7.2:09:Times Talk June 24th's Times Talk with Iggy Pop and New York Times critic Ben Ratliff was a great success. In front of a sold-out audience of 400+ fans Iggy and Ben discussed his new album Preliminaires and also his biggest influences in American popular music including Louis Armstrong, Howlin' Wolf, Bo Diddley, James Brown, Jerry Lee Lewis, and The Ramones.
Summer Sale at the Stooges Official Store until July 4th:
Preliminaies Reviews!
Preliminaires
IGGY POP
Release Date: no month , June
Producer(s): Hal Cragin
Label/Catalog Number: Astralwerks
Iggy Pop is back—not with a vengeance, but with an album of introspective, jazz-tinged, Leonard Cohen-esque standards and originals. Surprising? Sure. But the album succeeds because Pop bounces from track to track with the same swagger (albeit more muted this time out) that made him a punk icon. He simply refuses to acknowledge the shift in genre, instead diving head-on into this new sonic sea. From the upscale, hotel lounge-meets-faux-bossa nova vibe that Pop sings over on the timeless classic "Les Feuilles Mortes" (in French, of course) to the Louis Armstrong-meets-Tom Waits strut of "King of the Dogs," each track is an aural journey all its own. And on cuts like "I Wanna Go to the Beach" and "Spanish Coast," Pop's understated delivery draws even the most skeptical of listeners in, bathing his hushed voice in beds of stark piano and tremolo-washed guitar.—Jon Regen
What does Iggy Pop do when he no longer has the riff-tastic guitar stomp of Ron Asheton (R.I.P.) backing him? Make an ambient classical jazz album dedicated to a French novel called Préliminaires , of course.
Wait, what?
That’s right, with the whole world wondering what Iggy Pop was going to do with the Stooges in limbo following the death of their guitarist, Iggy Pop had actually been thinking about Préliminaires (translation: Foreplay ) since reading the 2005 novel The Possibility of an Island by Michel Houellebecq. Saying he got sick of “listening to idiot thugs with guitars banging out crappy music,” Iggy Pop, who once nearly kicked Mike Watt out of the Stooges after Watt merely attempted to play a bass solo, is going full-on jazz mode, with deeply influenced by New Orleans and slow-ballad songs of yore.
Iggy Pop originally was approached to do the sountrack to a film about Houellebecq’s life by Oscar-nominated French filmmaker Marjane Satrapi ( Persepolis ). Instead, he decided to do a full-on jazz album, complete with a cover a ‘40s French standard “Autumn Leaves,” with Pop singing in French.
“You can convince the world/ That you’re some kind of superstar/ When an asshole is what you are/ But it’s all right.” ~Iggy Pop, “I Want to Go to the Beach”
It is lyrics like that that reassured me right away that all was still well. As word first surfaced about this project, I was nervous. Iggy Pop doing a record of jazzy ballads? Such an outing would be akin to the Sex Pistols playing at casinos or something. (Oops, they did.) Yet, Preliminaires works, and often very well. Who knew that Iggy had it in that voice to lower it to Leonard Cohen-esque levels of jaded smokiness, enough to give most of the record a seedy, inspired torch songs?
The songs are based on image and ideas from The Possibility of an Island, a 2005 novel by the latest decadent French writer, Michel Houellebecq. Like Villon, Sade, Bataille and Genet, Houellebecq swims in waters where the holy is unholy, and often vice-versa. Apparently there was talk of a film version of Island, but it never came about. Iggy, asked to write some songs for the soundtrack, ended up with an album’s worth of what he called the alternative soundtrack to the proposed film. Preliminaires evolved from there.
Risky though it may have seen (in terms of both taste and talent), this is a great record. Even Iggy’s French vocals -- on “King of the Dogs” and “He’s Dead/She’s Alive,” and cover of the standard “Autumn Leaves” -- ring authentic. One thing that has always been a hallmark of Mr. Osterberg, even when delivering tired material -- is that he has always been sincere. And he often sings his heart out here. The “jazzy” elements are mostly New Orleans horns or a muted trumpet. No big band abominations. Of the up-tempo tunes, the jump blues of “How Insensitive” works much better than the dancer “Je Sais Que Tu Sais” or “Nice to Be Dead,” a sort of rock tune that is mostly stillborn.
To call Preliminaires “Mature Iggy” might be stretching it, but it is surely among his most daring releases. Like the inspiration for these songs, Iggy is tired and jaded, with more loneliness than disgust in that heavy heart of his. This is a record that hopefully opens up new creative veins for Iggy and for his voice, a voice that, like those of Dylan, Cohen and Waits, is fading with grace and defiance.
"I just got sick of listening to idiot thugs with guitars," Iggy Pop said recently, perhaps obliquely referencing last year's vapid Stooges reunion album, The Weirdness. Either way, this is a major volte face. Out go guitars (mostly). In come wistful saxophones, old New Orleans jazz and music made to waft through a fog of Gitanes smoke in some forgotten European bar. Préliminaires is inspired by French writer Michel Houellebecq's book The Possibility of an Island, which enables Iggy to sing in French, tell stories and expand on the theme of escape - especially escape from himself. The old Iggy makes fleeting appearances on rocker Nice to Be Dead, but otherwise he is beautifully fatigued and insightful. On lines such as "You can convince the world that you're some kind of superstar, when an asshole is all you are, but that's all right," he sounds simultaneously invulnerable and immortal. This may be his best album since 1977's Lust for Life.
Iggy Pop finds French rebirth on Préliminaires The Guardian
May 5 2009
Dave Simpson
Iggy Pop's recent output has been laboriously retreading his glory years. But, inspired by Michel Houellebecq, his new album thrillingly bids farewell to the rock superstar persona
It's 'boîte de nuit' … the new Frenchified Iggy chucks his beret out to the crowd. Photograph: Michael Loccisano/Getty
A couple of years ago, I penned a blog urging Iggy Pop to stop making records. The gist of it was this: I am a massive Pop fan and have been since my teens. His 1977 double whammy of The Idiot and Lust for Life are among my favourite albums of all time. But his recorded output has been going down for years. 2007's Stooges reunion album, The Weirdness, I believed, was the nadir of his career. I believed that, for the sake of his remaining reputation, Iggy had to stop making music.
He hasn't listened to me, and I'm glad, because Préliminaires – the album he releases this month, having just turned 62 – is one of the best things he's ever done. The problem with modern Iggy is that he's been stuck on "being Iggy" – trying to recreate his youthful, wilder self with increasingly bad metal. Not that he's alone in that, but either he's got sick of his imitators or sick of imitating himself.
"At one point I just got sick of listening to idiot thugs with guitars banging out crappy music," he said recently, a prelude to a complete volte face wherein Iggy has stopped trying to rock.
Préliminaires is as extraordinary and radical an album as he has ever made. Gone are the sounds of sub-Stooges or dunderheaded punk, replaced by New Orleans street jazz, shades of Louis Armstrong, quieter overtones and the kind of music that played in smoky European bars in the 1940s. Iggy – God forbid – even sings some of it in French. There are tales of dead dogs, stale love and growing old. Some of it is playful (King of the Dogs); some of it is incredibly moving (He's Dead/She's Alive).
