Iggy Pop Page 10
But not every song on that Byrds album was so distinguished; one of its least successful tracks was ‘Tribal Gathering’, a forgettable piece of hippie indulgence in 5/4 time, heavily influenced by Dave Brubeck’s ‘Take Five’. The song meanders along, aimlessly, until one minute in the musicians seemingly get bored and switch beat and mood to play a tough, simplistic two-note riff for eight bars. This fragment of an otherwise forgettable tune would lodge in Ron’s psychedelicised mind.
The evening looked as promising as the afternoon, for the band were playing again at the Grande, supporting the James Gang, on a bill that had originally featured Cream. As with all their performances so far, the band had planned a completely new set for the occasion, while Jim Osterberg had cadged a lift to the venue earlier that week to bring in a five-foot-tall oil-storage tank which Jimmy Silver was delegated to ‘play’, and place it in front of the stage. To celebrate the event, Iggy decided to drop two hits of Owsley Orange Sunshine. But as the band launched into their set, they discovered that instead of the expected all-conquering roar of sound emanating from their Marshall amplifiers, a problem with the power hook-up reduced the output to a pathetic weedy murmur: ‘It was like the aural equivalent of erectile dysfunction,’ says the singer with a shudder. As the opening number faltered to a premature halt, the band decided to stop the set until they could get the amplifiers back to full power. Growing increasingly restless, the crowd started to chant, ‘We want the Cream! We want the Cream!’
Deciding to confront the audience, Iggy climbed to the top of the huge oil-storage tank and posed, like a renaissance statue on a massive plinth, ‘just to be a lightning rod for this hatred’, as the crowd’s chanting grew louder and more aggressive. Finally the Marshall amplifiers spluttered back to life, and the band resumed the show. ‘But it was not a good set,’ says Iggy, who, despite his initial bravado, found the crowd’s hostility profoundly disturbing, particularly in his ‘sensitive’ hallucinatory state.
Grief-stricken, he returned to Ann Arbor to stay overnight with Dave Alexander and his parents, but even the birthday treat of a cheeseburger with a candle plonked on top couldn’t erase his sense of failure. ‘And if ever I was going to give up, that would be the time. I was not encouraged.’
This was the point where a sensitive hippie would have given up. But Jim Osterberg was not a sensitive hippie. He was the boy most likely to, and he would face down this hatred.
But how do you confront hatred?
Jim Osterberg says he reacted by becoming ‘more brazen. So they could bill me as The Guy You Love To Hate.’
Jimmy Silver says that Jim Osterberg built up a kind of psychic armour. ‘He had to. Because there were all those people that hated him. Plus there was the potential [of them] physically attacking him.’
Cub Koda, fellow musician and fan, observed that ‘the audience’s rejection of that pop art performance brought out the meanness in him - made him go out and physically provoke the audience into responding, one way or another’.
Kathy Asheton, friend and later lover, points out that ‘He knew the viciousness of people. And it’s hard not to build an attitude after a while. He did not set out for shock value, it just naturally happened.’
This new man, brazen, indestructible, mean, confrontational, was Iggy Stooge.
The idea of an alter ego that takes on a life of its own reaches back through time, was formalised in nineteenth-century gothic fiction, and reached new popularity in the postwar America that nurtured Jim Osterberg, the boy who dreamt of being the Atomic Brain. For a twenty-year-old performer confronting a hostile audience, being able to call on a superhuman alter ego might enable survival. But as we know from countless cheesy horror movies, alter egos can get out of control.
Over the coming years, those people who were close to Jim Osterberg mostly came to respect Iggy Pop, as he would later rename himself. They’d enjoy sharing a stage with Iggy, or going for a meal with Jim (heaven help anyone who got the combination the wrong way round). They’d learn to forgive behaviour from Iggy that would simply be unforgivable from his charming creator. Ultimately, Jim Osterberg created what many people regard as the greatest rock ’n’ roll frontman ever to command a stage. But this Iggy creation would subsequently become the focus of all the attention on the Stooges and, ultimately, the morality of the cheesy horror movie could not be ignored. As Ron Asheton puts it, ‘It was an act for a long time: sincere, wholesome emotions that made him be Iggy. Then it spilled over. To where he could not separate the performance from his real life.’
