Iggy Pop Read online

  Dear Iggy,

  I just wanted to know if you think a girl should kiss a boy on the first date.

  Love Veronica

  Veronica,

  That depends on where you kiss him.

  Love Iggy

  Happy to exploit his attraction for the opposite sex, Iggy nonetheless exhibited an unexpected humility, which deepened his charm. Dale Withers attended the University of Michigan with Jim, and she often saw him making his way from booth to booth in the semi-subterranean Michigan Union Grill. ‘Jim would come through and stop at each booth or table, saying humbly with downcast eyes, and I remember him saying these exact words, “Please please please please come to our gig.”’

  To Dale, such humility seemed rare among men in general, let alone aspiring rock stars. It was all the more alluring in someone so naturally extravagant. Iggy himself recalls how his attitude to the audience differed from that of his bandmates. ‘I remember once in the Prime Movers, we were on a break, we were playing in a bar, and the [Erlewine] brothers were going on and on about how fat and ugly the two girls in the front were. I just told them, “Are you guys crazy? You have two fans there! I don’t give a damn what they look like. This is a treasure, you have two people paying attention to you!” You know?’

  This faithful compact with an audience is something that would, in its unconventional way, endure in Jim Osterberg’s life - even if this notion would seem ridiculous to some of his peers, including Pete Andrews, who regularly booked the Prime Movers into Mothers Teenage Nightclub. He regarded Iggy as a ‘solid, sound’ drummer but was staggered by some of his antics, particularly one evening when he checked the stage at showtime, only to see it empty but for a cheesy-looking cardboard phone booth. Then he saw the drummer, dressed in some kind of superhero outfit, break his way out of the ludicrous contraption, climb up a rope to the balcony where the entire band was set up and get to his kit just as the band fired into the intro. ‘We were just going, Jeez,’ remembers Andrews.

  After dropping out of the University of Michigan by the second term of his anthropology course - he claimed he learned more as an autodidact, researching in the university library - Jim moved on from his apartment share with Dan Erlewine behind Herb David’s guitar shop to a room across the road in Blakely Court, and finally to an apartment in the basement of a rundown Victorian building, which he shared with Scott Richardson. Lynn Klavitter, his girlfriend from high school, had moved to California, but went to search him out on her return in the summer of 1966. She was shocked at the transformation from the boy she knew from the previous summer: ‘I’m sure he was heavily into drugs, he was wrapped in a blanket, the place was a total disaster.’ Lauri Ingber, who’d served on Jim’s High School election committee, saw him around the same time, and is convinced to this day that the previously clean-cut school kid was by then on heroin. But his dishevelled state was more to do with poverty than the marijuana that was the drug du jour, and which he only smoked ‘when force-fed’, as it exacerbated his asthma. By now he was living on his meagre earnings from the Prime Movers and Discount Records, along with handouts from his parents. ‘We were poor, and we were starving half the fucking time,’ says Scott Richardson. ‘We had our clothes hanging on the water pipes, newspapers on the floor, we were living like Kurt Cobain underneath a freeway. But I remember laying with him all night and talking about stuff. It was such a tremendously exciting time. And it was that painful period when you’re young, don’t know who you are yet, with all these influences around.’

  For a short time, the Ann Arbor svengali Jeep Holland took control of the Prime Movers. His control freakery was excessive, and the band began to bridle at his insistence that they perform dressed in suits. But Jeep’s megalomania was a godsend in a genuine crisis, notably the spectre of military service in the Vietnam war. Ominous letters started dropping on the doorsteps of many of Ann Arbor ’s musicians from 1966 - by which time Iggy, who’d dropped out of university and therefore lost his student deferment, was vulnerable, as was his friend Ron Asheton. Fortunately Jeep saw the military’s predations on his musical empire as a personal affront, and he masterminded a counter-attack that was inspired in its audacity and frightening in its attention to detail.

  The guiding principle, Holland explained to Ann Arbor ’s apprehensive musicians, was psychology. Creative, vulnerable psyches were by their nature incompatible with the rigours of a military campaign or the claustrophobia of life in a platoon. Jeep’s tactics were to accentuate the charming personality foibles of his charges, and even amplify them, often with the use of his favoured drug methamphetamine, until the establishment was compelled to view these innocents as deranged psychopaths.

