The Stooges were formed in 1967 in Ann Arbor, outside Detroit. They created three classic albums between 1969 and 1973, The Stooges, Fun House and Raw Power. Despite a lack of commercial success, the band attracted a small, devoted following and laid a musical foundation that would influence generations of artists. The Stooges' music was raw, primal, exciting, and the unique and compelling stage presence of the band's singer, Iggy, made them legendary. The Stooges' performances were unpredictable, with Iggy inciting audiences to react and making it impossible for them to remain complacent. Iggy was passionate, fearless and, at times, expressed himself in genuinely frightening ways, performing self-mutilation, stage dives, crowd surfing and rushing into crowds to confront hecklers or spontaneously interacting with audience members who struck his fancy. Iggy tore down the barriers that traditionally existed between audience and performer, forcing the audience to become part of the overall performance. By 1974, Iggy was locked into an orbit of self-annihilation and drug abuse that ultimately led to the demise of the band in February 1974. This book explores in depth all the concerts the Stooges played from 1967 to 1974, bringing the live experience to life through eyewitness accounts, press reports and other source materials to present an unprecedented account of the Stooges' performances during this period.
The author Per Nilsen is a leading authority on Iggy and the Stooges and was one of the authors behind The Wild One, the first biography of Iggy Pop. He has written on numerous artists, including David Bowie and Prince. Nilsen is a behavioural economist from Stockholm School of Economics and is a Professor of social medicine and public health at Linköping University. Music has been a life-long passion since he discovered the Beatles at the age of five.
Personnel:
Iggy Pop: vocals
David Bowie: keyboards, synthesiser, guitar, piano, saxophone, backing vocals
Phil Palmer: guitar
Carlos Alomar: guitar
Laurent Thibault: bass
George Murray: bass
Michel Santangeli: drums
Dennis Davis: drums
Recorded at Château d’Hérouville, Hérouville; Musicland, Munich; Hansa Studios, Berlin, between June and August 1976
Producer: David Bowie
Release date: March 1977
Label: RCA
Chart places: US: 72, UK: 30, Aus: 88
Running time: 38:49
In the summer of 1976, Iggy Pop and David Bowie retreated to the 18th-century Château d’Hérouville just outside Paris, a haunted mansion turned recording studio. Its isolated, decadent setting provided the backdrop for an album that predicted the sound of post-punk, when punk had barely put on its pins.
In April, Iggy had celebrated his 29th birthday at Basel railway station, where Bowie gifted him a Polaroid camera to chronicle their European travels. Their journey included a detour to Moscow via Warsaw, during which the KGB detained them at the Polish-Soviet border near Brest and subjected Bowie and Iggy to strip-searches. Among Bowie’s belongings were books that included works on Goebbels and Speer, which he explained were research for a film project. Bowie’s preoccupation with Germany’s past and the Cold War climate foreshadowed a broader fascination – one that would soon pull them both towards Berlin and seep into the music they were about to create. At the afterparty of Bowie’s penultimate Paris show, Iggy and Bowie met Kraftwerk’s Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider. Their presence left Iggy transfixed, watching them with unmistakable awe.Radio-Activity had been a constant throughout Iggy and Bowie’s travels. After Bowie’s tour concluded on 18 May, they left Paris for the Château. Initially there for a break, he bonded with the studio’s manager and engineer, Laurent Thibault, a former bassist of French progressive rock band Magma. Bowie booked the studio for June and July, setting the stage for what would becomeThe Idiot.
Bowie started the recordings with foundational tracks on his Baldwin electric piano. Initially a two-man project, it quickly expanded. He requested a drummer, and Thibault brought in Michel Santangeli, who recorded what he assumed were demos. Unaware that many first takes would remain, he left after the second day, thinking his performance wasn’t up to par. While Bowie experimented with a new sound – later teasingly calling Iggy ‘a guinea pig’ in the 1989Sound+Vision liner notes – Iggy drew on their time on the road for lyrical ideas, often improvising at the microphone. The method fascinated Bowie: ‘I thought he was the funniest, darkest lyricist of the time’, he toldSeconds in 1995. Iggy’s vocal delivery was instinctive, shifting between detachment and intensity, sometimes pushing th