As Iggy, once a term of abuse, became an official stage name, it was obvious that this superhero needed his own costume. Inspiration came, according to Jim, when he was engaged in his own research in the undergraduate library of the University of Michigan, which he’d still occasionally visit: ‘I was looking at a book on Egyptian antiquity. And [I realised] the Pharaohs never wore a shirt. And I thought, gee, there’s something about that!’
Of course, for any casual observer, the notion that the Wild Man of Michigan rock found inspiration for his outfit in a tome on tribal anthropology seems ludicrous. But it’s true, as Psychedelic Stooges roadie Roy Seeger testifies: ‘We’d often get together and smoke some weed while Jim would tell us about anthropology, and how ancient people were. He was fascinated in how the human race was when we were real primitive, closer to the animal kingdom and nature. And he did definitely use that in his music.’
Performing stripped to the waist obviously fitted the Psychedelic Stooges’ primal ethos, but Jim also decided to opt for something more spectacular in the trouser department, inspired primarily by the flamboyant stage gear of the MC5. In early 1968, the Stooges were regular overnight visitors to the MC5 and Artist Workshop offices overlooking Detroit’s John C Lodge Freeway, and often ‘babysat’ the MC5’s wives and girlfriends, who lived in fear of some of the heavy local characters who’d previously broken into the building. Becky Tyner and Chris Hovnanina, the partners of Rob Tyner and Wayne Kramer, had become expert costume designers working for the ’5, and Becky volunteered to make a pair of stage pants for Jim in cheap, leather-look PVC. The pants were tailored, via trial and error, to fit Jim’s ‘wonderful body’, says Becky. The eventual hip-hugging design they decided on was ‘very, very low - the top of them just came to his pubic-hair line. And they were very, very tight.’
Purpose-built stage clothes seemed perfectly appropriate for the moment when the Psychedelic Stooges were expanding out of the Grande Ballroom into the small clubs scattered around the tiny rural and industrial towns of Michigan. One such club, Mothers, had been launched in Romeo, Michigan during the summer of 1968 by Luke Engel, and on a visit to Ann Arbor, Luke dropped in to see Jeep Holland, who by now was operating his A2 (aka A-squared) agency out of an office, rather than a payphone. Despite not having high hopes for the Psychedelic Stooges after seeing an early ‘rehearsal’, Jeep was helping them out with bookings, and on this day Jimmy Silver happened to be in the office. After nearly an hour of sweet-talking, Engel was convinced by Silver’s blandishments to book the Psychedelic Stooges as support act to the Jagged Edge, on 11 August 1968.
After the band arrived for the evening’s performance in roadie Roy Seeger’s Pontiac station wagon, Engel had a pleasant chat with an alert, soft-spoken ‘little guy in low-cut pants’, but as the band started up playing their elemental music he was surprised to see the youth, who he’d assumed was a roadie, walk up to the microphone and sing into it - only to grimace, as no sound came out of the PA system. Disgusted, he tossed the offending mike onto the stage, then watched the Jagged Edge’s roadie walk on and retrieve it, switch it to the ‘On’ position, then leave the stage. A slightly chagrined Iggy resumed the performance, dancing in a ‘demented’ fashion before confronting the indifferent crowd. ‘He jumped off the stage, began approaching girls and humping them, much as a large dog might have!’ recounts Engel, who remembers with delight how the local farmboys stood stock-still, their fight-or-flight
instinct hopelessly confused. Soon the crowd was transfixed by this ‘seemingly psychotic little person’.
By now Iggy had stripped off his shirt, then he suddenly twisted into a trademark move, arching himself backwards into a seemingly impossible contortion. And at the very last degree of the arc, his PVC pants, stretched beyond their limits, popped down and Iggy’s penis made the first of its many public appearances. ‘The club was buzzing with concern and confusion,’ says Engel, ‘and the two off-duty sheriffs who provided my security were making haste towards me as I ran to find Jimmy Silver and tell him he had to pull the band!’
Within moments the club was swarming with cops, all of them alerted, believes Engel, by a rival club owner, and the now naked Iggy fled out of the back door, accompanied by roadie Roy Seeger. As local and state police rushed around, Jimmy Silver located the superior officer and, using his considerable powers of persuasion, negotiated a deal that guaranteed his charge wouldn’t be beaten up by the irate cops, who were convinced they’d busted some kind of perverted homosexual strip joint. Deal concluded, Iggy was persuaded out of his hiding place in the back of Seeger’s station wagon, and admitted into police custody.
