He invented the punk, introduced the peanut butter into the history of rock’n’roll and once and again proven that outer clothing is overestimated. His œevre last sounded after a farewell, now he rises again from ashes and he also gets prizes for it – there is no second time like Iggy Pop.
The irritation
“Recognition is a hard mistress,” says James Newell Osterberg alias Iggy Pop. Recognition is not so easy to achieve in order to express it more subtle. In those words, Iggy has a chic suit, a T-shirt that he does not move out this time. Maybe also because the Royals are sitting in the parquet in front of the stage. Carl XVI. Gustaf, King of Sweden, is present, his wife, Queen Silvia, also, in between her daughter, crown princess Victoria, who is obviously the most happy about Iggy’s presence. The place of the event is the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, on May 24, 2022, the Polar Music Prize will be awarded there in the 30th year, with which an artist is each honored in the field of pop (!), And a classical music for musical work. In 1992 Paul McCartney was the first to receive the “Nobel Prize for Music”, which was endowed with one million Swedish crowns, and sizes such as Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Sonny Rollins, Björk, Ennio Morricone, Grandmaster Flash. And now Iggy. The occasion is solemn, the son’s voice of Mr. Pop fits perfectly. “Ada Osterberg, a Swedish US immigrant, adopted my father James. She was a nurse at the Red Cross,” says Iggy Pop about his Scandinavian roots. “She raised him during the great depression. These were great people, real people. I am neither great nor real. Here and today I am a myth. Fortunately, music is also a kind of myth. All beauty arises from faith in a myth.” Iggy, the ‘Chairman of the Bored’, somehow fits. And yet you think so when listening, man, everything is quite set. Is there still a bit of rock’n’roll in there, a pinch of danger, something unpredictable? Iggy folds the note a bit with his speech. “But every now and then you have to become real. So I have eggs. So I made it here. So if you think of music, if you think of this price and if you remember me, then think of the eggs.” There is no other way, the number with the testicles may be so preceded, almost still lets Olli Kahn and his “We need eggs”- like James Newell Osterberg because the assembled aristocrat and monarch crowd serves these sentences, which is as timeless as pens without schoolchildren. Klingelingeling, here is the egg man. The camera briefly swings on Queen Silvia’s face, for a nanosecond you can almost hear her teeth crunch, but then the applause drowns out everything. Departure Iggy Pop. Detroit vs. Stockholm 1: 0. Sverige and Destroy.
This pennic desire for irritation, the Lausbubenig, the Schalk in the neck, all of this describes a line from that mild May evening in Stockholm directly back into the 1960s. The early band photos of its first formation, the Iguanas, are examined, the origin of its nickname. Even then, the suit seems to be attracted only to be moved out again, even on these historical black and white shots, one thinks of recognizing the train to recognize Iggy’s mouth that is hardly visible by means of microexpression, and yet unequivocally makes it clear: Do not be too early, the number here flies in the bellows-and it is the coarse wood to keep the coating on the fuse.
The fire, it burns in it early. On April 21, 1947 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, born, his hobby will soon put the parents’ house to the test. The drums as such, not a family -compatible instrument, but father Osterberg takes it pragmatically and leaves the family trailer’s bedroom as a rehearsal room. With his first formation, the Iguanas, Iggy sniffs on the very big thing. The band plays shows in the preliminary program of the legendary Shangri-Las and the no less prominent Kingsmen, publishes a single called “Mona”. In the meantime it goes to Chicago, Prime Movers is called his second combo, then it goes back to Detroit, into the city of engines, whose industrial basic tone becomes Iggy’s musical meridian. “I was on the popping of the machines, the metallic noise that came from the many car factories,” says Iggy in Jim Jarmusch’s excellent Stooges documentary “Gimme Danger”.
The unpredictable
On Halloween in 1967, the first gig of the Stooges, with Iggy on the vocals, Ron and Scott Asheton on guitar and drums, rises Dave Alexander on the bass. A few months later, the next gig in the famous Grand Ballroom from Detroit. Your reputation quickly makes the round. There is this band, whose singer always does something unpredictable. Who sometimes throws with cakes and gets on a bloody lip, from spectators who do not like the meaning so much according to sweet bakery. Who, another time, lensively rubs in the chronically bare upper body with peanut cream or crawls across the stage like a wild lizard, possibly already the first of those pelvic floor immersions that leave it so crooked today.
