|
(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
Summary.
The Stooges were one of the pillars of the Detroit sound that, at the end of
the 1960s, came to epitomize loud, noisy and outrageous rock music.
They took the ideas of
Chuck Berry,
Rolling Stones,
Velvet Underground
and Doors
(hard riffs, obscene antics, libidinous vocals, distorted guitars)
and pushed them to the limit.
We Will Fall was the Doors' The End plus the Velvet Underground's
Venus In Furs.
1969, No Fun and I Wanna Be Your Dog were
Chuck Berry's Sweet Little Sixteen
plus the Rolling Stones' Satisfaction plus the Velvet Underground's
Waiting For My Man.
The sex appeal of Mick Jagger, the erotic guitar of Jimi Hendrix, the
shamanic perdition of Jim Morrison, the degenerate rituals of Lou Reed,
found in the Stooges a new vehicle for a new generation, that was no longer
idealistic but merely frustrated.
The Stooges embraced the image of the degenerate punk, and
took it to a new level of realism, leaving behind the mythic overtones
of the hippy era, and returning it to its original dimensions of defiance and
vulgarity.
Thus the Stooges achieved a historical synthesis of both musical styles and
sociological meanings.
Fun House (1970), whose TV Eye virtually invented voodoobilly,
and whose 1970 virtually invented punk-rock,
continued the saga, whereas Raw Power (1973) veered towards the kind of
respectable glam-rock which would soon become Iggy Pop's new career.
Every bit of Stooges music was militant, although they never referred to
politics. And every bit of it was pornographic: each note, each chord, each
riff was a sexual innuendo.
That mixture of abrasive guitars, raw vocals and solid rhythms
was a sonic kamasutra.
Full bio.
(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)
The Stooges were one of the cornerstone groups of the Detroit scene at the end of the 1960s, a scene that took to the extreme the insights of Chuck Berry, Rolling Stones, Velvet Underground and Doors (hard riffs, decadent theatricality, lascivious singing, noisy guitars) and anticipated…
The histrionics of Mick Jagger, Hendrix’s guitar eros, and Morrison’s fascinating perdition found in the Stooges their epoch-making synthesis. At the same time, the Stooges exalted the image of the degenerate thug to a wilder level than their predecessors, bypassing both the psychedelic and blues-rock fashions, and bringing that sound back to the strongly subversive dimension from which it had originated.
James Osterberg (on drums), Michael Erlewine (future editor of the "All Music Guide"), Gene Tyranny (future avant-garde composer), Jack Dawson (future member of the Siegel & Schwall) and others formed in Detroit in 1965 the Prime Movers Blues Band. James Osterberg switched to singing
when, on Halloween night of 1967, he formed the Psychedelic Stooges (Dave Alexander on bass, Scott Asheton on drums and Ron Asheton on guitar).
Discovered by Danny Fields (who also discovered MC5) and assisted by John Cale, they were in effect the grandchildren of the Velvet Underground. The singer put on a show on stage with obscene exhibitionism. The band gripped the audience with a deafening, hypnotic, and lacerating music. The Stooges added to the Stones and Doors’ recipe an even more incendiary charge.
The first album, Stooges (Elektra, 1969 – Rhino, 2005), is one of the masterpieces of rock music. The lascivious, perverse, and frustrated singing of Iggy Stooge (his new nickname before he switched to Iggy Pop) dominates this collection of demonic songs. Towering above them is We Will Fall, a long, slow, repetitive track, with John Cale on viola and a dark chorus of magical formulas, unfolding seductively and sinisterly for over ten minutes, midway between the macabre-erotic deliriums of the Doors and the gutter highs of the Velvet Underground, halfway between a spiritistic ritual and a terminal trip.
