Iggy Pop (40 page)

CHAPTER 17

Undefeated

By the end of 1987, Iggy Pop’s career seemed to demonstrate that simple professionalism could make the difference between success and failure. With the right skills, the right voice, an engaging reformed rebel image and efficient marketing, comfortable prosperity seemed inevitable. But real life turned out to be not so simple. The years that looked so comfortable and safe from the outside turned out to be full of unrelenting work and the knowledge that, at any moment, it could all fall apart.

The commercial failure of
Instinct
sealed what had been a dreadful decade in terms of Iggy Pop recordings. One album,
Blah Blah Blah
, could be regarded as a qualified success, but most of the credit for that rested with David Bowie. Besides, David and Iggy’s artistic relationship promised diminishing creative returns compared to the heady, chaotic days of
Lust For Life,
while Iggy’s other creative partnerships throughout the decade had ultimately proved artistic and commercial failures. Even the title ‘Godfather of Punk’ was an honorific that had diminished in value, as the New Wave finally receded in favour of sleek, airbrushed rock ’n’ roll manufactured by slick platinum-selling bands like Van Halen and Bon Jovi.

There was one bright spot. Having spent much of the last decade on the road, investing so much of his time in intense, gruelling touring, Iggy could at least claim a devoted fan base. Yet even the new reformed Iggy found it impossible to totally erase the record industry’s conviction that he was, at heart, a misguided, deranged loser, someone who’d always threatened to crossover, but who would never quite cut it as a major artist. Ian Hunter, Iggy’s fellow MainMan artist, had proclaimed in the mid-1970s that ‘Iggy’s the all-time should-have-but-didn’t - and it’s because he’s not quite good enough’. Well over a decade later, that opinion was widely shared; as Jim remembers, ‘I had a terrible rep in the USA; terrible. Somewhere between Andy Kaufman and a serial killer.’

If that were not enough, Jim was now entering his forties, a tough age for a man who’d always revelled in his own beauty and boasted of his indestructibility.

If Jim Osterberg’s confidence did flag in the late 1980s, though, there were few outward signs. Even without a record label, he was fortunate enough to have a persistent but likeable manager who never seemed to give up on his charge. Nancy Jeffries, the A&R who had signed Iggy to A&M back in 1986, had been impressed with Art Collins, who had first made his name working for Atlantic and later became president of Rolling Stones Records. ‘He was always lovely,’ says Jeffries. ‘Very persistent, but at the same time very friendly.’ A few months after signing Iggy to A&M, Jeffries had followed her old boss Jordan Harris to take a dream job building up the artist roster from scratch at the newly established Virgin America. Eventually, Jeffries took a call from Art Collins, telling her, ‘We’re free. Do you want to do anything?’

One of Nancy Jeffries’ first signings at Virgin had been Keith Richards, as a solo artist. This would prove a prescient move, helping the aggressive new label headed by Jordan Harris and Jeff Ayeroff eventually to net the Rolling Stones and facilitate its sale to EMI at a humongous price, but at the time, says Jeffries, the deal provoked criticism: ‘People felt that once you got past a certain age you weren’t allowed to breathe any more, you weren’t allowed to make music any more - and you should just go home.’ Jeffries wanted to sign Iggy for much the same reason she had signed Keith Richards; but this would not be a big money signing. A deal was made on what were, thought Jim, ‘very very good terms - for them. Low royalty, low budget, a no-security contract with all the options on their side.’

In Iggy Pop’s long and colourful recording career, every record contract he’d ever signed had been launched in a blaze of optimism. This time around, he was joining a label launched by ‘a couple of California hard-heads who weren’t gonna fuck around’, and there was a consciousness that if this new album failed ‘they would have dropped me there and then’. For the first time, if he wanted to continue making music for a living, Iggy would make his next album believing that ‘if it wasn’t a hit . . . it was all over’.

Fortunately, also for the first time in Jim’s life, his record company suggested a producer who was ‘nice! Who I can talk to!’

Don Was and Jim Osterberg had gravitated towards each other at a record-industry dinner, when it turned out that the Stooges were one of the first bands who had ‘corrupted’ the young Donald Fagenson, as he was christened, when he was at Oak Park high school in Detroit. The two collaborated on ‘Livin’ On The Edge Of The Night’ for Ridley Scott’s
Black Rain
(the song ultimately didn’t make its intended slot), but Don Was remained in awe both of Jim Osterberg’s startling intelligence and articulacy, and Iggy Pop’s music.

