Iggy Pop (41 page)

From being a kind of totem of old-school punk on the Virgin label, which was bought by EMI in 1992, Iggy Pop was becoming one of its hippest acts, sharing top billing at international festivals with the likes of Sonic Youth and Nick Cave; when Virgin came to release his next album, 1993’s
American Caesar
, there was a new swagger in their pitch for the artist: ‘Born in a log cabin by the Detroit river in 1862, Iggy Pop the punk pioneer cleared the land, killed the sharks and bears, and changed the sound of American music with his mighty axe and his band of Stooges.’

American Caesar
was recorded with a largely new band (
Brick By Brick
tour bassist Craig Pike had been killed in a car accident in 1993), that included guitarist Eric Schermerhorn - who lived down the road from Jim in the West Village and had previously played in Tin Machine - and Eric’s room-mate from college, curly-haired bassist Hal Cragin, plus drummer Larry Mullins, a longtime Iggy fan who’d ‘stalked’ him in the late 1980s and finally joined his band in 1990. Jim would approach writing sessions with an unrelenting work ethic, obviously in love with the stimulants that had fuelled his glory days but exhibiting impressive self-control. ‘He’d drink half a glass of wine, go, man, that’s good, and leave the rest undrunk,’ says Schermerhorn. ‘The same with a cigarette - he’d inhale deeply maybe twice, and you could tell it had a real effect on him, then he’d stub it out.’

Jim would get up early each morning each day and spend half an hour or so working on qigong, a form of t’ai chi that helped him keep his skinny body in trim, before walking over to Schermerhorn’s apartment, often buoyed up with childlike glee by the odd sights he’d noticed en route, and then they’d work on material. The songs they developed showed Iggy liberated, confident and ready to experiment, and reflected his current reading matter, including Edward Gibbon’s
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
(‘It wasn’t the condensed version, either,’ says Schermerhorn).

Over the next couple of years Jim’s hard core of friends included Johnny Depp, whose first encounter with Iggy had been at a show in Florida, back in 1980; Depp had made a nuisance of himself screaming obscenities after the gig and was rewarded with a close encounter with his hero, who walked right up to him and shouted, ‘You little scumbag!’ Thereafter Depp was a regular sight at Iggy shows in the early 1980s - Esther Friedmann certainly noticed him - and finally got to know Jim during the filming of John Waters’
Cry-Baby
in 1989. Two other regular friends included tattoo artist Jonathan Shaw, son of bandleader Artie Shaw, and Jim Jarmusch, who’d filmed Iggy with Tom Waits for his
Coffee And Cigarettes
project in 1992. But bit by bit, the friendship with David Bowie seemed to have receded into the background. There have been suggestions that there was a falling out over money when Jim bought back the masters of
The Idiot
and
Lust For Life
for reissue on Virgin, but Bowie himself offered the most perceptive explanation later in the decade, when he mentioned, candidly, ‘I think there was a moment where Jim decided that he couldn’t do a fucking article without my name being mentioned - and I don’t think that’s a very comfortable feeling.’ There was a poignancy to Bowie’s belief that Jim had taken umbrage at incessantly being linked to his so-called mentor: ‘That’s a shame, because I would have liked to remain closer to him.’

Jim and David’s friendship had been a unique one in popular music, but perhaps, as in so many relationships, their egos couldn’t be held in check for ever. ‘I think in any close friendship you can use the word love,’ says one observer who was close to both of them, ‘and in many close friendships you’ll see that one person loves the other more than the other loves him or her. And I believe David loved Jim more than Jim loved David. And, in the end, I think Jim found he could manage without him.’ The complex interaction of two egotistical men had been characterised by mutual admiration and rivalry - ‘They each have what the other guy wants,’ says Eric Schermerhorn - yet, ultimately, it seems Bowie’s respect for Iggy ran deeper than Iggy’s respect for Bowie. Furthermore, by the mid-1990s, Bowie’s cerebral, intellectual take on music was, Nirvana cover versions apart, out of favour compared to Iggy’s visceral, intuitive approach, and there were other friends to be made.

As Bowie receded from Iggy’s public circle of admirers, newer replacements emerged, most notably Henry Rollins, the one-time singer of Black Flag whose diverse output stretched to spoken-word performances and poetry (and who would later oversee a reprint of Iggy’s
I Need More
at his own 2.13.61 publishing house). Rollins would be a key advocate for Iggy in the 1990s, extolling both his dumb punk onslaught and his eloquence.

