I Need More

by Iggy Pop (2.13.61 Publications)
by William Ham

Even by the aberrant standards by which rock lives are measured, there is likely no individual who most personifies the excess, debauchery and persistence of the punk id as epically as Iggy Pop, the real Motor City Madman. Forget freak-of-the-week ephemera like Marilyn Manson; we’re talking almost thirty years of obscurity-into-infamy-into-iconography, a truly unique character who’s slipped into the depths and bobbed to the surface more times than you’ve hot dinners. With his Stooge-era proto-punk albums firmly entrenched in the realm of the classics and “Lust For Life” generating “China Girl-“sized royalty checks, the timing is perfect for the Rollins-sponsored reissue of his 1981 autobio (which might better be titled Get Atop The Van With A Jar of Skippy And Writhe Around On the Shards Of the Windshield You Just Smashed With A Ballpeen Hammer, but that probably wouldn’t fit on the spine). Iggy’s no idiot, album titles notwithstanding, but I Need More is to literature what most of his solo albums are to music: the raw spontaneity is impressive and the bursts of intellect make it impossible to write off, but by the end, you wish he’d applied himself a little more. The book is a long tease unworthy of the man called Pop, an unstructured meander through a string of reminiscences, tour stories, and nuggets of personal philosophy (“Golf is like life: you only meet at the tee during the first shot and at the end. In-between you can really be on your own.”) You get to know the individual Stooges pretty well (if they were indeed a band whose members’ personalities can be summed up by their choice of intoxicant, which they very well may have been), but every time the Ig seems about to veer into some amazing anecdote, he jetées back to Evasiville, or drops the thread entirely and moves on. This may be due mostly to the period in which he wrote this, emerging slowly from the murk of his addictions and compulsions as he was at the time. (That his clean and sober period has coincided with some of his most draggily workmanlike material is an unfortunate endorsement for self-abusive psychopathia in rock, but that’s another matter.) Then again, it may also be that, being silver-surfingly wasted all the time, most of his best stories could be beyond his recollection. (I can name half a dozen Igcidents [modeling his cock ring for Tina Louise in hopes of a free drink, dropping from the rafters on stage, crazed on acid, just as Elton John is phumphering on in a crocodile suit] in Danny Sugerman’s hey!-I-knew-Morrison memoir, Wonderland Avenue, that beat holy hell out of the best this book has to offer.) Where’s the dirt on his co-dependent relationship with Bowie? The whole story of the Stooges’ final gig (like Altamont and the Doors’ Miami concert rolled into one)? Dinah Shore, for frig’s sake? Okay, maybe that’s a lot to ask this book to hold between its covers. It’s really a glorified fan book, which isn’t a bad thing at all – lotsa lyrics, great photos, and proof that this fucked-up punk can string sentences together. (I won’t say write, though I’m sure he could, because the text often reads suspiciously like transcribed ramblings.) If you dig the Ig, then you’ll likely like it – besides, it’s all we’ve got until the real Poptomes get writ.