  Jeep would work closely with his subjects for a week before their fateful draft examination at Ann Arbor Armoury (the cheek of the Army, subverting a rock ’n’ roll venue for this charade!) and his evangelistic fervour would help all their fears evaporate. One example he liked to cite was that of Glenn Quackenbush, keyboard player with greaser band the Fugitives, and later the Scott Richard Case, or SRC. ‘Like most organ players, Glenn felt superior, and didn’t really like people very much,’ he explained. Over the years Glenn had nonetheless attained a basic mastery of the niceties of human behaviour. All Jeep had to do was remove this, ‘to take away all the little things you develop so you can get along with other people’. By the time Quackenbush got in line at the Armoury, Jeep proudly boasted, ‘The lines on either side had a gap of four people, because no one would stand near him, they just knew something was very wrong.’

  Iggy Osterberg’s performance was a little more baroque, but still satisfying. After they had completed a questionnaire, the draftees were required to strip down to their skivvies in readiness for their physical examination. Osterberg duly lined up, but kept his hands down his pants, ‘holding his dick’, only to be admonished by the military police who were keeping order. ‘No one is touching my dick!’ Osterberg yelped, as the MPs counselled him gently, ‘Don’t worry son, no one will touch you.’ Finally two of the burlier MPs grabbed his elbows and attempted to pull his hands away from his genitals. ‘But Jim was a drummer, and he had arms of steel!’ cackled Holland. ‘They lifted him right off the ground, but couldn’t get him to take his hands off his dick! He was out of there in half an hour!’

  Holland calculated that he saved twenty-one musicians from the draft, including most of the future Stooges, the Rationals, and future members of the SRC. Many of their contemporaries were not so lucky. Two of Jim’s close friends, Ricky Hodges and Dennis Dieckmann, were drafted, but survived their tours of duty. Several other Ann Arbor High classmates were maimed or killed in the South-east Asian conflict.

  Liberated from military service, the Prime Movers could dedicate themselves to their mission of converting the masses to their own brand of authentic blues. They were sufficiently evangelistic - or masochistic - to take their music to the heart of Ann Arbor’s tiny black quarter around Ann Street, playing a residence at Clint’s Club every week for over a year. They were tolerated by the clientele, who appreciated that they were making an effort, and any mockery tended to be good-humoured. Often a set would finish in silence until some wag shouted out, ‘Let’s give these guys the clap.’ (‘Meaning gonorrhoea, of course,’ says Erlewine.) Sometimes at the teen nightclubs like Mothers they met with similar incomprehension, but for a select few they were the coolest band around - Chosen Few guitarist and future Stooge James Williamson describes the Prime Movers as ‘the best band Iggy was ever in’. ‘What they were doing was relatively esoteric,’ says Dale Withers, who along with her sister, Janet, and future husband, Larry, was one of the band’s more committed fans. ‘But we thought they would really move on up, like the Stones did.’ The band members were formidable musicians. They would often throw unexpected gospel numbers into their set; Sheff’s adept, inventive keyboard-playing anticipated the sound of the Doors by a full year, while Dan Erlewine was one of the first US musicians to use a Gibson Les Paul to ac
hieve an authentic, overdriven, blues grittiness. Iggy himself was becoming an impressive drummer, and he made a decent fist of the songs on which he sang lead - ‘Mystery Train’ and ‘I’m A Man’: ‘I remember him singing that song as “I’m A Tricycle”,’ says Bill Kirchen, later a revered interpreter of roots music. ‘He did it totally straight, like Muddy Waters, singing out the letters “T-R-I-C-Y-C-L-E”. I was impressed!’

  Notwithstanding such japes, Iggy’s stage demeanour was restrained compared to his Iguanas persona. ‘They were actually quite shy on stage,’ remembers Dale Withers. ‘Not too much banter or extravagance. But they had a mystique about them.’