The story behind the album is this: on the lookout for "important fiction", Iggy came across a book called The Possibility of an Island by notorious French writer Michel Houellebecq. He took it to France and read it in three days at a lonely seaside hotel, and fell in love with it. Word must have got around, because a year later he found himself being asked to write some music for a film about the author and – like the contrarian of old – "just ignored the film and wrote music for the book". Holed up in a Miami riverside cabin, Iggy spent a year crafting the songs, "completely outside the modern music industry. Like Daniel, the book's protagonist, I too have grown weary of a career as an entertainer and wish for a new life," he says, pointedly.
Among the album's killer tracks are a sublime take on 1945 standard Les Feuilles Mortes (Autumn Leaves), and I Want To Go to the Beach, which has real vulnerability in lines about leaving the "superstar" behind. He's not totally ditched the Pop we know – Nice to Be Dead is the album's sole rocker, and Je Sais Que Tu Sais has a Glitter beat and sounds like Nightclubbing in Pigalle. But otherwise it's timeless, jazzy, brave, reeking of Gitanes and rebirth, with Pop's stunning mature baritone the best vocal he's delivered in years; an album to lose yourself in like a great book.
"It's the best I can do," offers Iggy, humbly, of his masterwork. The title, incidentally, translates as "Foreplay", suggesting there's more to come. If Pop can escape the straitjacket of "being Iggy" and come up with something as outstanding as Préliminaires, he simply must carry on making records.
Scratch the surface of the vocal stylings of a lot of male American rock singers and you'll find the unmistakable relics of crooning. The genealogies are pretty explicit: Iggy Pop started off copying Jim Morrison, who really wanted to sing like Sinatra (go give "Touch Me" another listen) and Elvis, both of whom worshipped at the altar of Bing.
Iggy has always managed to sneak the melodious low phrasing of his forebears within the racket of the Stooges (e.g., the verses of "Gimme Danger"), but he has made his affiliations still more explicit with occasional covers of standards like Cole Porter's "Well, Did You Evah!," Harold Arlen & Johnny Mercer's "One for My Baby," and "I'll Be Seeing You." Even as his American handlers continue to persuade the often barechested 62-year-old to churn out body-surfing-friendly material for his lucrative stateside tours, it's not surprising that Mr. Osterberg would accept a French offer to make a nice 'n' easy record.
The long shadow of Gainsbourg is all over this project, which was expanded from soundtrack work for a Michel Houellebecq adaptation. (Iggy in a recent interview: "Every 10 or 15 years I'll meet some Euro nerd who is bright and wise enough to give me carte blanche on something, then leave me alone.") Although he occasionally shoots for a New-Orleans-in-the-'20s vibe (the Waits-ish "King of the Dogs"), the pervasive ambiance — represented by a lovely update of "Les feuilles mortes," the standard behind Chet Baker's "Autumn Leaves" — is firmly grounded in the Left Bank jazz of Boris Vian and early Serge.
Further revelations of the softer side of the Iguana include the primitive country blues of the loose jam "He's Dead/She's Alive," a spoken-word bit from Houellebecq's clone opera, The Possibility of an Island (Iggy found it reassuring that "someone was as negative as I am"), and a version of "How Insensitive" that brings it all back to the great bossa nova sessions by the Chairman of the Board and Jobim himself. In Préliminaires, the Stooge King has put together a perfect soundtrack for a short, doomy stay in the Hotel Lautréamont.
IGGY POP
PRÉLIMINAIRES JUNE 2
LAURA VOGEL The New York Post
Posted: 3:12 am
May 10, 2009
IGGY POP's new album, "Préliminaires," is a joyful mash-up of sultry Serge Gainsbourg tunes, the New Orleans' Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and Tom Waits-style melancholy. But the force behind it is undeniably the product of a man fashioned by the glory and ravages of punk.
What's up with the whole French thing?
There was a novel by French author Michel Houellebecq with reviews in the American literary press that used words like "repugnant" and "unlikable" -- people were outraged and terrorized by his work.
So of course I wanted to check this guy out. I picked up "The Possibility of an Island," about a middle-age entertainer whose life spins out of control as he hangs out with stranger and stranger people, and he finally commits suicide.
But before he does, he hangs out with a French cult, and this cult believes in processing technology to create neo-humanity. They take his DNA and he becomes the progenitor of a new race -- humans interfaced with digital technology. I read it, a year passed, then some filmmakers asked me to provide a few songs for a documentary about the author.
How'd you find a connection between Parisian torch songs and N'awlins?
I was listening to lots of Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong. Something about the melancholy of Houellebecq really resonated, to me, with the sadness in those guys.
Why did you say you're "sick of listening to idiot thugs with guitars banging out crappy music"?
Honestly, I have played in, in my opinion, one of the greatest and most valid rock bands in the last 25 years, and we were all about guitars! We were one of the good ones, but most of 'em aren't any damn good. It has now become the world's worst music in history. Coolio is better!
Album review: Iggy Pop - 'Preliminaires' NME
May 25, 2009
The ultimate punk goes all French jazz on us, but, bizarrely, c’est magnifique!
God rest the soul of dear Ron Asheton, but in truth the last Stooges album, ‘The Weirdness’, was no masterpiece. Buoyed nonetheless by the goodwill of anyone with even the slightest interest in rock’n’roll, it was a collection of serviceably sleazy riffs, over which Iggy howled stuff like, “My idea of fun!/Is killing everyone!” And fun it was, for certain. But fun of the ‘harmless’ variety, which was never really the point.
Now though, for his latest solo offering, the Godfather of all things punk has decided to reprise a much more appealing bit of his past, glimpsed on half of ’77’s ‘The Idiot’ and ’99’s rubbish-but-mad ‘Avenue B’: namely eccentric Ig. “A jazz album based on French author Michel Houellebecq’s novel The Possibility Of An Island”, you say? That’s more like it.
And so instead of more re-writes of ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’, we get a New Orleans swing number entitled ‘King Of The Dogs’ (“I got a piece of meat/In between my teeth”), and Iggy purring away in French on Louis Armstrong-esque, er, numbers such as ‘Les Feuilles Mortes’ (a ’40s standard, translating as ‘The Dead Leaves’) and ‘Je Sais Que Tu Sais’. Elements of this music have infiltrated his work in the past, of course (notably on the saxophone blasts of ‘Funhouse’), but ‘Préliminaires’ – translating as ‘foreplay’ – contains more than just elements.
There are touches of modern, electronic production, but, in the main it is straight, slow-ballad jazz. At first it sounds completely bonkers, but repeated listens reveal Iggy’s character to be strangely suited to this style of music. A little like a cross between Glenn Miller, Tom Waits and Serge Gainsbourg, he injects ‘I Want To Go To The Beach’ and ‘A Machine For Loving’ with his own inimitable brand of sleaze. Only on ‘Nice To Be Dead’ does he veer into heavy guitar territory, but it fits seamlessly into the mix, making for not just his strangest set in years, but also his best. There’s a tendency, what with Iggy being such a punk institution, to sometimes overlook his shortcomings, but that’s just not necessary here.
“I just got sick of listening to idiot thugs with guitars banging out crappy music,” he claims of his inspiration.
Us too, Ig. Now if his legions of lame, self-conciously cool leather-jacketed imitators could take note of this attitude, that would be great. Come on guys: make a jazz album, do an insurance advert, whatever…
Pop Iggy Pop PréliminairesAstralwerks ESSENTIAL "I Want to Go to the Beach"
Iggy Pop experienced such pleasure reading Michel Houellebecq's 2005 novel, "The Possibility of an Island," he made a soundtrack to go with it. In fact the Stooges frontman was so transformed by the moody dystopian narrative (it's about sex, death, and the end of humankind) that he mostly kissed his guitars goodbye and flung himself into a percolating whorl of French crooning, acoustic blues, laid-back electronics, and - if not quite jazz - some seriously jazzy instrumentation.
