Iggy Pop, by the author - who risked near death at the hands of a bouncer to get this headless pic.
Let's get this straight from the start. I am a massive fan of Iggy Pop, and have been ever since the age of 16 when my then girlfriend Carol lent me her copy of Raw Power. The cover alone gave a hint that the contents were explosive. On the front, a leering, eyeliner-caked and topless Iggy thrusting the microphone stand into his crotch. On the rear, Iggy again leering from within an absurdly cool leather jacket decorated with a painted tiger bearing fangs. The music - alienated, deathly, psychotic, raw yet strangely beautiful - was even more alluring. By the time Carol had also lent me her copy of The Idiot album and live crucifixion Metallic KO, and I'd gone and bought Lust For Life, I was hooked.
I even suffered for my worship. At a gig at Leeds University, I was asphyxiated by a bouncer for the heinous crime of taking photos of the Ig onstage. He only let go when I managed to convince him that I'd dropped the camera, not slipped it up my sleeve. I have about 10 photos of a waistcoat-wearing Pop to show for it, most of them headless, like the one on this blog. We'd spent all our money on the gig so walked home. It took five hours. It was February, and it was snowing. Even now, I still play Iggy or the Stooges most weeks, and those records mean more to me than several of my relatives. Thus, it really isn't easy to say this, but the great man should not be allowed to make any more records.
Everyone knows how cataclysmic the Stooges' first three albums were, how they virtually invented punk and introduced a new nihilistic, wound-opening language to rock'n'roll. But for me, even these are edged by the (un)holy records the former James Osterberg made in Berlin with David Bowie. Not long out of mental hospital, Iggy's 1977 The Idiot and Lust For Life are more than just great albums about narcotic collapse and a plea for recovery and redemption. They are quintessential documents of a city, a time and a state of mind; but also emotional and soulful. They show that however grim the squalor - and in 1977, Iggy's lifestyle epitomised this more than most - humanity can shine through (at least if it has a killer tune). Lust For Life's title track introduced him to a new generation via Trainspotting; The Passenger became a standard. But Iggy is now 59. Lust For Life was his last great album, and that was 30 years and half his lifetime ago.
Since then, it has been one long, drawn out decline. New Values (1979) and, less so, Soldier (1980), certainly have their moments and I've always been partial to 1981's goofball Party album, although I seem to be the only critic in the Western hemisphere who doesn't view this attempt at Iggy Pop pop to be a crime. Sometime after making what may be his worst solo record, 1982's Zombie Birdhouse with Blondie's Chris Stein producing, Pop teamed up with Bowie again for 1986's mainstream Blah Blah Blah. Perhaps the best we can say about this is it contained the spectral Shades, and a cover of Real Wild Child got the Igster on Top Of The Pops, where he (un?)fortunately didn't show his willy.
Although he was off drugs, Pop's excesses continued in the 90s and Noughties, where he flailed around, collaborating with everyone from Guns 'N' Roses to Green Day and (for heaven's sake) Sum 41. Live, he was still entertaining, but ignored the Berlin material in favour of a theatrical, almost cartoon version of his Stooges persona designed to woo metal kids at festivals (and yes, he showed his willy).
Iggy had painted himself into a corner and the obvious denouement has been to reform the Stooges. Alas, the best we can say about comeback album The Weirdness is that it is made by men of near-pensionable age who once made some astonishing music when they were angry, isolated, narcotically enhanced youths, fronted by a singer who these days prefers golf to rock'n'roll pursuits. The Weirdness may actually be the nadir of Pop's career, or maybe some will find the news that he's inspiring the Lust for Life garden at the Chelsea Flower Show more embarrassing - there's plenty of competition. It shouldn't be this way. Pop - or rather Osterberg, because Pop is now such a cliché - is an intelligent man and really should be spending his old age writing, or painting, or yachting ... Anything that prevents him clogging up the record racks with yet more hideous albums.
Iggy, I love you. But Pop, please stop.