By now, Was qualified as one of America’s hottest producers, having worked with the then down-and-out Bonnie Raitt on what turned out to be her bestselling album ever,
Nick of Time
. Yet Was had no complex masterplan of how to produce Iggy beyond concentrating on good songs that would demonstrate the intellect of Jim Osterberg, as well as the primal power of Iggy Pop. ‘I always viewed it as me taking a black and white photo of Iggy; capturing how complex he was, what a unique character he was, what a deep guy he was.’

Was had decided right from the off to use the team of session musicians he’d called on for many recent projects, most notably the terrifyingly proficient drummer Kenny Aronoff (who’d made his name with Tony Defries’ other big discovery, John Cougar Mellencamp). The main recordings were at LA’s state-of-the-art Ocean Way studios, a place where, says Jim, ‘these really expensive, muscular American rock stars make fantastically boring records’. The combination of classy studio and sophisticated musicians such as Aronoff, bassist Charlie Drayton and guitarists David Lindlay and Waddy Wachtel was a scary one; while he trusted Don Was, Jim was beset by doubts. But as the recordings commenced, the two evolved a new working technique, of Jim playing his electric guitar in the studio and teaching the musicians each song, then recording a take before they’d started to get comfortable. Jim’s nerves eased when two other guest musicians who’d asked to play on the album, Slash and Duff of Guns N’ Roses, arrived at the studio dressed in chain mail and studs, complaining that they’d set off all the metal-detectors in the airport, in true Spinal Tap style.

Just as the recording of
Brick By Brick
seemed to embrace convention, so did the songs: reflective adult ballads like ‘Main Street Eyes’, or bluesy rockers, like ‘Home’. This was Iggy Pop the grown-up but still quirky rebel, in a safe package that was nonetheless refreshingly no-frills and almost minimal compared to the overblown rock fare of the late 1980s, with its booming drums and shrieking guitar solos. For the first time, Iggy sounded of his time; not ahead of his time, as on
Fun House
or
The Idiot
, nor behind it, like
Instinct
, and while there was undoubtedly a sense that this was a more acceptable Iggy, it was obvious that he was trying something new, rather than simply repeating himself. Much of the time, it seems, Iggy was still struggling to work out what his place in the world was. ‘I Won’t Crap Out’ is the narrative of a man who made music as an outcast and now searches for new values in a corporate world; ‘Candy’, a duet with Cindy Pierson of the B-52s, is a poignant lament for Betsy Mickelsen, the ‘beautiful, beautiful girl from the North’ who, he says, haunts him still. For ‘The Undefeated’, Iggy called in his son Eric Benson and a bunch of Eric’s LA friends, including guitarist Whitey Kirst and bassist Craig Pike, whom he nicknamed ‘the Leeching Delinquents’, to hang out and sing in the studio. With the song done, and the session almost over, Iggy allowed himself a brief return to his old ways, hoovering up a huge line of cocaine off the mixing desk before taking Whitey and friends off to Club Vertigo, where Debbie Harry was playing that night. As Iggy and the young guitarist walked into the club the crowd parted to let Iggy and entourage through, and Debbie’s band started up ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ in preparation for a duet. That night Iggy and Debbie dry-humped on stage, and a great evening was of course had by all.

Released as a single early in 1991, ‘Candy’ would be Iggy’s first ever US hit single, scraping into the Top Thirty.
Brick By Brick
would become a gold album, shifting decent numbers in seemingly every overseas territory, staying in the US album charts for thirty-seven weeks and becoming Iggy Pop’s bestselling album by far. The sense of a well-earned comeback was heightened by the success of ‘Did You Evah’, a kooky duet with Debbie Harry from
Red Hot + Blue,
the Cole Porter tribute album that benefited AIDS research.

There was, of course, a supreme irony in the fact that
Brick By Brick
would outsell the incandescent albums that had helped make Iggy a legend. The album was filled with occasionally subtle craftsmanship and intelligent lyrics and even today sounds far more arresting than contemporary albums by, say, Robert Plant or Mick Jagger. Yet the fact that
Brick By Brick
would go on to outsell the far more creative and tuneful
Lust For Life
is, in retrospect, ludicrous. But only about as ludicrous as the way in which
Lust For Life
had been scuppered by Elvis’s seizure atop his throne.