The collection opens with a chill arrangement of the mid-century standard "Les Feuilles Mortes," spoken-sung in an American accent so obvious and gruff it flirts with satire. But the chuckles quickly fade, and despite a handful of half-baked moments (the disco throwaway "Party Time" and what sounds like a kitchen-table recording of a fragment called "He's Dead/She's Alive"), a musical persona begins to take shape.
Here's wiser, wearier Iggy, burrowing into the stately and strangely provocative confessional "I Want to Go to the Beach" and a hard-bitten New Orleans stomp, "King of the Dogs," songs that recall Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits, respectively. Antonio Carlos Jobim's "How Insensitive" grows haunted in Pop's baritone clutches, as does a passage from the novel that the singer recites on "A Machine for Loving."
The familiar Iggy surfaces, more coiled now than explosive, on "Je Sais Que Tu Sais," "Nice to Be Dead," and "She's a Business," and the dark rocker is grippingly of a piece with the disillusioned crooner. For all its talk of death, this album feels like a rebirth. (Out tomorrow) JOAN ANDERMAN
EMI/ Astralwerks US has generously provided http://iggypop.org with several Deluxe Limited Edition Preliminaires Boxsets and ecopac CDs for a giveaway contest, consisting of 5 trivia questions, enter the contest now HERE!
6.02.09: Preliminaires released today in the US and can now be directly downloaded from iTunes or a most reasonable price! Click icon to purchase
6.01.09:Preliminaires was released in Europe May 25, 2009 and here is a collection of video and audio of the events in Paris surrounding it's release!Reviews of Preliminaires will be coming later this week.For those of you who have websites and blogs EMI has supplied us with a webtool page with banners suitable for every configuration here -- Preliminaires webtools page: http://www.astralwerks.com/iggy_pop/webtools/
EMI has also generously provided http://iggypop.org with several copies of the Preliminaires Deluxe Boxset and ecopak CDs for a giveaway contest -- (update) which will be posted Saturday June 6, 2009
France Inter radio show May 28, 2009: audio and video
Iggy at the FNAC Preliminaires CD signing May 25th -- video
It was a resounding success, peope who stood in line for 2 hours still couldn't get in! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH4LrCR2yqA
King of the Dogs and King of Fashion: Iggy Pop - Preliminaires video - Photo shooting by Xavier Martin
Shooting photo d'Iggy Pop par Xavier Martin. Tirages disponible sur http://www.yellowkorner.com Listen to the album and buy your own collector open Edition photos ! More info : http://www.iggypoppreliminaires.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKnIaDr_f90
Two Events on May 28, we in the US can listen to one in the afternoon, then go to the other that evening!
IGGY POP MICK ROCK Urban Zen Foundation Benefit
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Time: 6:30pm - 10:30pm
Location: Le Poisson Rouge
Street: 138 Bleecker Street @ Sullivan Street
City/Town: New York, NY Tickets $20 (Iggy will not appear, he will be in Paris promoting Preliminaires -- above.)
Screening of the rockumentary on Mick Rock and Iggy Pop
“Raw Power Redux” Directed and produced by Dean Holtermann
Followed by a live performance from
Michael H. and the Joan Jett Band
Raffle items include:
Turks and Caicos / 3 day 3 night Private Island Resort Vacation Package - valued at over $5,000 compliments of DPS Sports Club Development Company
7 course dinner for two (2) at AGUA DULCE – new Caribbean / South American restaurant
Free 1 year membership to ZipCar
Martin Scorsese autographed movie poster from “The Departed.”
Mick Rock autographed original Iggy Pop print
Dinner for two (2) at L'Artusi in the West Village
An evening of free libations at a private downtown speakeasy
5.18.09: Easy Action Records release "Stooges 1971" available for preorder now.
"Ok how do I start here ? We have bought tapes of four Stooges shows from spring 1971 when the line up included James & Ron on guitar with Jimmy Recca on bass and what a sound they make too ! Mind blowing isnt the word!"... http://www.stooges1971.com/
Signing session at FNAC St Lazare in Paris Monday, May 25th at 6pm
Iggy Pop will be holding a signing session at FNAC St Lazare store in Paris, on Monday May 25th at 6pm. Meet the Iguana!
FNAC St Lazare
109, Rue St Lazare
75009 Paris http://blog.iggypoppreliminaires.com/
5.15.09:The June 2009 Issue Of Word Magazine: "Ego vs Ig" with issue video promo below. I've seen this long, detailed article but cannot post it here. It features a special limited edition cover photo of Iggy. http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/
Born in Detroit: John Varvatos interviews Iggy on SiriusXM Radio
John Varvatos, Detroit native, men's designer and owner of the boutique that now occupies the old CBGB's in NYC, has a new show " Born in Detroit" on SiriusXM radio's Faction, channel 28. He interviewed Iggy for the show May 2nd in NYC, the night after the Road Recovery show at the Nokia Theater. This interview is tentatively scheduled to air Sunday June 7, 2009 at 9pm EDT, 6pm PST You can download a 3 day trial of Sirius...:)
Official Iggy Pop Autographed Memorabilia! – GRAMMY Charities May Online Auction
Bid on amazing Iggy Pop signed items including a Gibson Flying V Guitar, Hoodie and a rare Stooges Vinyl. The autographed items are now available on the May Online Charity Auction benefiting MusiCares and the GRAMMY Foundation. Auction runs now through May 21. Click here to place your bids now!
WARP X ANNOUNCES THE UK PREMIERE OF ALL TOMORROW’S PARTIES DOCUMENTARY
FEATURING BELLE AND SEBASTIAN, PORTISHEAD, SONIC YOUTH, ANIMAL COLLECTIVE, GRINDERMAN & MORE
AT EDINBURGH FILM FESTIVAL ON JUNE 24 & A MULTI PLATFORM RELEASE THIS SEPTEMBER THROUGH WARP FILMS
Warp X is pleased to announce the UK premiere of All Tomorrow’s Parties at the Edinburgh International Film Festival screening on 24 and 25 June. All Tomorrow’s Parties is a kaleidoscopic journey into the parallel musical universe of the cult music festival of the same name.
All Tomorrow’s Parties is a DIY concert film featuring performances from an eclectic mix artists including: A Hawk and a Hacksaw, Akron/Family, Animal Collective, Aphex Twin, Battles, Belle and Sebastian, Boards of Canada, Daniel Johnston, David Cross, Dirty Three, Eye (Boredoms), Fuck Buttons, Gossip, Grinderman, Grizzly Bear, GZA, Iggy and the Stooges, Jah Shaka, John Cooper Clarke, Les Savy Fav, Lightning Bolt, Mogwai, Mars Volta, Micah P Hinson, Mr Derry, Nurse with Wound, Octopus Project, Patti Smith, Portishead, Roscoe Mitchell, Saul Williams, Seasick Steve, Shellac, Slint, Sonic Youth, Two Gallants and Yeah Yeah Yeah's.
The film is a semi-found bricolage made from Super8, camcorder and mobile phone footage contributed by over two hundred filmmakers, fans and musicians over the festival’s recent history, with key contributions from co-director Jonathan Caouette (Tarnation) and cinematographer Vincent Moon (The Take Away Shows, Arcade Fire).
