Iggy Pop (44 page)

By the following year, the Stooges topped the bill at Coachella, which as they prepared to take the stage seemed a terrible mistake - for most of the crowd had elected to avoid the traffic jams and leave immediately after the White Stripes’ set, which had been dogged by technical problems. As the Stooges launched the three-chord assault of ‘Loose’, thousands of weary fans were walking back to the parking lot . . . ‘Then you visibly saw everyone stop. Pause. Listen,’ says audience member Andrew Male, ‘and then they turned back. It had started off with you thinking they’ve screwed up, the audience is wondering who’s this old guy on stage. Then there was a total sea change. You felt a rush, like the wind behind you, with thousands of people running towards the stage. All around were these obviously euphoric experiences, kids turning to each other with huge smiles, looking into each other’s eyes.’ After the show, Iggy remained for a magazine cover shoot with Jack White, the new standard bearer of Detroit rock. White held Iggy in his arms in a quasi-religious pose, like Mary Magdalene contemplating Jesus in the Deposition from the cross (photographer Mick Hutson reflected afterwards, ‘There was love in that look - and not normal man-love!’). Speaking to the Christ-like figure a few weeks later, White told him, ‘I have always felt that the blood that runs in your veins is so much thicker than normal people that nothing can pollute it. That’s the vibe I’ve gotten from you.’ An unabashed fan, White had picked up on a perception shared by many, that despite the chaos that had so often engulfed him, Iggy Pop’s devotion to his music, which had resulted in all those still visible nicks and scars, endowed him with a strange kind of purity.

And so it went on, ‘like a dream or something,’ says Ron Asheton, a stream of validation that seemed ‘so special that it seems almost too good to be true. You’re gonna go whoop, I’m gonna wake up now and be back in the bar playing for ten dollars a night.’ For both Ron and Scott Asheton this was an unparalleled, almost mystical experience, that after thirty years in which their music gestated, finally to percolate into every corner of the contemporary rock scene, they had their moment in the limelight. Yet this could be no easy ride, for with every show came the nervousness before, and anxious post-mortems, as the Stooges gradually made their way to the top of bills across Europe and the USA. For the three founder Stooges, one crucial rite of passage was their headlining show at London’s Hammersmith Apollo in August 2005, the first time they’d topped a bill in the city since July 1972. In a highlight of London’s All Tomorrow’s Parties season, the band would play their
Fun House
album in its entirety.
Fun House
producer Don Gallucci took a few days off from his real-estate business to attend the event, for which, despite all those years of experience, both Iggy and Mike Watt were beset with nerves.

In the event, the dream continued. Iggy skipped onto the stripped-down stage of the Apollo with the bounce and energy of a spring lamb, yelling a terse welcome before leaping onto bassist Mike Watt’s Marshall stack and dry-humping it as the Stooges launched into ‘Down On The Street’. And all those years, all those injuries, all those humiliations simply melted away, as Iggy danced, lithe, beautiful, untroubled and untainted by history. The band seemed almost unbelievably confident: Rock Action’s drumming supple, playing the song rather than the beat, and Ron Asheton’s guitar style, while frenetic, seemed intelligent and refined.

Iggy and his various backing bands, particularly the Trolls, had always been a superior rock act, but the Stooges seemed to represent something far more unconventional: experimental, on the edge, like an art happening, but one propelled by a barrage of guitars. Iggy, too, seemed less a rock singer, more a dancer: lithe, balletic, fluid. As Iggy conducted the sturm und drang, commanding his comrades - ‘Wait a minute!’ ‘Take it down!’ - or imperiously ordering another violent surge of noise, it was like watching a magician conducting a thunderstorm or parting the seas. After playing
Fun House
in its entirety, they hit the stage again for a run of songs from
The Stooges
: ‘1969’, ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’, ‘Real Cool Time’, and then carnage ensued, as a planned stage invasion got out of control with fractured limbs and broken teeth, Ron Asheton standing to the rear and quizzically observing the madness surrounding his singer, who eventually sat down calmly in the middle of the chaos, like a king surrounded by his motley retinue. For the encore, they hit the brakes for a mid-paced, menacing ‘Little Doll’, Ron coaxing the bendy, minimal riff out of his Reverend guitar, Mackay shaking maracas, and up on the balcony boys were kissing girls romantically, joyously, in a way that never could have happened thirty-five years ago. As they walked off the stage, Don Gallucci shouted at me, ‘I think they nailed it.’

