LONDN, Ont. - My London will always bow low to the Stooges.
This week, we pay tribute to the recent Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees a.k.a. Iggy and the Stooges. These anarchic Stooges, fronted by Iggy Pop, are having a classic year -- a place in the hall, a classy re-release of their 1973 album Raw Power and a tour that reaches Toronto. The comic iconic Three Stooges will surely have their day here if there's the right London connection.
The Michigan rock band has a London bond celebrated in remarkable visual evidence from The Free Press files. Back in 1988, with the Stooges long fractured, a solo Iggy Pop was rawking the old Kiplings club on Wellington Rd. The place was packed. Free Press photographer Julie Matus has shots of the central event of that Aug. 14 gig. Viewed as a sequence, these photographs capture Iggy Pop (Jim Osterberg in another life) in full, chiseled stage thrash lofting a microphone stand -- "the sharp metal apparatus," circumlocuted The Free Press. The stand hit the fans, or at least one fan.
Matus has Iggy Pop looking stunned and omigosh regretful, realizing a fan has been hit. Then, there is a triumphant and joyful photograph of the fan, Richard Dreyer, who had been hit on the chin. Dreyer is on stage with Iggy, armed raised, joyful.
"To our collective disbelief, the man whose reputation boasts audience abuse, didn't continue the assault with insults and spit. Instead, a rather concerned Ig pulled one injured soul onto the stage and proceeded after ensuring the damage was minimal," wrote Free Press critic Wendy McCann.
Comments on my blog from friends who were at Kiplings that hot August night also say how shocked and apologetic was the Ig man.
So does this memory.
"It hit the guy standing beside me right in the head," said Rick Howald, 41, of Ilderton, who was at the show with friend and drinking buddy, Free Press online editor Dan Brown. Howald recalls Iggy's shocked concern and the fan up on stage. "He had both hands in the air, waving to the crowd, (as if to say) 'I'm up here,' " Howald says.
My interest in Iggy, who turned 63 on Wednesday, and his bandmates has been piqued in recent days by the arrival of a review copy of Raw Power (Columbia/Sony). Long a favourite of mine on Columbia vinyl, the 2010 remastered Legacy Edition CD is confirmed as one of the greatest rock albums of all time. Somehow, Iggy and guitarist James Williamson were able to tie down the band's self-destructive impulses for almost 34 minutes of glorious rawk.
(The Legacy Edition also has a live album I haven't had time to listen to and a booklet that the need for too much Raw Power keeps me from reading. There is apparently a deluxe package with many more goodies, if you're interested).
Its less famous songs -- Gimme Danger, Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell, Penetration, I Need Somebody, Shake Appeal, Death Trip -- all live up to the title track's promises about raw power.
I'm even happy to discover that the opening line from the first cut, Search and Destroy, is actually: "I'm a street walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm." It's my favourite song and I thought that line was "a hatful of napalm" all these years.
So call me a stooge. I won't mind.
There are many other London Stooge connections. They include rumours of a gig at Wonderland for Iggy about 1982 and a fine London band called Osterberg in a tribute to Iggy's original name and the Stooges songbook.
The London Stoogelove doesn't have to stop there. A reunited Stooges' lineup plays Toronto's Yonge-Dundas Square in a free show on June 19.
OK, it's only Toronto.
Here's hoping Iggy, Williamson, original Stooge Scott Asheton and the others always find a way to keep faith with Iggy at Kiplings in London.