Future Cinema, in association with Warp Films, ATP and Synergy, will present the premiere of All Tomorrow’s Parties as part of a unique live cinema event at the Edinburgh International Film Festival on June 24. The film will be screened and brought to life in an immersive and 360 degree musical experience, including live performances from very special surprise guests.
All Tomorrow’s Parties is a fiercely independent festival that many music lovers regard as one of the most important music events in the world. In an intimate and communal atmosphere, free of corporate sponsorship, it serves up a heady combination of alternative music, crazy golf and chalet-living, with musicians and fans living side by side. At each festival a band or artist is chosen to gather up their favourite artists who perform over a weekend in an out-of-season holiday camp by the sea. Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore described the festival as the ‘ultimate mix tape’.
All Tomorrow’s Parties will have a UK multi-platform release this September with one night only theatrical events, a DVD release and digital download available through Warp Films.
Warp X is an initiative of the UK Film Council’s New Cinema Fund, Film4, Screen Yorkshire, EM Media and Optimum Releasing:
5.12.09:Preliminaires Interactive Video
This just in from EMI US/ Astralwerks, an interactive video, select your King Of The Dogs!
5.10.09: Musicares Map Fund Benefit, May 8, 2009: Nokia Club, LA.
On the setlist was: Search and Destroy, Loose, Down on the Street, TV Eye AND THE PASSENGER! Steve Jones on guitar, Flea on bass and Chad Smith on drums. Flea was wearing a Minuteman T shirt:) Also premeiring, a new RHCP offshoot, the Insects with Anthony, Flea, Chad and Ronnie Wood. (thanks ultra fan and friend Geneveive) James Williamson attended the show seated at a table directly in front of the stage , with Nina and Ron Wood. Iggy joined them after his performance. Famed rock photograpger and author of the new Stooges book due out in September "The Stooges:The Authorized and Illustrated Story" Robert Matheu was on hand and generousy allowed me to post this phtograph of Jones and Williamson together. Wayne Kramer was also in attendance. (For previous James Williamson update scroll down page to 2.23.09)*
Here is the picture of Steve Jones and James Williamson by Robert Matheu. Thanks RM!
See Iggy singing "5'1" on my video of the week page
Scroll down this page a bit ti see Rolling Stones review of the show posted a few days ago.
5.07.09: Iggy Pop live on France Inter on May 28th at 9pm
Iggy Pop will perform live at radio station France Inter in studio 105 on May 28th at 9pm and on www.franceinter.com. France Inter and Iggy Pop goes a long way. In 2007, France Inter broadcasted live the Iggy Pop & The Stooges gig live from the Fête de l’Huma.
EMI Music is proud to announce exclusive photos of Iggy Pop by Xavier Martin & YellowKorner: Contest!
Fans across Continental Europe will soon be able to acquire gallery and museum quality exclusive images of Iggy Pop shot by French photographer Xavier Martin, best known for his iconic images of Serge Gainsbourg, Robert Mitchum, Catherine Deneuve, among others.
You are invited to vote for your favorite shot between the following pictures. Five framed & numered Open Edition photographys to be won, enjoy !
Wednesday | June 24, 2009
6:30 PM - 8:00 PM
Address: TheTimesCenter, 242 West 41st Street, New York City
The godfather of punk takes on the language of romance and gets "dangerously near jazz" on his new album, Préliminaires, inspired by French author Michel Houellebecq’s 2005 novel "The Possibility of an Island." Hear the musician discuss his influences and his work. Interviewed by Ben Ratliff, New York Times jazz and pop music critic and author of "The Jazz Ear: Conversations Over Music."
Iggy Pop, Perry Farrell and Tom Morello Join a Huge Supergroup at “Road Recovery” Benefit
5/4/09, 11:07 am EST Rolling Stone
“It’s about putting the smack down, so we gonna put the smackdown,” joked Boots Riley before Friday night’s New York City benefit for Road Recovery, an organization that steers kids away from substance abuse by using the stories of entertainers and musicians who have been there and done that. The bar at Nokia Theatre was closed for the night and the choice of “Love Is the Drug” as the house music probably wasn’t an accident, as artist after artist took the stage to spread messages of clean living and to play a few songs.
The young participants in the program kicked things off, and were able to go home saying they had jammed with the likes of Jerry Cantrell, Tom Morello, Gilby Clarke and Wayne Kramer, to whom the evening was dedicated. Morello debuted his project with Riley, Street Sweeper Social Club, and capped off the energized rap-rock set by playing a guitar solo with his teeth.
Billy Bragg emerged for a pair of tunes, including a cover of the Verve’s “The Drugs Don’t Work,” Cantrell and Clarke teamed up for a version of “Wish You Were Here,” and host Matt Pinfield spoke between sets about his own struggles and his imminent return to rehab.
The all-star jam segment opened with the four aforementioned guitarists being joined by Perry Farrell for loose but upbeat renditions of “Mountain Song” and “Ain’t No Right,” and Dictators frontman Handsome Dick Manitoba and Don Was joined in on MC5’s “Call Me Animal.” Juliette Lewis gave an appropriately raspy take on AC/DC’s “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap,” Cantrell went into frontman mode for Thin Lizzy’s “Jailbreak,” and Perry Farrell returned for “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” with Clarke convincingly pulling off the song’s famous synthesizer line with guitar effects.
As he is wont to do, Iggy Pop stole the show merely by taking the stage, screaming for the band to go straight into “Five Foot One,” followed by Lust For Life’s “Sixteen.” Of course, the night was capped off with everyone coming onstage for “Kick Out the Jams,” featuring Little Steven Van Zandt on guitar with Iggy and Biohazard’s Evan Seinfeld trading verses as Kramer and Morello swapped dueling guitar solos. Even if there weren’t beers to hoist in triumph, everyone seemed pretty wasted on enthusiasm.
"The Stooges:The Authorized and Illustrated Story" update and preorder
Slated to be released by Abrams in Sept 2009, author Robert Matheu, reknown rock photographer (with contributions from Jeffrey Morgan, Detroit Metro Times columnist and don of American rock critics) has a website detailing the story of the Stooges from the very beginning, with the promise of updates in the future. Counting the days! Read more and preorder here: http://stoogefiles.com/
IGGY To Perform in "Love and Death" Duisberg, Germany, Sept 11-12 2009
Advertising Standards Authority says motor insurance advert is misleading as the rock star would not be eligible for a policy in real life
Sandra Haurant, guardian.co.uk
Wednesday 29 April 2009 12.34 BST
An advert for car insurance featuring singer Iggy Pop leaping about and boasting he has "insurance on his insurance" was today banned by the advertising watchdog.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled that the swiftcover.com advert was misleading following complaints the singer would not have been able to buy cover since the insurer excluded people working in the entertainment industry.
The ASA received 12 complaints about the advert from viewers who said it was misleading because it was suggested Iggy Pop was insured by swiftcover.com. In the advert, the musician said: "I got it swiftcovered. I got insurance on my insurance!"
Swiftcover.com, which is owned by AXA, said the advert made no reference to his occupation and that he had been chosen because he had a reputation for living life to the full. It said the star had not stated he had a policy with the insurer.
But the ASA upheld the complaints and ruled the advert could no longer be broadcast in its present form. It said: "Because the policy was promoted by a well-known musician, which might lead some viewers to believe the policy covered those who worked in entertainment, when it did not, and because Iggy Pop did not have a policy with Swiftcover, we concluded the ad was misleading."