  The Erlewines’ friendship with the Butterfield Blues Band, who had revitalised the American blues scene the previous year with their debut album, gave them a direct link to the source of Chicago blues: the band’s original rhythm section, drummer Sam Lay and bassist Jerome Arnold, were stalwarts of Howlin’ Wolf’s band, but had been lured away by the prospect of more money. Sam had become the best blues drummer of his generation, working countless sessions with Muddy Waters, Junior Wells and others, and he was also the inventor of the ‘double shuffle’ - a tricky variation of a standard blues beat, which Lay jazzed up, inspired by the sound of the tambourine players in a sanctified gospel chorus. It was a tricky beat, and when Iggy mastered it after hours of practice, with Ron Asheton standing in on bass, it was a source of pride to him. But despite such breakthroughs, the musical environment that had once felt liberating was starting to feel constricting. Although still regarded as a junior member by his bandmates, Iggy was ready to move on. And in the autumn of 1966 he spotted an opportunity to further his ambitions, when Vivian Shevitz, assistant manager at Discount, and bassist of R&B band the Charging Rhinoceros of Soul, became friendly with ex-Butterfield drummer Sam Lay. He recognised this as a unique opportunity to learn blues drumming from one of its greatest masters.

  Iggy decided to break the news that he was leaving the Prime Movers to Dan Erlewine, rather than to Michael himself - a sensible move according to Ron Asheton, who explains that ‘Dan Erlewine was like Goering to Michael Erlewine’s Hitler - which is pretty funny for two Jewish guys!’ (Unfortunately for Ron’s historical analogy, the Erlewines were in fact Roman Catholics.) Dan describes their leavetaking as tearful: ‘He was afraid to tell my brother, because Michael’s a real taskmaster, there would have been a real confrontation. And he’d left it real late, so he was, I’m leaving tomorrow. I was, I don’t believe this. And that was it.’ The next day the young drummer squeezed into Vivian’s red MGB with her friends and fellow blues fans Barbara Kramer and Charlotte Wolter for the 200-mile drive to Chicago. They drove around the South Side looking for Sam, before they finally ran down their quarry at Curley’s Club on the West Side.

  Curley’s, at Madison and Homan, was an archetypal West Side club, distinguished by its ‘upscale’ cuisine and music by some of Chicago’s younger generation of bluesmen, who would often hit the stage at three in the morning and then watch their audience leave for work, complete with lunchboxes, at seven fifteen. The club was rumoured to be owned by the mob, and it was a regular haunt of Otis Rush - who’d had his own run-ins with the Chicago mafia and was a regular, unwilling witness to shootings and stab bings. ‘It wasn’t the club’s fault,’ says Sam Lay, ‘but I call that area the Wild Side, not the West Side, ’cause that’s what it was. Infested with hookers, robbers.’

  ‘It was a heavy place,’ agrees Barbara Kramer, ‘but we were luckily too young and too stupid to be scared.’ Charlotte Wolter thought that Iggy seemed ‘a wide-eyed innocent’ about the whole trip, ‘As we all were.’

  The teenage blues fans arrived at the club expecting its clientele to be flattered by their interest. Instead they were greeted with amusement or suspicion, but luckily the only patron who threatened physical violence chose to pick on the three girls, rather than Iggy, and was hustled away by more sympathetic clubgoers. It was only when Sam Lay, tall, polite and dressed for the gig in tux and tie, arrived and ushered them protectively back to his dressing room that the Ann Arbor quartet could relax. He listened indulgently and supportively as they told him how excited they were to hear the music in its spiritual home. The four went back to see Sam again the next night, sharing a room in a run-down hotel by the lake, by which time Iggy had convinced the drummer of his mission and secured his support. ‘The little I saw of him, I knew I could trust him,’ says Lay. After making a few phone calls, Sam established that his previous harmonica player, Big Walter Horton, was in need of a drummer, and invited Iggy to sleep over at his place.

  Sam and Elizabeth Lay’s one-bedroom apartment on Flores was already cramped; their six-year-old son, Bobby, slept on the couch in the living room. The aspiring bluesman was allotted a space on the kitchen floor. He was the perfect guest, packing away his few belongings so as not to clutter the flat, making himself scarce and charming the neighbours, who were somewhat bemused by this new character in the street.

  In late 1966 the parlous existence of the average Chicago bluesman was becoming rather less endangered thanks to figures like harp-player Paul Butterfield, who’d established new, better-paying white venues like Big John on Wells Street on the North Side, and record-industry figures such as Bob Koester and Sam Charters, who’d exposed old and young blues players to a new white audience. Walter Horton and other bluesmen discovered that playing white venues could almost double their income. Even better, employing white musicians cut down on their overheads, as they could be counted on to ask for less money. Horton didn’t even bother to audition the young drummer - instead, driving to the gig, Horton blew out a riff on his harmonica and asked Iggy to tap along. According to Iggy, Horton chose to motivate his new employee by brandishing a knife and asking him if he was sure he could keep up. Unfazed, Iggy shot back, ‘Look old man, I can do anything you can, give me a break.’