The messages are simplified and to the point. Let me be your dog. No fun. Little doll. I’m bored. Search and destroy. “I was on Bob Dylan, the stories he told,” said Iggy in the interview shortly before the trip to Stockholm. “But it was clear to me that I didn’t want to imitate him, I couldn’t at all. I was about expressing something similar, but with my means, in my language.” The whole thing about the music of the Stooges, whose wild mix should prove to be a proto-punk at all, influenced to the back of the rock music, that stoic riffing, sometimes to the point and in two and a half minutes, then again in the spirit of Free Jazz, on which Iggy is at an early age, tangens, playful, supposedly aimlessly and deeply anarchic. The hippie overhangs of the Doors and Hendrix are back, the 1977 class is lurking forward and everything afterwards without guessing it. The sex pistols and the Damned in the 70s, Sisters of Mercy and Siouxsie in the 80s, Mudhoney and Sonic Youth in the early 90s, all suck the stoges, suck Iggy and his songs and play.
It pops
The sound becomes a sound carpet for Iggy’s excursions. In a mixture of exhibitionism and the art of representation, from naive clowning and situationist disruption, he provides the rock’n’roll with that unpredictability, with the astonishment, this certain sensational factor, which distinguishes a concert evening at best: at Iggy you never knew exactly what happened. It was clear that something was happening and that it would pop. As a punk in the mid -1970s, the Stooges are, the pioneers of the genre are again history. As early as 1971, Pop and David Bowie met at a show in Max’s Kansas City, where Bowie introduced his album the man who the world the world. Iggy had followed Bowie to London, where the album Raw Power was finally created, the last of the classic Stoooges phase, published in 1973, the last concert of the Stooges, the gig in Detroit, overshadowed brutal clashes with a biker. Iggy tours with Bowie, who in turn produces his records, especially in Berlin, this Bromance leaves cultural traces, Bowies Heroes, Pop’s lust for life, two of the epochal contemporary witnesses for the pop annals. Pop and Bowie, A MATCH MADE in Rock’n’roll Heaven, but the two actually bridle the horse from different sides. While you drogistically pull together, also fits together well, the image ideas of the two are quite different. Here Bowie, the conceptual planner, the hiker between the body worlds, sometimes Ziggy, then the Thin White Duke, sophisticated persona, on the other hand, pop, which relies more on short distance and spontaneity, on overall and ecstasy, spasm as an art form, a kind of hypophysis pogo in contrast to Bowies Ballet.
At the beginning of the 80s, pop with Zombie Birdhouse still knocked out a wild experimental album, then he takes a first longer break, begins in the second half of the decade with the laying of the foundation stone of the foundation on which his glistenly bright reputation is still based today. Iggy works with the Pistols Glen Matlock and Steve Jones, climbed the UK Top10 with “Real Wild Child (Wild One)” for the first time, tries successfully on Gothrock with “Cry for Love”, hooked up in 1990 at Kate Pierson and Schwoft with her to “Candy”, shortly after he was with the album Instinct (1988). Metal ”, once again made all things hard rock steam under the butt. At the latest with American Caesar (1993), Iggy Pop finally accepts icons, not only in the external impact, but also and especially in self-staging. The album title, the cover with the half -naked Iggy, so, like the rock god, hence he himself, once created it, but now decent for the first time, plus the ironic adhesive on the cover: “Parental Warning – This is an Iggy Pop Record”. That sounds like danger, but also after a lot of self -irony. The Age of the IG, the next chapter.
Iggy spends the rest of the 90s with unspectacular albums, some more spectacular film roles, the next generation sits on the knee of Uncle Iggy at the beginning of the new millennium and lets him shake through it. Just as Grunge et al was crossed by Osterberg syndrome, neopunk bands like Sum 41 or Green Day suck like the nectar. Solated into the status of Elder Statesman in this way, Iggy even itches again in his fingers when it comes to the Stoges.
The force
With The Weirdness there is a comeback album in 2007, it is possible, which says, Steve Albini ensures the timeless sound, a later classic that has to mature for a few years to develop full spice. With Ready to them the Stooges 2.0, this time with James Williamson on the guitar, six years later even after again. What follows are experiments in jazz and chanson, it becomes calmer at Iggy. Time for Valhalla? It almost sounds like that. Post Pop Depression comes in 2016 as a big goodbye in Glam, the concerts for the album got to touchy services, similar to colleague Cave is now “please touch” the motto, who knows whether it is possible again. As if Iggy was a little sick from this ceremony at some point, he once again counteracts everything-and suddenly adorns the title of the “DB Mobil” magazine of the Deutsche Bahn. The IG with BahnCard, window seat to look out and again this look that you already know from the Iguanas photos: the guy always makes sense. And what about the connecting train? This train ride ends there? Or change again? Iggy Pop responds in his way and with every loser hurls a new album into the world that turns everything on the left, in his force in all thoughts of farewell and retirement seat.
As the first harbing, there was the single “Frenzy”, a brute gem in the spirit of the Stooges, so originally Detroit Rock City that it crashes. And what was the first line: “Got a Dick and Two Balls, that’s more than you all”. So there they were again. Whether Queen Silvia has already heard the song? Klingelingeling …