Swiftcover.com said the advert had been a huge success with sales rising by a third in the first quarter of 2009. It added it had seen an increase in interest from musicians looking for cover, and was therefore set to make its policies available to that group for the first time. However, other people working in the entertainment industry will continue to be excluded.
The firm said it planned to keep Iggy Pop in its adverts. "Iggy Pop and swiftcover.com have made motor insurance interesting for a change, increasing awareness of swiftcover.com and sending our sales soaring by almost a third, so we would be crazy to lose Iggy," spokeswoman Tina Shortle said.
Nightclubbing II" Show on Canal Plus 20:45PM CEST April 27 was the most watched show in La Musicale's history
4.26.09:Iggy Pop’s insurer reverses decision on covering musicians The Independent
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Swiftcover, the online car insurer that uses punk idol Iggy Pop to advertise its wares but refuses to insure musicians, has reversed its decision ahead of an Advertising Standards Agency ruling on Wednesday.
But it's believed that Swiftcover, which has seen sales jump by a third during the first quarter of 2009, has changed its view of rockers and will now offer insurance to the pop world.
4.26.09: First of March 26, 2009 Iggy Pop "Preliminaires" press conference videos with the song "Les Feuilles Mortes" is now on the front page of http://iggypop.org.
4.21.09: Today is Iggy's 62nd birthday! I'm sure you will join me in best wishes for him and his!
Preliminaires update:
From EMI:
Please be advised that Preliminaires will be released on May 25th and not 18th. This is for all countries except US where it is still on June 2nd. Also, we are going to post today the first video from the press conf. There will be 4 of them, and each time there will be a video at the end to listen to a new track from the album.
Canal Plus has posted snippets of video from "Nightcubbing II: here and still photos here.
Sable Starr died in her sleep last Friday at 51. Many of you may remember her from Leg's McNeil's classic "Please Kill Me.'"
4.16.09:Preliminaires Update
From EMI France:
Pre-orders for Préliminaires are open today on Amazon
01. Les Feuilles Mortes
02. I Want To Go To The Beach
03. King Of The Dogs
04. Je Sais Que Tu Sais
05. Spanish Coast
06. Nice To Be Dead
07. How Insensitive
08. Party Time
09. He’s Dead/She’s Alive
10. A Machine For Loving1
11. She’s A Business
12. Les Feuilles Mortes (Marc’s Theme)
The Japan Edition and US one will have the same tracklisting
01. King of the Dogs
02. Nice to Be Dead
03. Je Sais Que Tu sais
4.15.09: ROAD RECOVERY HONORS MUSICIAN WAYNE KRAMER OF RENOWNED MC5 IN SECOND ANNUAL BENEFIT CONCERT AT NOKIA THEATER ON MAY 1
Road Recovery’s “house band” of sober teens Crazy James takes the stage with legends including Perry Farrell, Tom Morello, Jerry Cantrell, Wayne Kramer, Iggy Pop and more, to celebrate Road Recovery’s 11th Anniversary
WHO: An evening of high-energy rock and roll that’s going to be “just loose enough musically that anything might happen," jokes Wayne Kramer… Perry Farrell (Jane’s Addiction), Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine/ Audioslave / The Nightwatchman), Jerry Cantrell (Alice in Chains), Wayne Kramer (MC5), Don Was, Billy Bragg, Iggy Pop, Boots Riley, Gilby Clarke, Carl Restivo, Eric Gardner, George Wendt, Bun E. Carlos, Handsome Dick Manitoba performing songs together and individually from their respective catalogs, as well as collaborating on MC5 songs and anything else that strikes their fancy
WHAT: A blow the roof off live concert with some of today's legendary performers. Road Recovery Benefit Concert 2009 Honoring the Resilient Wayne Kramer To celebrate more than a decade of mentoring young people through addiction and other adversities, Road Recovery honors Wayne Kramer (MC5), for his intrepid work with young people faced with the challenges of our times during its second annual benefit concert. All of the night’s proceeds will go directly to support Road Recovery and its various programs. Open to the public
WHEN: Friday, May 1, 2009
8 p.m. EDT
WHERE: Nokia Theatre
1515 Broadway (at West 44th Street)
New York, NY
“Chicks dig me,” sneers Beef (Moby), the shaven-headed self-proclaimed “biggest rock star in Buffalo” as he pushes aside Hugo (Chris Ratz), the spindly roadie for down-and-out rock band The Winners. Marching to his doom down a filthy corridor leading to the dimly lit motel room where the cold white embrace of Jennifer (Jessica Paré), The Winners’ incandescently beautiful bass player, awaits him, Beef will find that while chicks may dig him, this one will love him to death.
And even beyond death. As the phrase goes, rock and roll is indeed a vicious game.
Writer/director Rob (PHIL THE ALIEN) Stefaniuk, who also stars as the band’s frontman Joey, hopes to bypass the curse of “vampire rock star” genre clichés with a witty flick that is unequivocally a rock-and-roll movie with vampires, rather than a more stock-in-trade vampire movie with rock-and-roll. Rounding out the lead cast with Canadian actors Mike Lobel and Paul Anthony (who join Paré and Ratz to play the band), SUCK also stars Malcolm McDowell as vampire slayer Eddie Van Helsig (yep, that's how it's spelled), Burning Brides frontman Dimitri Coates as immortal predator Queenie, who changes The Winners’ lives forever with his bite, and Dave (NETHERBEAST INCORPORATED) Foley as the group’s archetypically sleazy manager. Firmly anchoring the film in the horror genre without reservation are makeup artists Jordan (GINGER SNAPS) Samuel and Colin Penman, from SAW V and the as-yet officially untitled new George A. Romero zombie opus.
Further separating SUCK from the current crop of dewy, post-adolescent romantic TWILIGHT-hour vampire fare is a perfect storm of cameos by classic rock stars, also including Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper, Henry (WRONG TURN 2) Rollins, Carole Pope of Rough Trade and Alex Lifeson of Rush. And for the first time ever, Cooper (playing a sinister bartender) will appear opposite his daughter, dancer Calico Cooper, who plays a barmaid.
“I love the mixture of horror and humor,” says Cooper, who stops just short of calling Stefaniuk a genius in this specific area. “And what’s cooler than a vampire?” Adds Lobel, “Rob’s omniscient.” He notes that there are pieces of Stefaniuk (also a musician, and co-author, with John Kastner, of seven of the film’s 11 original tracks) in every one of the characters. “I love the fact that this is a rock-and-roll road movie.”
All of the musicians claim to have been drawn to the wit of Sefaniuk’s script and its not-too-subtle parallels between the wretched life of a couch-surfing rock band, who roam the night in search of fame in bars that stink of beer and cigarette smoke, and the eternal night of the vampire, who roams the night in search of blood. At The Winners’ level, the line between predator (either bloodsucking monsters who take 10 percent of nothing in the form of agent fees, or vampires) and prey is, at best, nebulous.
SUCK, written and directed by Rob Stefaniuk, produced by Robin Crumley, Jeff Rogers and Victoria Hirst and executive-produced by Gabriella (NIGHTBREED) Martinelli, is slated for release in the fall of 2009.
