrated by Patti’s lack of hunger for the big time. He would become Iggy’s key musical collaborator over this period, playing both keyboards and guitar, becoming so close that Kral’s own mother would describe him and Jim as being like brothers. Yet while Ivan remembers that he and Jim had ‘great times’ together, like all of Iggy’s future collaborators he knew he was strictly an employee. ‘I knew how far I could go . . . I knew there were certain discussions where I would have to let him win. You just kind of smile and let them be the centre of attention.’ This would be the crucial difference between Iggy and the musician with whom he did his best post-Stooges work, namely David Bowie - a man who could truly charm his musicians, and hence get the most out of them. Brian James, too, liked Jim and enjoyed their chats, but was also conscious of that hierarchy. After a year of dealing with the Sales brothers, Iggy never seemed to want to get close to his fellow musicians again. It was consequently that much easier for them to look on, believing the tales of his invincibility, as Jim’s life began to spin out of control once more.

Meanwhile, on the periphery now that he’d moved out of Berlin, David Bowie seemed to keep a kindly eye on what was going on, sending his driver, Stuey - famous among Bowie fans for his role in
The Man Who Fell To Earth
movie - to ferry the band around, and apparently turning up to counsel Jim whenever possible.

The
New Values
US tour, much like Iggy’s last outing with the Sonic’s Rendezvous Band, mostly relied on superior meat-and-two-veg rock ’n’ roll, veering from crazed,
Raw Power
material like ‘Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell’, to messy, enthusiastic versions of some of the songs from the as-yet unreleased
Soldier.
More unexpected was a very nearly transcendent version of Sinatra’s quintessential torch song, ‘One For My Baby’. The song’s loneliness, bar-room setting, and consciousness that there was a long, long road stretching ahead was scarily appropriate, even if the audience didn’t always appreciate it. Glen Matlock had engineered the introduction of one of his favourite songs, ‘China Girl’, into the set, the first time Iggy had played it since sacking Hunt and Tony Sales. The more sophisticated air these songs added was somewhat undercut, though, by Iggy’s use of a loose cap on one of his front teeth as part of his stage act. At key points in the action he’d pull off the cap and leer at the audience with the malevolent gap-toothed grin of a pantomime villain, the perfect accompaniment to the piratical assault of the music.

For both Brian James and Glen Matlock, who’d spearheaded Britain’s punk revolution, this two-month series of high-energy performances, night after night, was far more intense than anything they’d experienced. Their leader’s energy levels seemed almost superhuman, although Brian in particular was occasionally shocked by the levels of aggression, as Iggy bounced up to adoring kids crushed into the front row of the audience and slapped them on their faces, enjoying the shock and chaos he generated. Backstage, the atmosphere could be just as crazed. In the mornings, Glen or Brian would have conversations about books or history with Jim, who seemed like a studious young uncle. Then in the evenings, Iggy Pop would delight in stealing groupies from under their noses.

By the time the
New Values
tour came to an end with a show at Hurrah’s in New York City on 9 December 1979, both English musicians had had enough. Brian James wanted to return to his own band, a decision that meant he was cold-shouldered on his last evening at the Mudd Club after the show. Matlock phoned Peter Davies over the New Year’s break to tell him he was quitting soon after he’d heard the finished mix of
Soldier
, which he considered an act of sonic sabotage that amounted to Iggy ‘cutting off his nose to spite his face’. To be fair,
Soldier
’s mix was as likely to be an attempt at damage-limitation as revenge on Steve New, but the outcome illustrated Jim’s inability to keep his musicians - in particular the talented songwriters with whom he needed to collaborate. Over the same period, manager Peter Davies disappeared from the picture. A sweet, considerate man who bought tasteful presents for his friends - Charles Levison treasured a first edition of an Arthur Rackham-illustrated
Sleeping Beauty
that he’d given him - Davies had been engulfed by the chaos that seemed to surround Iggy, had already been cut out of the loop with Arista, and finally had a falling-out with Jim over money.

There was barely time to rehearse Matlock and James’s replacements - guitarist Rob Duprey and ex-Heartbreakers bassist Billy Rath - before yet another tour started in February 1980 to promote
Soldier
. The run of dates apparently started well, with an ambitious set packed with new songs, including ‘Hassles’, ‘Sacred Cow’, ‘Joe And Billy’ and ‘The Winter Of My Discontent’, but after two weeks of European shows, the band ground to a halt in New Orleans during the first two nights of a string of American dates. Iggy, according to Kral, decided to sack his rhythm section, explaining, ‘Klaus never smiles, he’s boring - and Billy is a junkie.’ Kral flew to New York to audition more cannon fodder, and found Mike Page - blues fan, ex-Chubby Checker bassist, and, by coincidence, an acquaintance of Jim’s from San Diego - and drummer Doug Bowne. Together, this small crew would play month in, month out over the coming year, crisscrossing America and Europe. And it was two-thirds of the way through those 100-odd dates, most of them agree, that things got ‘dark’.