After Iggy had limped, painfully, backstage into the dressing room, as was his habit he interrogated those around him: ‘How was it? What did people think?’ Detroit photographer Robert Matheu was there, as for so many of the Stooges’ performances first time around, and told him: ‘This is the Stooges in their prime.’ Today, he cites that performance as superior to the Ford Auditorium shows, ‘where they were awesome in their power’. This time around, in an unbearably hot auditorium, the music ‘physically drove into the crowd’s bodies’; this was the place and the audience that the music was made for. Don Gallucci, too, was as astonished by the performance as he had been by the Stooges’ show at Ungano’s in February 1970: ‘Amazingly, it didn’t feel like a nostalgia event. It felt like it did at the time - fresh. And I looked around and there were these kids, two generations younger, experiencing it as if for the first time too.’

After the show, Gallucci was reunited with Ron Asheton. It was a surreal sight, Ron more portly than in his prime but still with a certain presence, chatting with his ex-producer about their last encounter, when the Stooges were being dropped by Elektra. ‘So, Ron . . .’ says Gallucci, ‘do you remember our going in your room? With all those German uniforms?’ Jim has disappeared for a quiet glass of wine with Nina, as he does most nights. Instead, Gallucci has to content himself with a warm hug from Steve Mackay and a quick photo with Rock Action, who as ever seems the most unpredictable Stooge. He’s the only one who thanks Gallucci for his work on
Fun House,
the album they were showcasing this evening - ‘Without you, Don, this wouldn’t have happened’ - but when Don asks him how the tour’s going, Rock starts thanking his sponsors, as if he’s being interviewed on the red carpet for MTV. One senses why there was always this widespread perception of the Ashetons as loveable but unworldly - for that’s exactly what they are: innocents.

It’s not hard to imagine the surreal, earnest atmosphere as they reconvene over the end of 2006, huddled over toy drum kits, or in a Chicago rehearsal studio. Over the coming months, along with Iggy, they are labouring towards making their most crucial recordings so far. Rick Rubin, the man who helmed so many hit productions, has withdrawn from the fray, unable to make the Stooges’ schedule. Instead, Steve Albini, whose own stellar CV includes the Pixies and Nirvana, is overseeing
The Weirdness
, which Iggy, Ron, Scott, Mike Watt and Steve Mackay are recording at Albini’s studio, Electrical Audio. All those involved are enthused with the results, but even for a band who’d always confounded expectations, a heavy responsibility lies at their feet. Nick Kent, the man who almost singlehandedly proclaimed their importance in Europe back in the 1970s, believes they are equal to the challenges that await them: ‘I think the Asheton brothers will stand up to the plate and really be able to put it out. Because they’ve had long enough to live with their regrets. They understand.’

In truth, it’s probably impossible for any one single album to make sense of the crazed, picaresque events of the forty years since Iggy and his Stooges first huddled together on their return from Chicago and decided to make music. Even a great album could not represent a new beginning - most likely it will represent an end, a peaceful retirement for all concerned, most likely punctuated by the odd speaking engagement at which Jim Osterberg can demonstrate his talent for rollicking yarns. And for all the adoration the Stooges receive from a new generation of fans, it seems they will always be outsiders. In 2007, the Stooges were shortlisted for the sixth time, without success, for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, an institution that has already embraced the likes of Bill Haley, the Four Seasons and Lynyrd Skynyrd: perfectly acceptable acts all, but none of whose music resounds to the present day. Instead, Iggy and his Stooges must simply look on as disciples such as the Ramones and the Sex Pistols gain the accolades that continue to elude them. Yet, as many have observed, the sheer genius of Iggy and his Stooges lies in how they were always compelled to make their music, whether or not anybody cared.

And in the end, for all the blood, drugs and pain, a simple miracle makes it all seem worthwhile: the moment when a pleasant, well-spoken, elderly-looking gentleman with a noticeable limp taps into something primal and primitive that emanates from a drum kit and a stack of Marshall amplifiers. Then this gentleman skips onto the stage with the carefree joy of a child, borne on the incessant waves of the music.

Suddenly this devotion to the music, which so often looked like stupidity, looks like greatness. Then we all take a ride on the pretty music, the past is another place, and there is only the glorious now.

NOTES AND SOURCES