Gotta lust for life

  • 2006-11-08
  • By Paul Morton

NO STOOGE: American cult idol Iggy Pop defined punk for his generation and all that followed.

RIGA - Being a member of Generation Y, I learned about Iggy Pop, the great satanic "godfather of punk" of the '70s through two sources. There was "Trainspotting," the heroin comedy for which his anthem "Lust for Life" provided the soundtrack. Then there was "The Adventures of Pete and Pete," the brilliant kids' show on Nickelodeon on which he guest starred as a dopey suburban dad who wants to dance with his beloved daughter at a school function.

In other words, by the time I got around to Iggy Pop, he had obtained a certain pop cultural hipness. He could enjoy a near messianic non-presence against Ewan McGregor's classic "Choose life" monologue in a film about the madness and fun and horrors of heroin, while ironically posing as the image of sweetened homey eccentricity in a children's show. Both sides were equally lovable, and perfectly palatable for the son of baby boomers for whom rock music was never really that rebellious to begin with.

Of course, for an earlier generation, Iggy Pop was the cult icon who defined the concept of punk. You know, stage diving, crowd surfing, smearing oneself in peanut butter on stage, having oral sex in public, that sort of thing...Pop teamed up with David Bowie to compose "Lust for Life," and later Pop wrote some of the songs that are considered vintage Bowie, like "China Girl" and "Tonight."

Yes, he did all this while battling a brutal heroin addiction that wore away at every particle of his being. For those of you who hope there might still be an anti-drug message to be found in his life, well just imagine what brilliant genius pose of rebellion and rage he could have obtained if he hadn't been wasting all his time shooting up.
Iggy Pop, a.k.a. James Newell Osterberg, Jr. (Shalom!), isn't old, but he isn't young at 59. And the posters appearing around town advertising his concert in Riga next month show a wizened man who seems to have never given up his old persona. There's the defiantly unsexy sunken face, the bare torso and chest wasted down to a six pack and the long dirty hair. He doesn't look all that different than he did 30 years ago.

In 1977, Iggy Pop gave an interview for CBC where he found himself delivering what may very well be the punk rock manifesto:
"I don't know Johnny Rotten…but I'm sure, I'm sure he puts as much blood and sweat into what he does as Sigmund Freud did. You see, what, what sounds to you like a big load of trashy old noise…is in fact…the brilliant music of a genius…myself. And that music is so powerful, that it's quite beyond my control. And, ah…when I'm in the grips of it, I don't feel pleasure and I don't feel pain, either physically or emotionally. Do you understand what I'm talking about? Have you ever, have you ever felt like that? When you just, when you just, you couldn't feel anything, and you didn't want to either. You know, like that? Do you understand what I'm saying, sir?"

I think I do. And even if you don't, why don't you check him out at Arena Riga on Dec. 5. He would have scared the shit out of your grandparents.

Iggy and the Stooges
Dec. 5
Arena Riga
More info: www.bilesuserviss.lv