The French release of Preliminaires will come 3 ways:
1. the regular digipack one (16 euros)
2. the Japanese version with 2 extra songs (25 euros)
3. the Collector box (35 euros)
(Thanks Gui from http://iggy-pop.com)
From EMI US:
In the US we will be releasing the standard 'ecopak' CD and a digital download.
The limited edition boxed set will be available to order from the official artist site and from Amazon (as an import) Preorder NOW!. There will be a limited number of copies for online contests (TBA here when contest set, stay tuned)
"Nightclubbing I" will be rebroadcast the following day. there as well.
IGGY POP To Perform At MUSICARES MAP FUND Benefit Concert
Apr. 3, 2009
Iggy Pop will perform at the fifth annual MusiCares MAP Fund benefit concert at Club Nokia in Los Angeles on Friday, May 8, 2009. The event will honor multi-Grammy-winning RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS co-founder and lead singer Anthony Kiedis, who will be presented with the Stevie Ray Vaughan Award for his dedication and support of the MusiCares MAP Fund and for his commitment to helping other addicts with the addiction and recovery process. All proceeds will benefit the MusiCares MAP Fund, which provides members of the music community access to addiction recovery treatment regardless of their financial situation.
Hosted by Greg Behrendt, comedian and author of "He's Just Not That Into You", the evening will feature a special performance by Kiedis along with RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS bandmates Flea and Chad Smith, as well as performances by THELONIOUS MONSTER vocalist and "Celebrity Rehab" participant Bob Forrest with his son Elijah Forrest, musician/producer Josh Klinghoffer, THE MARS VOLTA and THE NEVILLE BROTHERS' Ivan Neville. DJ AM will perform live during dinner. Additional artists will be announced shortly.
"Addiction exists in all communities and across all socioeconomic lines, but too often the challenges of making a life in music can lead people down the heartbreaking path of dependence," said Neil Portnow, President/CEO of The Recording Academy and MusiCares. "When circumstances such as the economy and shifts in our industry come into play, the need for our services can become greater than ever. MusiCares exists to offer a beacon of hope and critical resources for members of the music community who are struggling with addiction. Anthony is a strong supporter of our cause and this is a perfect opportunity to recognize and honor his commitment."
"I've seen firsthand the physical and emotional toll addiction takes on people — not just myself, but so many other artists and friends as well," said Kiedis. "The pain of addiction is leveled only by the promise of sobriety and the MusiCares MAP Fund provides access to the kind of resources that can help people genuinely change their lives. I'm proud to be honored and help raise funds for this critical work."
This special dinner and concert offers living room sets that seat 10 for $12,500, individual floor seats for $1,250 per person, and preferred balcony seats for $100. Contact Wynnie Wynn at 310.392.3777 or wynniew@grammy
As I reported some weeks ago, Iggy chose Peaches to cover "Search and Destroy" for War Child Heroes:
War Child and Astralwerks Records are pleased to announce the full track list and artist lineup for the new benefit album, Heroes, which will be released on February 24, 2009. Astralwerks and EMI are proud supporters of War Child, an award-winning charity that provides humanitarian assistance to war-affected children in some of the most devastated regions of the world. The album’s concept mirrors one of the intrinsic aims of War Child’s efforts in war zones around the world – to place faith in the next generation. We asked some of the biggest legends in music history to select a classic track from their own songwriting canon, and nominate an artist from the next generation to create a modern reworking of that classic song. This album is the result: 16 exclusive and truly inspired cover versions. Full press release herein a Word.doc: warchildpress
I may have an mp3 interview with Iggy about this project soon, stay tuned.
3.29.09:Nightclubbing II update
This will be the order of the songs of the "Nightclubbing II" show that will be aired on France's Canal Plus, April 27 and May 11, 2009, according to management.
3.27.09: Preliminaires press conference with Iggy Pop, March 26 2008, Paris. (edited transcript of online interactive 11AM press conference held by EMI.)
Press: MC talks about controversy about insurance.
Iggy Pop: In fact, I don't give a shit, I did the gig and it was cool.
Press: Why to you use your image in these campaigns?
Iggy: It's because they use the music. Where I come from, the kids dream is to become a rock star, and get signed. The companies that do that are big symbols, when those companies used that music, that's respect that I receive and also they pay a lot more than the record companies!
Press: Let's talk about the album. Is this a concept album?
Iggy: It's a concept album that happened. I read this book in 2007 in an old seaside hotel here in France. I read some of Houellebecq's poetry and thought "this motherfucker can write." I recognised some of my own traits in the book, and then discovered some more.
Press: Does Michel Houellebecq know your album is inpired by this?
Iggy: Yes, we met and corresponded about it. The guys who did the documnetary about Houellebecq's film asked me to do the music, and gave me carte blanche for the tracks. In the beginning I wanted to do just accoustic guitars with one mic and then it grew, no one asked me anything about it, but I wrote and wrote in a small cabin. Thanks to the internet the tracks were elaborated without me seeing some of the musicians, which was great. I imagined them as bearded crazy guys. I met them and they are healthy Americans! I had to do a song in French, and saw a picture of Houellebecq at seaside.The adaptation in English is Autumn Leaves, but it was impossible to clear it. So the guys from movie said "Do it in French and we can clear it."
Press: QUESTION FROM WEB (1999) Do you feel the same as for The Brave Soundtrack?
Iggy: Yes absolutely, I like these areas from music. I like to get this comedy grip, it's the same path.
Press: Do you want to become a crooner in Vegas?
Iggy: I don't like Vegas, but if they want to pay me for a week, why not?
Press: Does it matter to you that Houellebecq is French? How much is it a gift for the French?
Iggy: I made a video explanation about the record. It's just that when I done the record, I wondered "who is gonna hear it?" Once I had the tracks, for the French, I could do this and this and they could appreciate it. The producer, Hal Craigin, married a French woman. He and her had read the book. There was one song that was "I want to go to the beach." The beach is where I want to die, but in the nice sense of it. It was just an accoustic piece [Iggy sings accapela] I sent it to Hal, and it came out as a beautiful French 60's pop piece. I was in front of Mediterranean sea and wrote the lyrics to "Spanish Coast." There s also this track called "She's a Business." I wanted it to be in French without getting in the way too much.
Press: How do you think the other people in the world are gonna perceive it?
Iggy: Well, Japanese are Francophiles, Koreans are open to anything, then you have the Germans, Italians, yeah they'll say "why don't you sing in Italian." It's called Preliminaires for some reasons, it was made for a 1 hour music. There are 12 tracks, it's slim. The Americans, they're gonna kick me out! I reckon that the real connection will be done by some people who will connect together.
Press: Is there anything about France that appeals you?
Iggy: I hate giving compliments. But when you traval around here, things a kept well. A lot of people trashed my country. When I was a kid it was beautiful. In America people always want to build some shit. But I feel people are well educated here in France. I think it's interesting. At a certain time, I received support here before I got it anywhere else. When I came here in the 70's, the city provoked me, and I went me. I look back at footage of what I did and some things were erratic. I think Berlin is feeling competition with Paris and that's
Press: What's the diference between the dog from the novel and Lucky?
Iggy: I was on a tour break and I was alone in the US. The dog Fox seemed like the most sympatetic character. Re reading the book, I felt manipulated -- the dogs dies 3 times! I have 3 dogs but that was not my idea! First he just barked at me, but we became close. One of the worst things about being a dog, is that you have to wait for someone to open the door.
Press: For King Of The Dogs, it's the dogs point of view. Can you tell us about the song How Insensitive?