As neither band nor manager had enough cash to bail out the unfortunate singer, Jimmy Silver was forced to summon James Osterberg Senior for assistance. Mr Osterberg arrived the next morning to stand bail for his son. With commendable promptness, the case was heard the following morning by Justice Shocke, who fined the offender $41, with $9 costs. Osterberg Senior paid the fine, and seemed remarkably good-humoured about the escapade, once Jim Junior offered to take him out for a round of golf at Pat’s Par Three.
The notorious gig was the subject of one of the band’s first press reports, making the front page of the Romeo Observer. Sadly, its PR value was limited, as the newspaper described James Osterberg as a ‘dancer and entertainer’, making it appear the cops had managed to close down some lewd homosexual strip club. The infamy Luke Engel attracted for hosting this display inspired the club owner to pull his lease the next day, and the aspiring promoter left town soon afterwards.
Because of - rather than despite - such displays, the Psychedelic Stooges started to attract a hard core of fans, most of them, according to Jim, ‘high school and junior high kids who either were bad - or wanted to be. Plus a few of the more musically informed people.’ Those groups epitomised the polarity of the Psychedelic Stooges’ appeal, for the music was brutal and anti-intellectual, while the spectacle itself was theatrical and confrontational. Dave Marsh, later a celebrated writer for Creem, and one of the Stooges’ main supporters, saw a performance at the University of Michigan in Dearborn where a ‘straight-looking, fraternity couple got up to leave and were confronted by the singer: he begins to do this routine haranguing them, getting right in their faces - which resolved into a song called “Goodbye Bozos”.’ The confrontation was thrilling, ‘deeply theatrical’ and anticipated a controversial play, Dionysus 1969, later filmed by Brian De Palma, which experimented with similar psycho-dramatics, confrontation and nudity. However, the Stooges didn’t look as if they were acting, and the brutal monotonous riffing added to the sense of danger. When it didn’t fall apart, that is, because for the few local musicians who actually enjoyed the music, the Psychedelic Stooges’ semi-competence was an intrinsic part of their appeal. Embryonic songs, like ‘Asthma Attack’, had memorable riffs but no worked-out endings, and would often simply fall apart. Crowds might be treated to the sight of Iggy and Scott Asheton having an argument mid-song about a drum pattern that would culminate in Iggy taking up the sticks and showing a scowling Scott what to play. Or they might watch Iggy incense the crowd by simply lying on his back as yet another song ground to a halt, and crooning an a cappella rendition of ‘Shadow Of Your Smile’.
Brownsville Station’s Cub Koda shared many concert bills with the Stooges, and remembers, delightedly, how: ‘A lot of the bands like Ted Nugent or the Frost, who thought they were superior, didn’t like sharing a bill with the Stooges. With us it was: Great, it’s the Stooges, what’s gonna happen? ’Cause they could do twenty minutes and be brilliant, then all of a sudden the set would go to hell in a handcart. All the stuff that happens on the Metallic KO record, even though it’s a different band, was what those performances were like - ’cause they could really fall apart in mid-song. And because you had a leader who was no leader, who was a leader of chaos, the band would just stand there looking at their shoes waiting for their next piece of direction.’
For all the chaos, for all the ridicule, the Stooges, four Midwest nobodies with huge egos, entertained no self-doubt. They had cast their fates to the wind, they said, and they would see where it would take them, outcasts against a world they considered shallow and banal. Jim Osterberg, the schoolboy politician, was perhaps the only Stooge who could have lived in this outside world. But according to his confidant, Jimmy Silver, rejoining that would require him ‘putting on a face he no longer wanted to bother with. He had made this decision to play this music. That’s what he was. That’s what drove him. That’s what called him.’ And there was no going back.
Nowadays, when the late 1960s Detroit scene is revered as a hotbed of tough garage rock, it’s easy to forget the hippie evangelism that nurtured the Stooges. Perhaps the most effective reminder is John Sinclair, at the time a high priest of the Detroit arts scene, and today a tubby, avuncular DJ in New Orleans.
