WINNERS, LOSERS & IGGY POP

Day to day. lggy Pop stares from a larger-than-life poster on my kitchen door. Those eyes mean business and follow you around the room. Escape means the bathroom, where a Rob Halford sticker pouts up from the bowl.

One day I went to an office on Park Avenue South, New York City, and my poster came to life. Now those jeans were splashed with purple paint stripes and the eyes creased into a friendly grin, as if the Lust For Life album cover had replaced the eyes in the kitchen.

An outstretched hand grabs mine. Those hands have probably never been happier. These days they paint, type essays or do housework, rather than stuff drugs up their owner’s nose Qrjft deadly glasses to his lips._

With these hands Iggy Pop has also crafted a bright, genuinely uplifting new album, Blah-Blah-Blah, his first for four years and somthing of a comeback.

James Osterberg in 1986 is obviously a changed man from the careering maniac I last saw staggering around a London stage three years ago. He has left excess behind him to concentrate on building a new life and getting back to music.

The album shows iggy going for the mass success which has so far eluded him. That’s not to say he’s copped out or softened up. There’s a new melodic edge, typically clipped and personal lyrics and sense of optimism which suggests that this is the record that should’ve been called Lust For Life.

In the past Iggy has been everything from stoned belligerent to sfmply not present in interviews. He’s been through a lot, a winding nether-tunnei which it took a great chunk of his 39 years to negotiate to the light at the other end. Nowadays he positively bristles with natural energy and articulate opinions. He is a very nice bloke. My opening gambit concerns the last three years, when we didn’t hear a sausage from his direction. The answer lasted the first half-hour of our two hour conversation as Iggy filled in “the lost years.”

OUT OF THE ZOMBIE BIRDHOUSE

“I took an opportunity to get off the road and do something more interesting in ’83. I spent six months in L.A. with a good doctor, met a business manager, learned to keep books, learned to balance a check book and a bank account, pay taxes, leased an apartment-first time for everything! I moved to New York to take advantage of the excellence of the arts here—began going to the theatre a lot and joined an acting class with a lot of vicious young actors who couldn’t care less who I was—traded licks, insults and stage trickery in said class. I learned to focus my energies without always jumping up and down when all else failed. I read a lot of good literature. I put myself on call as an actor in New York City, auditioned for 48 things without getting one and finally landed a part in The Color Of Money (Martin Scorcese’s new film), playing a pool player called Skinny Guy—I did the part miming. I mimed another part in. Sid And Nancy—I was the straight guy! (the clerk showing a couple around...only to bump into a zomboid Sid).

“At the same time I spent two to four hours a morning working with my typewriter. I hope to do some screen writing, and I’d like to do another book (to follow up I Need More). I spent two to four hours a morning writing an essay on whatever I felt like writing about, rather than wanting to feel like “I’m a rock singer and I’ve got lots of fans and this is what they listen to and this is what I think might appeal to them—how about another song about beating up girls? Sounds good, hee hee!” Instead, I just wanted to get to know what I’m really interested in, because l wasn’t sure anymore. I would write stuff about riding up and down in the elevator in my building and how weird it was that everybody got in them and nobody talked, but we’d all seen each other a lot. Or what it’s like to be throwing out your old clothes and what you remember about the things you did in them. Stuff like that.

“The other big activity was making up little songs around the house—just trying to develop my voice as an instrument and seeing if I could write melodies. All of the afore-mentioned was about two years. The third year I spent actually recording again. I’d saved about $30,000 from publishing income and scraping dimes and nickels together with my girlfriend—we’d take the subway, we’d cook at home and save the money. I didn’t have a maid, we’d take care of the place ourselves and actually learned to enjoy it. I do! I like housework. It’s all right. It’s calming sometimes. You know the floor’s gotta be vacuumed and thou shalt vacuum! The rhythm of it’s sometimes very good for thinking about something else.”

BLAH-BLAH-BLAH

Iggy needed someone to bounce his song-germs off of so he contacted former Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones, who he’d worked with on the Repo Man Soundtrack. The two of them took off to a rented house in Los Angeles in June ’85. Steve himself is rehabilated waster—so fervently that he gives AA talks to kids.