As Jim Osterberg travelled around the world for the string of press and broadcast interviews to promote
Brick By Brick
, there was a sense that this final historical revenge was sweet. The scary manic fervour of his Berlin days was gone, as was the slightly sad grandiosity of the early 1980s. Instead, he would confess his worries about working with Don Was and weave a fascinating narrative from the picaresque events of his life, mocking his own ludicrous behaviour, yet remaining fiercely proud of the music he had made, all the while commendably modest when discussing the many musicians who now paid tribute to his music. The impression was of a man who had lost most of his battles, yet after twenty-one years had just heard he’d won the war.

Just as significant a sign that the world was turning Iggy Pop’s way came with his first big show that summer, the Gathering of the Tribes at Shoreline Amphitheatre, which featured Seattle band Soundgarden, who’d released their first EPs on Sub Pop and recently signed to A&M. By the next summer, the same venue would host the first Lollapalooza tour, signalling the death of the hair metal bands who had suppurated the airwaves over the last five years, and the rise of a new generation of bands headed by Jane’s Addiction, LA’s Red Hot Chili Peppers and Nirvana, whose breakthrough
Nevermind
would hit the UK Top Ten late in 1991, and the US Top Ten the following January, going on to sell over seven million copies.

The rise of these bands marked the point at which the values of punk finally percolated into the American mainstream, and all of the scene’s key architects seemed to namecheck Iggy Pop. Jane’s Addiction and the Chili Peppers emerged from an LA music scene in which Stooges covers like ‘Search And Destroy’ or ‘I Got A Right’ had become staples, where Perry Farrell would play ‘Fun House’ backstage and Chili’s guitarist John Frusciante would say of the Stooges that ‘everything they did blows me away. They can’t make music with that attitude now.’

In June 1987, Iggy had joined Sonic Youth on stage at London’s Town and Country Club to perform ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’. ‘This was a crucial endorsement of Iggy as iconic American punk god-head by a new generation,’ says Keith Cameron, who would become one of the key writers documenting Nirvana and other Sub Pop bands for the
NME
. ‘Prior to this, I think Iggy was someone respected for his past work but whose contemporary relevance was minimal.’ Two years later, the Stooges’ influence on the emerging mainstream was signalled when Nirvana jammed the same song with Tad and Mudhoney at London’s tiny Astoria club; Kurt Cobain would confide to his journals that
Raw Power
was his all-time favourite album and write a song, ‘Talk To Me’, for Iggy, while Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore would fantasise, ‘I’d really like to see Nirvana as Iggy’s backing band, that would be way cool.’

Undoubtedly, Iggy’s had become a hip name to drop, but the Stooges’ influence went far beyond mere lip-service: the guitar drone of ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ was easily discernible in Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr’s ringing guitar sounds, while James Williamson’s aggressive but concise guitar attack was most obviously recognisable in John Frusciante’s playing. Iggy’s lyrical and visual imagery was just as pervasive, whether it was in songs steeped in boredom and alienation (‘oh well, whatever, nevermind’), Anthony Kiedis’s appropriation of Iggy’s shirtless
Fun House
look (together with lyrics proclaiming ‘we can dance like Iggy Pop’), the ripped jeans sported by most of the Seattle bands, or the way in which crowd surfing and the breakdown of barriers between performer and audience that Iggy had invented became an integral part of rock performances. By the mid-1990s, almost every key stylistic element of Iggy and the Stooges had been absorbed into the American mainstream.

Crucially, most of the bands who would dominate the American ‘alternative’ and grunge scene of the 1990s would see Iggy as a still-vital force and an inspiring live performer, rather than a mere nostalgia act. Iggy’s only rival as the spiritual father of this new movement was Lou Reed; yet by now Lou had become notorious for delivering limp, tedious live shows, and as Black Francis of Pixies, those vital precursors of grunge, puts it: ‘I want to find the most true, pure rock and roll available from this time period of, say 1968 to 1977, and Iggy is it. I love Lou Reed, but who is more rocking? It’s him. It’s way more pure.’ Like John Frusciante or Thurston Moore, Francis had studied the most obscure Stooges out-takes and bootlegs; at last, those lost works the Stooges had been compelled to make even when there was no prospect they would ever be heard had found an audience. After discovering
Lust For Life
and
The Idiot
, Francis had been the most moved by a collection of demos, including ‘I Got A Right’ and ‘Johanna’, released on Bomp: ‘For me personally this is the most ice-hot, adrenalised, just full-on album . . . because there’s no one there. There’s no one there except them. Haunting is the right word for those demos.’