Sinclair’s greatest fame came when he was adopted as a cause célèbre by John Lennon when the authorities gave him ‘ten for two’: ten years’ jail for two joints of marijuana. Sinclair was victimised for his establishment of the White Panther Party, whose claimed exploits included blowing up a CIA building in Detroit. Grey-haired, with a hip hoarse-voiced jazz jive in the style of Dr John, today Sinclair looks like a cross between a dress-down Santa Claus and one of the lazy hippies from Gilbert Shelton’s Fat Freddy’s Cat cartoon. In the daytime, he makes a living via his oldies show on New Orleans public radio. At home, he sits late into the evening playing rare old vinyl records by Albert Ayler or Charley Patton.
He’s an engaging, smart, inspiring raconteur, but as our conversations continue over several drawn-out, generous New Orleans lunches of catfish and okra, it becomes increasingly obvious why Amerika was never consumed by revolution. For all his charm, he’s a self-absorbed, unworldly figure, overflowing with ideas but always complaining he’s out of cash.
Sinclair was a crucial influence on the young Jim Osterberg, putting him in contact with Elektra records, tutoring him in free jazz and helping the Stooges score their Marshall stacks. But he was the making of the Stooges in a more crucial way, too. By encouraging their art-rock experiments, he unwittingly engineered their rejection by Michigan’s unheeding, untutored audiences. What started out as an optimistic, avant-garde hippie experiment would become something altogether darker and ultimately confrontational. This confrontation would have a profound, painful effect on Iggy and his Stooges. But it would also make for some great music.
CHAPTER 4
Oh My, Boo Hoo
‘It was Sunday, the twenty-second September, when I heard the Stooges. I know that was the weekend because it’s my parents’ anniversary. I stopped in the doorway and did a mesmerisation moment. What is this? You don’t get too many moments like that in your life. Some movies, some passages of books, like Catcher in the Rye. You live for moments like that. Well I do. And this was one of them.’
An engaging, flirtatiously energetic character with a mordant sense of humour, Danny Fields has occasionally been described as Jim Osterberg’s brother, and more consistently been credited as Iggy Pop’s discoverer. The man who finally exposed the Stooges to New York, and ultimately to a worldwide audience, the maverick who championed revolutionary music that no one else could comprehend, he would be rewarded for his crucial contributions with ingratitude, endless early morning phone calls and huge credit-card bills. Despite the fact that, in the main, his greatest protégés caused him nothi
ng but trouble, the visionary who helped them record their most radical albums recounts their story with grace and wit. And a lot of sex, drugs and revolutionary mantras.
In the mid-1960s it was compulsory for any record label to recruit a ‘company freak’ - a hippie who knew what was down with the kids and could help the label make money out of them. Elektra Records founder Jac Holzman was hugely interested in recorded sound, had established his label recording folkies like Phil Ochs and repackaging European music, but hit gold-dirt when he happened on Danny Fields, who established his credentials in grandstanding style in 1967 when he insisted that the Doors’ ‘Light My Fire’ should be the band’s breakthrough single. Unfortunately for Fields’ career with the label, those credentials would be comprehensively shredded by his involvement with the Stooges, and confrontations with Elektra’s management.
It was John Sinclair ’s messianic zeal that inspired the MC5 and Stooges’ hook-up with Elektra. After a couple of years of intimida tion by the police and other rednecks, Sinclair and the MC5 moved from Detroit to the far less repressive bohemian enclave of Ann Arbor, where they set up their organisation at 1510 and 1520 Hill Street around May 1968. Together with John’s brother David, who managed the Up, and Jimmy Silver, they established Trans Love Energies, a loose management cooperative. Sinclair issued endless press releases and manifestos from his sprawling Victorian headquarters, and eventually piqued the interest of DJs and music writers Dennis Frawley and Bob Rudnick, who hosted the Kocaine Karma radio show on the pioneering independent radio station WFMU in New Jersey. When Sinclair dropped off a copy of the MC5 single ‘Looking At You/Borderline’ in the summer of 1968, the two put it on heavy rotation. One of the first people to notice it was another head and fellow WFMU presenter: Elektra’s Danny Fields. Enthused both by the single and by Sinclair’s radical polemics, Fields flew to Detroit to see the MC5 at the Grande on Saturday 21 September, 1968. He thought they were ‘terrific . . . very show business’ and agreed to sign the band to Elektra, convinced the act would be a huge money-spinner.