This song-sculpting period was more like a working holiday—when the muse was out to lunch Ig and Steve took to the beach, “instead of taking some drug or getting drunk.”

About 20 songs emerged, and demos were laid down with Olivier Ferrand, a Swiss photographer who’d opened his own home studio.

“I had never demoed a song in my life.” But Iggy demoed the new stuff with a vengeance, determined to come up with “the best album made in L.A. this summer.” With Olivier and Steve handling all instruments they laid down about 11 numbers (some will appear on the next album). The three Pop-Jones originals which made it onto Blah-Blah-Blah were “Winners And Losers,” “Fire Girl” and “Cry For Love.”

“We circulated the demo shortly before Halloween (’85). I’d moved back to New York, having run out of ready cash. So I came back here waiting for bites, quickly got some bites from the various fish in the A&R departments and, at the same time,

David Bowie came to town to work on his Labryinth soundtrack in November. He called me up and said ‘I want to play you some demos!’ I said, ‘great, I’ll bring mine!’

“He really liked them, and was really keen to come and work with me and Steve on the album. I thought this sounded like a good idea, so I embarked on a similar project with David as I did with Steve. He said that most of the stuff me and Steve had done seemed to be in a middling tempo, so he would try and write some slower and faster material. I said, ‘fine, but how are we gonna demo? You can barely operate a cassette recorder!’ ”

Unabashed, Bowie trotted down to a New York music store and had custom-built a portable studio with drum-machine, synth and all the bits.

“We took the whold bleeding lot down to the Caribbean and started writing songs, not killing ourselves over it...we spent December there, January and February skiing, doing the same. By March we had an album’s worth of stuff.”

The album’s Bowie collaborations are “Isolation,” “Shades,” “Hideaway,” “Baby It Can’t Fall” and the title song.

March and April he spent in New York honing lyrics (he reckons he has enough latent stuff left over to last for the next three years).

In May it the chaps were ready to enter Mountain Studios by the banks of Lake Geneva in Switzerland, where Bowie lives. A “tragedy” occurred when Steve couldn’t make the sessions ’cause he was busy with Duran’s Andy Taylor and had visa problems. So Bowie got in Kevin Armstrong from London, who he had worked with on the “Live Aid” project. All other instruments were played by Erdel Kizilcay, a university graduate from Istanbul and something of a musical genius (he came up with the bass riff on “Let’s Dance”).

Work was intense. The whole album—-including mixing—took one month. Iggy says the sessions were “very regimented” but good fun.

“For comic relief we had a gaggle of 13-to-15-year-old girls from various parts of Europe who were swimming in that area and they’d come in in their little wet bathing suits and we’d play rate-arecord. ‘Now listen to the cut and give us one to ten!”’

From this idyllic setting came Blah-Blah-Blah. It’s Iggy with an ear to the radio and an eye on the lists—but he’s always had this ability to let his personality shine through, regardless of the setting. Whether it’s the sonic-punch of Raw Power or lowdown mind-strangling of The Idiot, you know it’s him.

He’s toned down the maddog assault: it’s a commercial album, but never mindless or pandering. Bowie is very apparent in the dramatic synth-sheen coating. “Shades” and “Isolation” shimmer with melody, while “Winners And Losers” bites with dark power.

Lyrically, B-B-B $ees Iggy Pop coming to terms with himself, Scraping away the bullshit of the world and falling in love, Ht took me on a guided tour...