Iggy: Yes, basically, there was a 3 month period where we wondered 'can we get a record out. ' Hal, the producer, kept sending me tracks. I felt it was such a beautiful song, the writing is very compact and sets a mood very quick.
Press: Does Preliminaires mean that there will be another one?
Iggy: I hope to make something else that comes from this, whatever that means.
Press: WEB QUESTION<JEJE> What about the cover from Marjane Satrapi?
Iggy: I worked for her doing the uncle in Persepolis. I did it for the English version. It was nominated for the Oscar. When I see her drawings, it makes me think of Edward Hopper.
Press: In your video, you talk about being tired of guitars, is it linked to Ron's death?
Iggy: No this album was done already when Ron died. For personal pleasure I listened to Louis Armstrong, gnawa music for southern Morocco etc...
Press: (from Diext) Is jazz punk music?
Iggy: When Jazz started yes, they were dressed bizarrely, they were hustlers, they had the sex drugs rock and roll lifestyle.
Press: Do you think you will record an entire electronic album?
Iggy: No, after 4 hours of boom chick I feel ill.
Press: Do you want to be adopted by europeans?
Iggy: I'm open for adoption.
Press: Do you bring your dogs on tour?
IggyPop: I brought Lucky and he tried to lick everyone and come and kiss me..
.
Press: (Adam) will there be any touring?
IggyPop: No
Press: (1969) Is this new album the end of punk rock?
Iggy: There was never a beginning of punk rock for me, I did those things and some marketing guys did the rest, we pied and other licked.
Press: Do you see any glimmer of hope for the artists of your country?
Iggy: Yes, I'm not an social science expert, but I noticed a trembling effect, booming and busting, with the previous administration. I think the new president is more sensitive and more sensible, certainly better educated. Maybe he can do something.
Press: What does Houellebecq think of these songs?
Iggy: He was pleased I was doing it, he was very encouraging about the music, he has his own favourite which is "Spanish Coast."
Press: Do you listen to French music at home?
Iggy: Leo Ferré, from time to time, Juliette Greco, Gainsbourg
Press: You said "I wish for a new life". What kind?
Iggy: I'm open, I'm at the point I don't have anything to say with myself, so I just react. There's a whole world, a lot of good people, a lot of things happening. If you learn to react, you end up doing good things. when you're young you're very self obsessed, then you say "I wanna hang on", and then if you're lucky enough to get to the third part, it's more relaxing. I work as an actor sometimes, you just check people out.
Press: Do you have acting projects?
Iggy: I'm working for Marjane Satrapi again in fall. I'm doing something in Germany called "A Century of Songs." I have something coming out with Danger Mouse also. I have 5 songs of the Ashton brothers. Really unforgiven, unreconstructed shit. I just had time to listen to the rough mixes and it was silent, I don't know if it was a joke from Ron or my player. I would like to make something with these tracks, I worked on two.
Press: Is the biopic going on ?
Iggy I don't think so, I reacted bad. It opens with my mother and father worrying about me. My father was alive at the time and it felt like an intrusion. They can wait for me to be dead. Fuck you, I won't do your biopic promo.
Press: Some French singers sing in English because they feel it's better. Are there some songs you feel are better in French?
Iggy: Yeah, the Happy Birthday song!
PressConference - THIS IS THE END OF THE PRESS CONF, THANKS EVERYONE
Nightclubbing II: Day 2 (March 25 2008) Thanks Anthony!
SONGS/ ARTISTS
Les Feuilles Mortes by Jacques Prevert: Iggy
Go To The Beach: Keren Ann + Iggy
King Of The Dogs: Iggy
You're The Boss: Iggy with Emma De Caunes -- originally sung by Elvis and Ann Margeret
I Put A Spell On You by Screamin Jay Hawkins: Iggy with Catherine Ringer
How Insensitive: Benjamin Biolay + Iggy
Reeferman by Cab Calloway: Iggy and Peaches
Nice To Be Dead: Iggy and Izia
Gloria by Van Morrison: Iggy and Izia
3.25.09:Nightclubbing II: Day 1
Here's the word from management on the first day - March 24 - of taping "Nightclubbing II" The show will be aired on Canal Plus April 27 and May 11 2008. Thanks Gui of http://iggy-pop.com for the air dates.
The MUSICIANS LIST :
Hal Cragin: Bass, Producer of Iggy Pop’s new album
Kevin Hupp: Drums
Marc Phaneuf: Clarinet & saxophone.
Eric Mula: Trumpet Player
Michael Joussein: Trombone Player
Geoffrey Burton: Guitar Player
Albin de la Simone: Piano and Keyboards Player
Fabrice Eulry: Piano Player Boogie Woogie
Guests March 24th SONGS/ ARTIST
Honky Tonk Train Blues / Shout For Joy: Fabrice Eulry without Iggy
Minnie the Moocher "Theme song" C.Calloway: China Moses with Iggy
Spanish Coast / Iggy Pop new album: Stephan Eicher with Iggy
Ne Me Quitte Pas / Jacques Brel Version: Ayo with Iggy + Fabrice Eulry
Rum and Coca Cola / A.Dombasle version: Arielle Dombasle with Iggy
Je Sais Que Tu Sais + Machine for Loving Michel Houellebecq + Iggy + Lucie
Nightclubbing / Grace Jones Version: Grace Jones with Iggy
Passenger "spontaneous version"
EMI will be holding a live online press conference on http://www.iggypoppreliminaires.com about Nightclubbing II at 11AM CET, Thursday March 26. Fans will be able to ask questions using a chat feature on the site that requires registration:
As of this time, I understand that the show itself will be broadcast on Canal Plus 2050 CET, Friday, March 27 but this needs confirmation from Canal Plus.
3.14.09:Nightclubbing II on France's Canal Plus March 27 canalplus.fr
Iggy will be performing music from his upcoming release on EMI France "Preliminaires " on French TV channel Canal +. Among special guests that will be on the show are Ayo, Catherine Ringer, Keren Ann and Benjamin Biolay. Free tickets are available for the taping of the show March 24-25 at the link below. The show will be broadcast March 27.
News...Currently I have finished producing/ co-writing a new Iggy Pop record called "Preliminaires" to be released in May. heres a little press release....
NEW YORK – Fans of the music of punk godfather Iggy Pop might be surprised to hear the quite rocking singer/songwriter has a softer side. In 1998 his longtime touring and recording bass player Hal Cragin suggested a jazz collaboration to Iggy as a relaxing departure from their relentless (and high volume) touring schedule. "Our first collaboration was in my apartment/studio on 3rd Street,NYC, something very informal just duo things which I added to later. We did some Jobim and Cole Porter, it was a lot of fun, and Iggy was really on"
These tracks were put aside for more than a decade while Iggy and Hal went on to other musical creations until "Iggy got a call to do music for a documentary about a writer named Michel Houellbecq trying to direct a movie version of his popular book," The Possibility of an Island." at that very same time I had sent Iggy our old jazz tracks just for posterity's sake, the timing was right, and we used this excuse to resurrect and complete our particular collaboration," Hal explains.
The collection,"Preliminaires" (foreplay in French), will be released in May worldwide on Virgin /EMI.
On the music:
"Some of the original songs we did had a launch pad from the spirit of Houellbecqs book, but once we got rolling the collection of songs took on its own life."
