Visceral... Iggy Pop in performance. Photograph: Juan Vrijdag/EPA
So, a new Stooges album for 2007! A new Stooges album entitled The Weirdness! It certainly has the aura of an odd dream. After John Lydon's stint in the jungle all bets are off in the "unhappy flogging of credibility" stakes. And really, what would happen if this record were the ground zero that uber-fans fear? Even if Iggy and the Ashtons delivered a vapid pastiche of their greatest moments and had Chris Martin flouncing around in the video, how could it detract from so outstanding a legacy? Iggy's already had Green Day on one of his records, for Pete's sake!
There is no shortage of musicians who hold their 1973 classic album Raw Power in the highest esteem. People that gush superlatives whenever the band is mentioned have been on the increase for years. Yet despite all the worship, has anyone made a record that comes close to its sound? That's not to say that any rock'n'roll that doesn't attempt to scale Mount Stooges isn't worth doing. Not at all. A world in which every record was trying to channel Raw Power would be a terrifying, unholy place. It's more that the Stooges albums possess an uncanny perfection - and a rare fascination too.
I seriously doubt anyone sits down and listens to Funhouse or Raw Power regularly. It's not that they're punishing records. They don't sound like a catharsis of anguish in the way that something like In Utero does. But the songs move between pulverising aggression and appeals to the unstable, damaged self with such rapidity it's disturbing. Moments on Raw Power draw back piteously to say, "Look at me. I'm fucked up. I'm losing all my feelings" - and then plunge deeper into the nihilism and violence. It's scary, not because it's excessive but because it doesn't sound conceited.
I get the same feeling when I listen to Skip James or Little Richard's Ooh! My Soul! There are enigmatic lyrics, there's an element of performance and show but it pales in the face of a weird, furious kind of concentration. These artists are convinced of their uniqueness and they calculatingly design their music to channel incredibly forceful emotions. They don't need to playact. When Iggy conceived of the Stooges he wasn't envisioning his place in the canon of rock'n'roll. He wasn't scheming on how he could be more outrageous than Jim Morrison or blacker than Mick Jagger. He was looking for expression that could transcend an already deeply self-satisfied medium. Not a misguided interpretation of the blues, but his "own simple blues".
Maybe this is why the three Stooges records don't sound like period pieces. It's like when you listen to Leadbelly and his songs blast more contemporary efforts into irrelevance. Time has no pull on some music. To create something like this requires passion and wit. Revelling in the Stooges' gonzo gore and swastikas entails the risk of overlooking the precision in what the band were doing. The notion that a bunch of witless, drug-addled ghouls might stagger into a studio and produce records like this on intuition is imbecilic. If you want to hear what that actually sounds like go and listen to Motley Crue.
The Stooges had a fraction of the skill of Led Zeppelin but incalculably more vision. This vision culminated in Raw Power and anyone worth their salt knows deep down it's unbeatable. Personally I've always been glad that collapse ensued. How do you follow up Death Trip? If songs such as Cock in My Pocket and Johanna indicate what a fourth album would have sounded like, then it would have been a lot closer to the posturing of the aforementioned Zep, though still a lot less bourgeois.
No, the Stooges did what they came to do. They did it so well and so fast that it took decades for the world to catch up. The Weirdness could be an interesting record. It couldn't be more charmless and gruelling than the dying breath that was Metallic KO. When all is said and done it just doesn't matter if the Stooges can't live up to their legacy because nobody else can either - and there's been 34 years in which to try.