It was in the glow of both general acclaim and financial security that Iggy went to New Orleans in September 1992 to record
American Caesar
with producer Malcolm Burn and the new band, whom he termed ‘similar to what I started with, three lost souls who didn’t fit anywhere’. The plan was that, as with the Stooges, the recording would stimulate a sense of crisis and push the whole outfit to the limit - a plan that worked, for there were many disagreements behind the scenes that somehow made for the edgiest most adventurous album Iggy had recorded in a decade or more. ‘Wild America’ was a tough, half-spoken meditation underpinned by a nasty, repetitive guitar riff that documents Iggy being thrilled by his country’s edginess and repelled by its complacence; it is at once original and also evocative of the intensity and claustrophobia of
Fun House
. ‘Hate’ sets revenge fantasies to an unpredictable gothic rolling chord sequence, while ‘It’s Our Love’ is an ethereal ballad with echoed drums and strings shimmering in the distance. Elsewhere, off-kilter but catchy songs utilise fairground drumbeats (‘Highway Song’) or set stream-of-consciousness imagery against a jug-band backing (‘Fuckin’ Alone’). It was with a sense of accomplishment that Iggy handed the tapes in to Virgin, only for them to say, according to Jim, ‘We love the album - but where are the hits?’ There followed, he says, the requisite artistic tantrum before he acceded to their suggestion that he record a version of ‘Louie Louie’, and then looked back through his old tapes to find the demo of ‘Beside You’, a ballad that he’d recorded with Steve Jones in the run-up to
Blah Blah Blah
.

If there was something depressing about acceding to his type-casting and recording ‘Louie Louie’, then Iggy didn’t admit it, says bassist Hal Cragin. ‘I thought it was a great decision. That was a very near and dear song for him because it was so raw and loose - the magic of it was a real template for his career.’ In truth, the commitment with which Iggy and band revisit the hoary garage classic that launched Iggy the singing drummer is both scary and touching (even if, post 1978, it’s difficult to dissociate the song from John Travolta and Olivia Newton John’s disturbingly similar ‘Summer Nights’). ‘Beside You’, a 1980s-style power ballad reminiscent of U2’s ‘With Or Without You’, is similarly formulaic and affecting in equal measure, and went some way towards fulfilling Virgin’s desires by scraping into the UK Top 50. However,
American Caesar
, which despite a couple of filler tracks was Iggy’s most creative album of the 1990s, sold in barely respectable quantities, reaching number 43 in the UK, but missing the US Top 100.

The lacklustre sales of
American Caesar
were not a terminal problem, for as Hal Cragin points out, Iggy’s live shows were making ‘a ton of money’, while his back catalogue was also generating a good income. But for the rest of the 1990s, Jim’s life would settle into a calm routine where the next album would be made in ten days or so with a modest budget and ambitions, and where in general the surprises and the thrills were modest too. For all that, his influence would continue to percolate into new corners of the world’s culture, as Iggy Pop began to be regarded as a more left-field and even more gnarled Keith Richards-style totem of rock ’n’ roll cool. His image as a subversive mainstream personality spread wider via his guest appearances on Nickelodeon’s hip kids’ show
The Adventures of Pete and Pete
, plus roles in
Tank Girl
,
The Crow: City of Angels
and a hilarious sequence in the
Rugrats
movie, where he voiced a newborn baby alongside Patti Smith, Beck and Laurie Anderson.

Appropriately enough, as Iggy Pop started to become a mainstream personality, Jim learned to take on serious responsibilities as a father. He and Esther had started looking after Eric for the odd week here and there in the early 1980s. Eric had later trained as an accountant and worked to get himself through college, but by 1990 had grown his hair and was planning a career as a rock singer, hanging out with bands in LA; his father arranged vocal lessons and, he says, did ‘all the wrong things’. Eventually, Eric battled his own substance-abuse problems; Jim paid for his therapy, not, he says, ‘out of any warm, fatherly concern. I dealt with it because I had to.’

Murray Zucker, who remained friends with the family, maintains that Jim’s relationship with Eric demonstrated ‘a loyalty, obligation and [a] sense of connection which sustained through the years’. Dr Zucker is surely the most objective of observers, but it’s hard to square his observations with Iggy’s own pronouncements on his son, which have at times been disturbingly cold-blooded: ‘When he was in rehab they’d all blame me, and that’s the sort of American thing I won’t accept. That kind of “let’s study your family” bullshit.’ Jim would later employ his son as a personal assistant, but Eric never seemed able to earn his father ’s praise. Eric Schermerhorn, like many musicians who worked with Jim, remembers his generosity in, for instance, sharing songwriting royalties, but was unimpressed by his complaints about Eric: ‘He was grumbling about dumping money on the kid. It was so selfish - what if he’d wanted to go to Harvard? And when you think about how his parents spoiled him.’ Undoubtedly, Jim did try hard to be a good father; he simply didn’t have the requisite abilities to be one, and would never acquire them.