Mike Page and Rob Duprey were both young musicians who were ecstatic to get the gig with Iggy, and lapped up the high-energy experience of live shows night after night, groupies lined up in the dressing room after the show, and drinking until the early hours. ‘It wasn’t until later that I realised what a skanky existence he was living,’ says Duprey, ‘that he was just surviving. And how towards the end it got pretty grim.’ That year there was a show every day or two throughout February, March, April and May 1980, with another string of dates, the
Nightclubbing
tour, arranged at smaller venues from September, which according to Mike Page were arranged so that Jim could pay off a huge IRS tax bill. ‘That was the point when it really got gruelling, when he had to muster up all that energy into playing the same places, night after night. Then it became a grind.’

In retrospect, there was a single upside to the relentless touring that Jim embarked on over the late 1970s and early 1980s. ‘I did invest a lot of time in the people, touring Europe over and over to no avail,’ he remembers. ‘They threw fish in Scandinavia, beers in Belgium, stones in Germany. And they set fire to my drum kit once.’ Little by little he was building up a new, grassroots following, who appreciated that very rarely, as Mike Page points out, did Iggy give a show that was anything but totally committed: ‘For live shows you’d see him get himself into the head space where the past, the present or the future didn’t exist. He’d work himself into being pure unadulterated rock ’n’ roll.’

It was once he was offstage that Jim Osterberg would become truly disorientated; for one thing, having worked himself up to a frenzy, there was only alcohol or sex to help bring him back down. Many nights he suffered from insomnia. After months on the road, during which Mike Page became his most consistent drinking companion, he would call Page’s room in the middle of the morning if he couldn’t sleep, and ask him, ‘Are you with a girl? Would you send her over?’ According to Page, he always obliged. ‘I didn’t care. I never figured out their names usually until the next day anyway.’

In time, Page would become numbed by the ‘absolutely staggering’ number of groupies the band went through, and he decided to get married a year later. But for Jim, alcohol and groupies seemed an addiction. And where, in his youth, there was a certain innocence - according to those who were there - in his predilection for young or underage girls, now he was in his mid-thirties that innocence was gone. One girl, who encountered Iggy when she was fifteen, describes how intelligent he was, how he ‘taught me a lot of things’ - and it emerges that the main part of her education at the hands of this rock ’n’ roll Henry Higgins was being tutored in deep-throat techniques.

By 1980, Esther had learned not to come on tour with Jim. She hadn’t had a rock ’n’ roll background, and hadn’t even heard of Iggy before they met; it was Jim Osterberg she’d fallen in love with, not Iggy Pop. ‘I think I was a good influence on Jim for a long time because I was coming from a different environment. I was a little Jewish princess.’ When she saw Iggy walk into the dressing room after a show, point imperiously at the young girls waiting for him and tell them, ‘You, you and you,’ sending the rest away, she understood that this was Iggy and not Jim talking and learned not to resent it.

One time Esther organised a swap with an ex-boyfriend, whose new girlfriend she knew Jim fancied. Jim liked the idea of being a decadent European; they did the swap and all had a great time, but when the other couple left, Iggy turned on Esther, telling her, ‘Don’t get me into this fucking European ménage-à-trois shit. You might like it, you’re some European slut, but that’s not happening here and if you ever do it again I’ll kill you!’ It was a demonstration that Iggy was a good old Midwestern traditionalist at heart.

Esther’s other tactic was to make friends with Iggy’s latest fling; that was guaranteed to make him jealous. In a couple of cases, though, she accepts he occasionally had good taste in girls who in Europe, she says, ‘were more pleasant. You could have a conversation with them.’ Brian James was a bemused witness to Iggy’s cavortings with one woman Esther had allowed backstage, brandishing a bottle of champagne. Brian had popped over for a reunion with his former employer after Iggy’s show at London’s Rainbow Theatre. James was introduced to the new band (he was slightly nonplussed to discover that a Bowie-style full kiss on the lips was the greeting
du jour
for the new line-up) and Jim asked him to come along to a party in Knightsbridge the following evening. It was a sophisticated affair, attended by Marianne Faithfull and husband Ben Brierly, actress Eva Ferret, Weimar-style singing duo Billy and Eve, ex-Sex Pistol Paul Cook and other aristo-punk celebrities; the party’s host was Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza, later known as Francesca, Duchess von Habsburg - the woman who, had the Habsburgs not renounced their claim to the monarchy in 1919, would ultimately have taken the title of Empress of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After the party, Brian took Jim and Francesca to a late-night drinking den he knew on the Fulham Road, where they sipped wine from coffee cups and Jim charmed the baroness. ‘He was very charismatic, but relaxed. He didn’t have to put on a show because he knew he’d pulled,’ says Brian James. Esther, in this instance, liked having an aristocrat around: ‘She was good for the entourage. And she gave great dinner parties.’