The anthems, 1969 (in the tribal style of Bo Diddley, with a galactic guitar solo) and No Fun, are rapid, unsettling electric discharges, always marked by the most nonchalant depravity, “performed” as if they were acts of carnal violence on virgin girls: a vertiginous rhythm, emphasized by the guitars and sometimes by clapping, serves as a pretext for the singer’s lascivious declamation and Asheton’s exasperated distortions. Moreover, No Fun is also a masterpiece of the marginalized underclass’s spleen. In I Wanna Be Your Dog, the derivation from piano boogie is clearer, here degraded to a monotonous hammering on the keyboard. No less devastating is the finale Little Doll, the most perverse erotic nightmare.
Fun House (1970 – Rhino, 2005) is perhaps less psychedelic but perhaps more hard-rock. The crude riffs of I’m Loose, whose catchy chorus degenerates into a frenzied dance, TV Eye, an ante-litteram voodoobilly at supersonic swamp tempo, and 1970, an epic, frantic, breathless scream and brilliant anticipation of punk-rock, are the epitome of the liberating scream. The devastating nightmare of L.A. Blues, a sort of mini-symphony of dissonances and guttural screams at epileptic rhythm, to which Steve McKay’s sax adds an intellectual touch, crowns this journey into hell. The whole record flows at a dizzying speed, chaining distortion to distortion, pounding boogie to acrobatic rock and roll, obscene shouts to blasphemous litanies, without a moment’s pause.
The heroic sound of the Stooges was furious and abrasive. The guitars of Dave Alexander and Ron Asheton screeched from start to finish with minimal harmonic variation, Iggy’s perverse moan slithered viscously and repellently within their wall of distortion, the rhythm was often marked also by hand-clapping, and live these pieces turned into pure noise acts. Stooge’s voice was a compendium of lechery (sensual hisses, stammers of pleasure, sadistic howls, etc.), an encyclopedia of sexual signals, a veritable sonic Kamasutra.
Most of the band was seriously addicted to drugs, so it took a while to return to recording.
Raw Power (Columbia, 1973), mixed by their admirer David Bowie by largely produced by Iggy Pop himself, is still shaken by lashing epilepsies of depravity, but the style is more varied and evocative than the monolithic "wall of sound" of the second album (perhaps also because Ron Asheton had moved to bass and James Williamson had taken over on guitar). A negative anthem of the force of Search And Destroy, a pounding boogie like Raw Power, the unbridled vulgarity of You Pretty Face Is Going To Hell, a link between Mersey-beat and punk-rock, a repertoire of howls at thrash tempo like Shake Appeal, and a disjointed horror sketch like Death Trip, make up a repertoire no less fierce but all in all more poised. What shines is the soft side of their psychedelia: a dilated, estranged ballad like Gimme Danger and an insinuating lascivious moan like Penetration (with celeste accompaniment).
Raw Power was remixed in 1997 by Iggy Pop in person, making for a much more intense experience than the watered-down David Bowie mix.
Bowie’s decadent maquillage, however, did not suit Iggy Stooge’s animal instinct, who, after recording Kill City (Bomp, 1978) in 1974, had to withdraw from the scene and be hospitalized for heroin abuse. The Stooges disbanded, but the market was flooded with all sorts of live recordings, bootlegs, anthologies, and collections of unreleased material.
Ron Asheton continued to play, but without success. The pieces composed with his New Order would see the light only posthumously, collected on New Order (Fun, 1977) and Victim Of Circumstance (Revenge, 1989). Also resurrected by the punk generation, he resurfaced with Destroy All Monsters, who managed to release three singles between 1978 and 1979, later collected on Destroy All Monsters (Revenge, 1989).
Destroy All Monsters were an experiment of free-form noise before Asheton joined them, as documented on
the three-disc box-set 1974-1976
(1996).
Asheton was then hired by the remnants of Radio Birdman to form New Race, whose album The First And The Last (Statik, 1982) was released. Asheton would also take part in the reunion of Destroy All Monsters, Silver Wedding Anniversary (Sympathy, 1996).
Rehabilitated and renamed Iggy Pop, the singer Osterberg returned to the stage as a *chanteur maudit*, under the aegis of his disciple David Bowie. The Idiot (RCA, 1977) was the first fruit of the collaboration with Bowie, and in fact the prototype for Bowie’s own Low. China Girl, Nightclubbing and Funtime are the most exploited songs.
