After bearing witness to a blistering, 50-minute performance by rock veteran Iggy Pop on the final leg of his American tour with The Pretenders last year, novelist Elmore Leonard stood backstage in awe.
”How can you do that?” Leonard, a fellow Michigan native, asked the aging primeval godfather of punk.
Casually drawing a towel to his gaunt, sweat-streaked face, Iggy answered nonchalantly, ”Well, I just want to . . . I have a desire to do that.”
It has been a year since Leonard asked his longtime friend that simple question, yet the solo artist still holds fast to acting out his ”desires.” In fact, at age 41, Iggy Pop still embodies all the gusto and high-power energy that rocketed him to fame more than 20 years ago as front man for Iggy and the Stooges, rock`s quintessential pre-punk punk band.
Today, Iggy Pop, the former James Osterberg, is sitting in the plush offices of a New York public relations firm, beaming with excitement about his latest LP, ”Instinct,” his 10th solo release and his 14th LP. ”I like this one,” he says, his smile resembling that of a sweet-toothed kid let loose in a candy store.
”I`ve made a couple of albums that are as incendiary in nature as this one-`Raw Power` and `Fun House`-and each one of those was a victim of lack of promotion and mishandling. Everything went awry, and that`s not gonna happen with this one.” (The albums, recorded in 1973 and 1970, respectively, were released on Elektra, whose executives of the time could not be reached for comment.)
”I sort of veer between euphoria and apoplexy,” he says. ”I`m euphoric when I listen to the thing and realize that I made something real good and then I`m apoplectic when anything comes up that leads me to believe that it might get ignored.”
Chances are slim that the recently released ”Instinct,” on A&M Records, will be ignored. With 10 cuts of power rock capturing Iggy`s vocals to the fullest, the album was produced by Bill Laswell and is backed by an impressive band led by former Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones.
Everyone involved obviously has given the project his all, a fact directly attributed to the solo master himself.
”I got this big jolt of juice from the `Blah, Blah, Blah` tour last year,” Iggy recalls. ”I went around twice, once on my own and another time with The Pretenders. I did nine months, which I`d never done before. I traveled all across the globe, practically everywhere except Australia, and caught a real buzz from the people in the audience. Having had that much contact playing over and over for people in every conceivable setting, I was real psyched when the tour ended in Germany.”
The morning after the marathon tour closed, Iggy awoke in his Hamburg, Germany, hotel room and vowed to do away with a nagging vice.
”The first thing I did was quit smoking because I figured if I quit smoking now, I`d be able to get a lot more power in my vocals. I wanted to hit it hard,” he says of his voice. ”I wanted to crunch it and be smoother on the bottom.”
From Hamburg, he flew to his home in London, where his roadies surprised him with an educational and inspirational toy.
”They got me a four-track recorder,” he recalls. ”I had never used one before. I was always the type of guy who forgot about the details and lived for the moment. But I wanted to learn to express myself, so once I got the machine and quit smoking, that opened some possibilities. I played guitar everyday for about nine months before I went into rehearsal with the band, and I built up a very large body of material.”
It`s no mistake that the raw, unpolished feel of ”Instinct” stands reminiscent of Iggy`s early Stooges material. From the word go, Iggy set the stage for a comfortable and spontaneous environment that would enable his band to duplicate that intense familiar sound.
”We got a room close by and played every day before we went into the studio,” says Iggy. ”During that time, the songs took on an aspect that hadn`t been there in the writing, the kind of aspect that you can only achieve, I feel, through sweat, work and playing together.”
Pop says he felt the same camaraderie during the recording of
”Instinct” that he experienced while making ”Fun House” and ”Raw Power” (both made with the Stooges), which he considers to be two of his most powerful albums.
”We recorded all the songs live on this one, and then took out some, and overdubbed some of the same things just to get a better sound quality. But every cut on there contained a vocal that was sung live at one point.
”It was exciting. `Square Head` and `Power and Freedom` were entirely written from scratch in the studio.”
To achieve the perfect setting for creativity, Iggy made arrangements to lodge the band near the studio, and within reach of one another.
”I was so obsessed about getting outside of the so-called `machine` that I even made sure that the studio would be close to home-so I could walk to it and back. I didn`t have to take a cab, I wanted as little as possible between me and the means of production. Furthermore, instead of having the band stay in hotels, where they`d have to call for a cup of coffee or have a maid wake them up wanting to make the bed, I found apartments for all of them in my neighborhood. I didn`t want anybody hassling my musicians.
”The day I wrote `Instinct` was funny because I said to myself, `Just play by your instinct, don`t bother thinking about clever riffs and how to record the thing. Just turn on the tape recorder and see whatever comes out, just follow your nose.”`
