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Forget, for a moment,
about pop and rock music, its ever-sordid history, and the omnipresent
infighting between fans of different bands and genres. Forget
whether someone “sold out” (most do, inevitably, to
the point that “selling out” even seemed cool for a
while), whether one band has borrowed another’s historic
sound to create its own, or whether the latest P. Diddy (is that
his name these days?) creation is, in fact, what is politely
called a “sample” from a famous song of the 1970s rather
than a new composition in its own right.
Forget it all, tune it
out and instead put on Lust for Life, Iggy Pop’s
second solo-album (1977). If you have spent any time at all
watching non-PBS TV in the last few years, it will sound instantly
familiar – though you may not place the one-minute-and-12-second,
lyric-less percussion, guitar, and piano intro that builds and
builds until Iggy’s voice intrudes to introduce his twisted
protagonist: “Here comes Johnny...”
Keep listening, and you
will hear a few things. The lead and title track’s lyrics
are hardly heart-warming (“...With the liquor and drugs
/ And the flesh machine / He’s gonna do another strip tease...”;
and my favorite line, “Well that’s like hypnotizing
chickens,” which is an absurd and yet entirely comprehensible
statement), and the rest of the album surely won’t impress
your grandmother either. Yet almost twenty years later, it is
musically energetic, engaging, and entirely original – it
is an album that has its own lust for life, evident in the care
with which the chords come out and Iggy’s sound explodes
through the stereo. (It didn’t hurt that Iggy had David
Bowie’s assistance – but while Bowie’s influence
is clear, it is an influence not an overriding force.)
The strength of the album
and its passionately-engaging musical hooks account for its revival
in recent years: you know that introductory drum line for “Lust
for Life” because Carnival Cruise Lines uses it, constantly,
and the whole idea of the title is the focal point for their
ads. (They do not, needless to say, play any more lyrics than
necessary.) Meanwhile, the song “The Passenger” –
which also features a good 20 seconds of instantly-recognizable,
guitar-strumming intro – was used to try to hook audiences
into the recent Nicholas Cage movie “The Weatherman.”
It made for an effective preview because the music is so strong
at conveying a particular emotional sensibility (the minimal
success of the movie itself notwithstanding).
Still, when Iggy and the
Stooges parted company, and he started performing as Iggy Pop,
one can’t help but feel that something changed; “pop”
is a loaded word, like it or not. If Lust for Life is
no pop album, it doesn’t measure up to the awe-inspiring,
frenetic energy of Iggy & The Stooges’ early album Raw
Power. Raw Power deserves a new hearing these days,
particularly with its Vietnam war-influenced lyrical imagery
(“I’m a street-walking cheetah / With a heart full
of napalm / I’m the runaway son / Of the nuclear A-bomb,”
from the lead track “Search And Destroy”). Where the
background vocal on “The Passenger” is a sardonic “la
la, la la, la la la la,” Iggy punctuates “Search And
Destroy” with explosive little pops of “Hah!”
This the essence of an American punk aesthetic that made sense
of its music and its sound, without sacrificing any of its energy
and affront. That it sounds so good all these years later is
testimony to that emphasis on the music itself.
There is no mistaking
the connection between these two discs: both are Iggy, as the
guitar-driven songwriting and the voice make clear with every
bar of every song. Raw Power’s “Gimme Danger”
has some terrific guitar work in it, playing punk counter-point
to Iggy’s plaintive singing, while the guitar intro and
hooks in “Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell,” and the
background bells (what is that sound, actually? bad synthesizer
keyboard?) in “Penetration” clearly presage the harmonic
intrigue of “Lust for Life.” And “Shake Appeal”
is a perfectly-aimed knife-to-the-heart of the wanna-be-a-teeny-bopper
rock-n-roll of the “Twist & Shout” era. You, out
there, listening to something – what is it? Are you even
paying attention? Take a small step back in time, and check
out these two albums. They’re worth it.
***
One song to download:
Iggy’s origins
in the Detroit music scene coincided with that of another group,
whose star has since fallen so far as to be largely off the radar.
The MC5, despite their explosive and original sound, and take-no-prisoners
attitude (they were famous for screaming “Up against the
wall, motherfuckers” in their concerts, and the beginning
of the track “Ramblin’ Rose” is a preacher-style
call-to-arms for revolutionaries) can be hard to find in contemporary
play. The title track from the live album Kick Out The Jams
is vigorous and raring to go, but the one song worthy of inclusion
in any rock music rotation is “Motor City Is Burning.”
It’s worth a download from whatever music service you use
and wherever you can find it: combining rock, punk, and blues
influences, it is political – it’s all about, well,
you know; that marvelous moment in Detroit’s topsy-turvy
history – and it is emotional, layering the band carefully
in over the lead vocals. Every time a verse ends, the music
pumps back in to remind the listener that whatever blues song
they might have thought they were listening to is just so much
more. |