“When I was doing the lyrics, I was keen to make them as good as I could— but I was terribly afraid of the trap where the artist sits in his garrett all alone and there’s no real deadline. I was afraid that I would overthink them and start wadding up perfectly good pieces of paper, tossing out the baby with the bathwater* So I went down to Pearl Paints on Canal Street, bought a lot of canvas and acrylic paints and started painting as an exercise V^daiisation to see...well, what did I] see? Let’s find out! They’re not abstract, they’re recognizable—and that helped me a lot. That’s how I got the lyrics done. I worked long on each one^

Take “Winners And Losers,” a charging epic brimming with fire and defiance. Mine and (it turned out) Iggy’s favorite track.

|“!t examines the things .that have moved me to such anger that I would go out and fuck myself dp, Instead of just giving in to the anger I tried to examine those realize that there's a possibility to lose all ■ by losing your detachment It s very personal. That was the song where when I heard the playback I would be on the verge of tears because I was so determin-1 ed to become a winner, so determined that I wasn’t going to join the list of where-are-they-nows. I wanted to write about that issue but I didn’t want to pretend and write an anthem like ‘Oh, I’m^a winner! because that wasn’t what I was feeling inside.”

“Shades” is a love song, but with an unusual angle. Bowie was the instigator.

“He was at my girlfriend’s birthday party. He watched her opening her presents and he watched me enjoying her enjoying herself. So he turned the situation around and wrote the first verse of this song as if I was receiving the presents and from the viewpoint of a guy whose basically stating ‘if I hadn’t met you life would be a much pooh|r place right now.N took it from there.”

“Baby It Can’t Fall”. ,More than anything that’s just talking about how surprised 1 am to find myself in the same room with a girl I’ve known for three years and I haven’t parted company with yet. I’m just very surprised. Just that kind of feeling and talking about death and the immortality of the human spirit, It’s tricky to talk about stuff like that, but I’d rather have it to be touchy than not to be touchy, so here it is.r’

“Isolation” is a doo-wop belter was a real hard one to write. I’ve enjoyed in the past almost a gluttonous relationship with my solitude. I used to love to be alone for days on end. I used to take holidays alone, but,

I think, not always to my betterment. I almost wanted to write a song in favor of isolation, but at the last moment, decided against it.”

The title track. Here hangs the tale: “Blah-Biah-Biah” the chaps are sitting ’round watching The Comic Strip (The Young Ones in different guises). Huge, skinhead comedian Alexei Sayle is prowling around as an EasternEuropean spy growling—“nuclear installation...biah-blah-blah..secret arms cache-,-biah-blah-blah,” Iggy couldn’t get it out of his head.

“I loved it. I started going crazy and imitating him all evening—‘Iggy Pop...biah-blah-blah.’ David heard I was taken with that. I went to bed, and next morning he presented me with this tape and said ‘here’s your music for “Blah-Blah-Blah,” let’s write a biah-blah-blah song. My idea i$ to cornpose a song as a series of snapshots of America as you live in it,and you have somehow survived it.’ So I knocked it up.”

“Cry For Love” was first song completed— "It’s very complex. I wouldn’t dream to figure out what it means. It has something to do with a refusal to be unnoticed and unembarrassed in this world, a refusal to give up and lead a life of quiet desperation, whatever poet said that.”

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 10

It also contains the classic line “every stinking bum should wear a crown.”

“I think a lot of people in America who find themselves in a homeless position couldn’t survive the emotional pressure-cooker that this country is. A lot of people get hurt. You’ve got to be ready to switch tracks when you’re heading for collision. You’ve got to be ready to almost prostitute yourself judiciously to survive in this society, j just wanted to point out to the high and mighty in status—“don’t be so it could be next.*”

“Real Wild Child” is a blues once covered by Buddy Holly. “Hideaway” is Iggy’s backto-the-earth ecological protest. It’s all worth an earful.

NEW VALUES

The parallels between post-thin white line Bowie and 1986 Iggy are striking. Abuse out, Art in..

"David’s the one who turned me on to painting. He showed me how to stretch a canvas. I really enjoy painting, it’s fulfilling. You look at this thing and it’s alive. You gave it birth. You feel like Frankenstein!”

He is used to people hailing his albums as classics years later—both frustrating and satisfying. He loves it when other bands do cover versions, though. The latest could be the Banshees doing “Gimme Danger” off Raw Power “One of the best feelings I get is when anybody covers my songs. Havihg been someone who’s been through several cycles now, putting out an album and having it lionized five or ten years later, it’s always good to feel that you’re not out on a limb all by yourself. There’s other people who like the stuff too, and who feel close enough to it and play it themselves and branch out on their own from that basis.”