With Lust For Life (RCA, 1977), Iggy Pop returned to rock and roll, particularly with the title track, a sort of confessional-manifesto, with Sixteen and The Passenger.
Freed from his intrusive patron and godfather, but not from the ghost of Jim Morrison that hovered over his first two solo works, Iggy intensified the rock and roll charge on New Values (Arista, 1979), with Five Foot One and Don’t Look Down, and on the lesser Soldier (Arista, 1980), with Knockin’ Em Down, and Party (Arista, 1981). Despite being played by exceptional bands, this was pretentiously avant-garde hard rock à la Alice Cooper, simply exploiting the new fame brought to him by punk. Eat Or Be Eaten is the gem of the more morbid Zombie Birdhouse (Animal, 1982).
Iggy Pop’s saga was resurrected once again by Bowie for the chart-friendly synth-pop of Blah Blah Blah (A&M, 1986). Cry For Love would become the theme of his concerts and the demonic Winners And Losers revived his old brilliance. The best track, however, is the cover Real Wild Child.
Perhaps Iggy Pop’s best solo album is Instinct (A&M, 1988),
co-written with Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols and
played in the spirit of stripped-down hard rock but with echoes of the Stooges’ stunning riffs (Squarehead, Instinct). Cold Metal represents, in fact, the man’s spiritual testament.
Back To The Noise (Revenge, 2004) is a double-disc anthology of rarities and live tracks.
Livin' On The Edge Of The Night (Virgin, 1990) greeted another rebirth of sort. Brick By Brick (Virgin, 1990) is the most focused and best produced album of his solo career, featuring a batch of solid boogies (Butt Town, Pussy Power, Home, I Won't Crap Out) and the shamefully commercial sell-out of Candy. So much for old icons of prevarication.
The follow-up was even more confused and compromising. Boogie Boy on American Caesar (Virgin, 1993) and I Wanna Live on Naughty Little Doggie (Virgin, 1996) were the equivalent of last signs of life from an aging pervert. They delve into Iggy Pop's identity crisis, a crisis that began when he first took up a guitar.
Breaking with those albums' hard-rock sound, Avenue B (Virgin, 1999) is a collection of mellow, middle-age ballads that deal (somewhat obsessively) with the break-up of his marriage (Nazi Girlfriend, Miss Argentina). He only tries once to sound like a rocker (Corruption). On the other hand, backed by jazz trio Medeski, Martin and Wood, the old scoundrel impersonates the lounge entertainer in I Felt The Luxury and Avenue B.
Iggy Pop tried to connect with the Korn-generation on Beat 'Em Up (Virgin, 2001), a loud and excited album that (despite being 72 minutes long) lacks good tunes but plays them with the anger and the passion of a teenager. The only notable thing on Skull Ring (Virgin, 2003) is that the Stooges reunited for four of the mostly inept songs.
One of the most over-rated artists of all time, Iggy Pop has been an icon, not a musician.
(Original English text by Piero Scaruffi)
Heavy Liquid (2005) is a six-CD box-set of rarities and out-takes.
The Stooges reformed for The Weirdness (Virgin, 2007), one of the worst
reunion albums of all time.
Iggy Pop's Preliminaires (Astralwerks, 2009) was a mediocre incursion into jazz territory.
Ron Asheton died in 2009 at 60.
Iggy Pop's Apres (2012) was a collection of French covers.
Scott Asheton died in 2014.
Steve McKay died in 2015.
Iggy Pop's Post Pop Depression (Loma Vista, 2016), produced by
Josh Homme of the Queens of the Stone Age,
is another embarrassment.
There's a bombastic spaghetti-western number that sounds like a collaboration
between Ennio Morricone and Nick Cave (Vulture), a
stoner-rock with bass synth line (Break Into Your Heart),
there is pop drama (Gardenia) and exotic psychodrama
(American Valhalla).
|