Jim himself was solicitous about acknowledging the influence of his parents. (‘One thing I should say is how supportive they’ve been of me,’ he told me in 1993, ‘that’s why I’ve purposely used the name Osterberg more in recent years, in honour of their name.’) When Louella fell gravely ill before her death in 1996, Jim was devastated and would break down sobbing at some points, channelling his grief into songs he poured onto tape. Jim Osterberg Sr was overwhelmed, says Nick Kent, who consoled Jim Jr on the phone. ‘I spoke to Jim about his father because his mother had just died and his father had almost gone completely crazy with the grief - but his dad had been able to pull himself back.’ Jim talked at length about his father, remembers Kent. ‘His dad is a loner, an intellectual - someone who pulled himself up through singular odds and didn’t have an easy time. At the same time his father found solace and peace in his relationship with his wife because they really were one of those inseparable couples. Jim was always in awe of that.’

As Jim approached fifty, like many of his generation a youthful rebelliousness was augmented with a respect for what his parents had achieved. It seemed more apparent now that he’d inherited his father’s dedicated work ethic, for even over a period when the income from live performances was no longer vital, he continued to work the road year after year, evangelistic about the Stooges’ music, and still shot-through with the competitiveness he’d exhibited back in Detroit.

Schermerhorn, Cragin and Mullins were a dedicated little band of brothers, assisted by a tiny crew headed by Henry McGroggan and Iggy’s personal roadie, Jos Grain, and although their leader might often disappear into the dressing room after the show, paranoid that the audience’s response had not been sufficiently ecstatic, he was still a focused, inspirational force. Often he’d counsel his musicians like a bizarre father figure, warning them against drinking beers given to them by rival bands at festivals in case they were spiked, still imbued with a Detroit ‘Battle of the Bands’ aggression. On live tours, he’d fuel his body with red meat, and would never watch TV the day of a show, for fear it would sap his energy. Although, in their latter days, Schermerhorn and Cragin would engage Jim in constant arguments over money and retainers, there was still an incredible emotional bond between singer and band: during one show in Warsaw that was being filmed by the Lodz film school, Schermerhorn was standing over a sweat-splattered Iggy when the singer took a full-voltage electric shock from a metal guard-rail. Eric stared into his eyes wondering what the hell was happening until Jos pulled Iggy out. Later, Jim told him, for all the much-touted encounters with broken glass and Detroit bikers, this was the closest he’d ever been to death. He seemed matter-of-fact about it.

Night after night, Iggy would deliver on a level that arguably no singer before or since has achieved. Whatever drama was going on in his personal life would always fuel his performance; during the
American Caesar
tour, he and Suchi were having rows, and when he hit the stage, says Larry Mullins, ‘It was like war.’ One night Hal Cragin was nearly speared by a mike stand that Iggy launched at his chest; a few nights later Eric Schermerhorn announced he was leaving after being the victim of a similar assault. Jim was apologetic and puzzled after the show, hardly remembering what he’d done onstage.

Photographer Bob Gruen was a friend of Jim and Suchi’s in the early 1990s; they’d occasionally go out for a meal or to a club together and Gruen enjoyed Jim’s wit and repartee. In June 1996 Gruen flew over to London for the much-fêted show which saw Iggy share a bill with the newly reunited Sex Pistols, whose rise Gruen had documented twenty years before. Gruen and Jim had exchanged a few words that afternoon, and a couple of minutes before Jim was due to go on stage, Gruen spotted the singer walk over to a quiet corner. The photographer was about to go up and offer some words of encouragement, when Art Collins motioned him aside and warned him, ‘I wouldn’t do that now.’ As Gruen looked on, he saw Jim immersed in some kind of deep breathing exercise, ‘And then, suddenly, it was like watching the Hulk, when some normal person, the secret identity, turns into this incredible creature.’ Gruen watched wave after wave of an almost inhuman energy surge through him. ‘You could almost see him become larger and more powerful. Jim had become Iggy and taken on all this mass, this power. And you just knew it was time to stay out of the way and not get anywhere near where he’d be.’