Iggy’s last album was 1982’s Zombie Birdhouse, on Chris Stein’s defunct Animal label. Not yet hailed as one of his greats, it was almost a prototype for Blah-Blah-Blah.

“That’s a funny album. That was an attempt to sing more melodically and clearer, and to try and express my own feelings. In many ways it foreshadowed what I’ve come up with on this album. It didn’t have the punch I wanted— probably because of money and time and my health was a little dodgy. I didn’t have the clarity that I have now. But I had at that time understood the need for change in my music and was trying to turn a comer. Didn’t quite turn it.

“I did give it a world tour. At the end of the tour I decided to make the change.”

For the first time in three years, Iggy Pop will be hitting the road. Kicking off with the States in November, he was going on to Europe, then back to the U.S. in the New Year.

Do you think your performance will reflect the “up” mood of the album?

Perched on the window-ledge, Ig reflects.

“I have a bit of a clue from the video. In the video I drew liberally on a lot of moves and dancing that I’ve always been an exponent of. It’s not a flat performance by any means, but I doubt very much if that there’ll be a lot of angst in the show. I don’t feel terribly tearful or particularly uncomfortable at all these days. I fee! very comfortable with myself so the shows should be prety straight-ahead. Probably pretty rocking, and about 90 minutes this time. I’m tired of doing 55 minutes. I’m in a lot better health, I’ve got a lot more Stamina, so it’ll be pretty high-energy, I should imagine.”

And what songs will be wheeled out from the illustrious horde?

“The albums I want to cover most are Raw Power, The Idiot, Fun House, and the new one, and maybe something from New Values. That had a couple of good songs, I thought.”

An Iggy gig has always been a fairly unpredictable affair. Qn different occasions I’ve seen him do three-quarters new songs, barely move from the same spot, go berserk bound up in gaffer tape, or just sing amd move in majestic syncopation. A lot of people seem to demand the crazed Detroit Demon smearing himself with broken glass and peanut butter. Iggy thinks his fans come expecting “a real show,” although he concedes there’ll always be the element screaming “Lobotomy!”

“They’ll be there, but I think they can be kept in perspective. I think people will be expecting a good show—but the craziness is, in large, part of a myth which is as much the Press’s creation as my own.”

Yeah, but it must be frustrating to be known in some quarters as a bug-eyed masochist.

“Yeah, it has been frustrating, but I do feel a lot of people have enjoyed the music. I still get it in a lot of interviews. Ten years ago it was “tell us about the heroin!” Now it’s “tell us about the broken glass!” I tend to look at those years as the same sort of process as when you roll away the dirty part of one of those wall towels in a gas station bathroom. If you give it a few rolls eventually the dirt gets to the bottom of the roll, and then disappears altogether. That seems to be what’s happening lately. They generally seem to put in the smut at the end of the article! Ha ha! Eventually I’m sure it’ll disappear altogether...although I never want to be squeaky clean.

“I helped out! I’ve done my share, no doubt about it. I know it!”

Ah, the eteranal problem. Does it extend to acceptance of the new music?

“I was wondering how some people would accept a song like ‘Shades’ who like ‘I’ve Got A Cock In My Pocket’! But I haven’t had any problems yet. They seem to enjoy the surprise of this one as much as they enjoy the surprise of the other one. I think in the end there’s more the question of why you’re singing the sogn rather than what kind of song it is.

song “In the late 70s I had all these bleeding Bowie fans going ‘where’s David?’ like it was a fashion party. But I continued to tour for some years. And I knew there was a core of people who like me for myself, but it was hard to get a good relationship with my record company. And the press decided that nothing I could do was right. If they printed my picture, it was with some sardonic slur.

“It’s like the weather—after a while the sun comes out and you’re OK again! ‘Oh, am I OK? OK, I’m OK!’ It’s weird.”

Might be weird, Jim, but you’re OK with this old scumbag.

It’s about time Iggy Pop saw some success. Well, to coin a pharase, here comes success. 0