  Over the following weeks Iggy played more dates with Horton, plus J.B. Hutto - a previously obscure slide player who’d been showcased on Charters’s album - and James Cotton, an amiable, easygoing harpist who’d played with Howlin’ Wolf as a kid, and was now enjoying a modest career revival thanks to Chicago’s new white audience. Through Vivian Shevitz, Iggy found a sympathetic patron in the person of Bob Koester, who was championing the new soul-influenced West Side bluesmen such as Buddy Guy and Magic Sam on his Delmark label. Koester had shown many blues fans around the city, including Michael and Dan Erlewine; a widely respected figure, he schooled a whole generation of future record-company bosses, as well as helping countless musicians, most notably Big Joe Williams, a cantankerous Delta bluesman who’d finagled a key to the basement of Koester’s Record Mart store. Williams played kazoo, harmonica and nine-string guitar, nailing metal plates or beer cans to his amp to add a distorted, dissonant edge to his eerie, almost African laments. Occasionally, when the trek upstairs to his third-floor apartment in the Record Mart building was too much bother, Williams would crash in the basement. Sometimes Koester, his employees and his customers would be locked out until Williams rose from his slumbers and condescended to unbolt the door.

  The Record Mart basement became a crash pad for many employees and blues fans, including Iggy. The drummer’s enthusiasm and honest demeanour charmed the record company boss, who helped team him up with J.B. Hutto and would sometimes buy him lunch at the café round the corner from the Record Mart. It was at the café that blues fan and Wayne State University dropout John Sinclair was introduced by Koester to the as then-unknown drummer. Iggy was ‘kinda raggety, a skinny little rock kid’, and Sinclair was sufficiently impressed by the clear-eyed young musician to make a note of his name. ‘He wasn’t brazen or brash. But he was interesting.’

  Koester today paints a different picture of his young charge. ‘He was egotistical. He was talking about Mitch Ryder, and was saying if his record made the Top Five, he would join him. Later I made a slip of the tongue and called him Ego. Which seemed appropriate.’

  Koester
remembers Iggy staying at his two-room apartment over two separate periods, between which the drummer spent some time sleeping rough in the Chicago Loop. The area was busy and heavily developed, with elevated train tracks, and the banks of the Chicago River were lined with swanky apartments, as well as water, electricity and sewage works, all of them powering the bustling metropolis. It was there that the drummer walked down around twenty steps to sit on the dock. He thought about the time he’d played with J.B. Hutto at a club on 64th Street, sweating to keep up, focusing on his drumming while simple but profound riffs dripped like honey off JB’s fingers, seemingly without him even thinking. Iggy smoked a fat joint he’d scrounged, and for the first time inhaled deeply as he contemplated the river. Then he decided that he was not destined to be a blues player. But in that simplicity lay ‘a vocabulary’.

  It was a notion that would take a full year of gestation to develop into a musical manifesto. But he knew his time in Chicago was up, and he phoned Vivian Shevitz and Ron Asheton to ask if they could collect him. In the meantime he’d be staying at Bob Koester ’s.

  It would take Bob Koester a long time to get over the experience of having Iggy, Ron and Scott Asheton, Scott Richardson and Vivian Shevitz as guests. Vivian was no trouble; she left after the first night to check on Sam Lay. Sam had recently gone out armed to a Chicago club after hearing that a harmonica player, just out of prison, was planning to cut up Sam’s bandmate James Cotton, whom he accused of messing with his wife while he was inside. Tooled up to protect his friend, Sam sat down at a table with the Colt automatic in his pocket and the pistol went off accidentally, discharging a .45 round straight through his scrotum. ‘Vivian was so gone, because Sam was in hospital,’ says Scott Richardson, ‘so she didn’t pay any attention to what was going on.’ What was going on was the baiting of Bob Koester. ‘He was just sorta mincing around, and that got to everybody,’ Richardson explains. ‘It was sheer punk sadism, that is all.’