Our first song was an Iggy original, "King of the Dogs." I produced it with full King Oliver New Orleans fanfare.The song is really swinging and the NYC horn players nailed it in 2 takes.I played Freddie Green type guitar as the bass was usually a tuba from that time.
Other Tracks Include:
"Les Feuilles Mortes" ("Autumn Leaves" in the original French). "Most American audiences will know the English version sung by Johnny Mercer in 1949, but we wanted to pay tribute to the original version by Hungarian Joseph Cosma (1905-69) and legendary French poet Jacques Prévert (1900-77) which was performed in the 1946 Marcel Carné film "Les Portes de la Nuit."
"We did a very dark and cool american version of Autumn Leaves back in the original apartment session, somehow Iggy thought it seemed like a better plan just to go back to the source for a number of reasons when we revisited it, Iggy singing in French is quite a first.
"To the Beach", is very introspective, and really just floats along on the lyrics and piano figure, I felt a rhythmic element too soon would break the mood.
"Je sais que tu sais" is a duet in english/french with Lucie Aime from the Poitou-Charentes region of France. Dark and rocking it follows a dialog between the sexes.
"Spanish Coast" Iggy was somewhat inspired by the character in the book " the possibiliy of an island" he had the first few lines and and we took it from there, there is a pulsating string motif in the intro and outro which borrows heavily from the oceans waves.
"Nice to be Dead" Is a full blooded rock track, which goes poetically from wanting to be left alone to acknowledging that being dead is the best "green" solution for the planet.Some classic Iggy in there, "we kind of rocked this in a way that I knew would work. As the vocal becomes more urgent the track really takes off its towards the end where i wanted to create a audio firestorm/end of the world kind of a sound with Iggy in the center
"How Insensitive" The original by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes, features English lyrics by Norman Gimbel. "We tweaked the feel of the rhythmic features.On the more well known jazz tracks that are such a staple of the lounge jazz cannon, I approached them with a new twist...to bring the songs into a new wing of the building as it were.I feel theres no point in doing another BMW car stereo ready jazz track. so this pulsates and then erupts with Iggy floating on top, quite nicely I may add"
"Party Time." This is an electro dance type track, with quite funny lrics about disco culture, with Daft Punk like electronic elements. "At this point we were careening from one side of the road to another stylistically having fun, perhaps we grazed the guardrail a bit with this one, but it works really well"
"Machine for Loving" is a spoken word recitation from Houellbecqs book. "Its a beautiful passage but quite dark as well"
Video of the February 28th Ann Arbor tribute to the late Ron Asheton is now available. See Powertrain, Hiawatha, Kyoto Cutout, more here.
Iggy Pop has puked on his audience, rolled around in broken glass and exposed himself to crowds. But on his new album, the 61-year-old rocker does something that may shock people — he sings in French. The Stooges frontman shows off his multilingualism On “Autumn Leaves,” a track off Préliminaires, due out May 19th. The record was inspired by French author Michel Houellebecq’s 2005 novel, The Possibility of An Island. “As I read scenes in the book, I felt music in my head,” says Pop, who also composed a score for the book’s forthcoming film adaptation. “I wrote less and less for the movie and started writing an alternative score to the novel.”
The disc — which features trombones and clarinets — lifts its sound from 1920s New Orleans. “We get dangerously near jazz,” says Pop, who cut tracks in Woodstock and Miami. “At first, I thought, ‘If I want to pee and I don’t do it with a sign that says Progenitor of Punk, people don’t want to know about it.’ Luckily, at this point in my life, I don’t care very much.”
In other Iggy news, the rocker recently nominated saucy electro provocateur Peaches to cover his “Search and Destroy” for War Child’s Heroes compilation, a charity disc for kids living in war-torn regions. “I get a big shot of pleasure every time I hear her music,” Iggy says of the Canadian singer, with whom he’s collaborated on several tracks in the past. “All the better since it was one of my songs.”
Pop — whose longtime Stooges bandmate, guitarist Ron Asheton, died in January — also hinted at the group’s future plans. “We have a large vault, and I’ve been fooling around with different ways to approach vocals,” he says. The band is also “developing something with a dramatic filmmaker,” but Iggy declined to elaborate. What about rumors that Sex Pistols‘ guitarist Steve Jones might join the Stooges? “I talked to Steve, and if I wanted an extra guitar, he’d be the guy to call,” says Iggy. “The group still exists. I’m not gonna tell you more than that.”
3.4.09: The media blitz about Preliminaires is in full swing!
New Iggy Pop CD "Preliminaires" from EMI France to be released April/ May 2009 The trailer for CD, which is supposed to be heavily promoted --http://www.megavideo.com/?d=OLYZ5FUT
Iggy Pop to release new album "Préliminaires" in May 2009 (Official Statement)
Iggy Pop will release a new album called Préliminaires in May 2009. The artist, considered to be the "Godfather Of Punk", returns with a quieter album, with some jazz overtones" as he explains in a video posted on his website to announce the project.
"At one point I just got sick of listening to idiot thugs with guitars banging out crappy music and I've started listening to a lot of New Orleans-era, Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton type of jazz. And I've always loved quieter ballads as well."
The album themes and texts have been inspired by Iggy's reading of controversial French novellist Michel Houellebecq, and his book "The Possibility Of An Island".
"[The book] is about death, sex, the end of the human race, and some other pretty funny stuff [...] I read the book with intense pleasure when it came out, and in my mind, I created music that would have been the music that I would hear in my soul when I read this book" explains Iggy Pop.
The title ‘Preliminaires’ means Foreplay in French, and Iggy Pop explains that the album indeed has been done especially for France and French-speaking people. On the record, he sings in French a cover of Jazz standard "Les Feuilles Mortes (Autumn Leaves)", originally created by Joseph Kosma and Jacques Prévert and performed in French by artists like Yves Montand and Edith Piaf. Other titles include New Orleans influenced King Of The Dogs, a story about a dog named Fox who explains "how cool it is to be a dog, and how much it beats human life", and "How Insensitive", jazz and bossa nova standard composed by Antônio Carlos Jobim.
The visuals for the album will be created by French/Iranian graphic novelist and animated film director Marjane Satrapi. Marjane and Iggy met when she asked him to do the voice of one of the characters in her Academy-award nominated animated movie ‘Persepolis’ in 2007.
Préliminaires is to be released on May, 18th on EMI Music.
A real mild child: Iggy Pop records jazz album Tuesday, March 3, 2009 | 3:07 PM ET
Read complete story here at CBC News
Iggy Pop to release jazz album steeped in French literature An unlikely cocktail of Michel Houellebecq and Jelly Roll Morton is the inspiration for Stooges legend's new francophile album, Préliminaires. read full article at link below
2.23.09:Powertrane memorial show February 28 at the Blind Pig in Ann Arbor Hear host John "Rastafarian" Griffin on WCBN online at 4PM EST Friday Feb 27th: http://wcbn.org/
Michel Houellebecq's documentary "The Possibikty of a Island"
The documentary Last Words directed by Erik Lieshout, Arno Hagers and Reinier van Brummelen. Bonanza Films was in charge of the production. The film shows Michel Houellebecq while he is translating his last book ‘The Possibility of an Island’ into images. Iggy Pop, who is Houellebecq’s admirer as well as idol, made 7 songs especially for the documentary. A search for a ‘farewell without an end’ and the ‘pure fear of space’. The result of Houellebecq’s film version of the book at the festival was under its original French title 'La Possibilité d'une île.'
‘The Possibility of an Island’
http://www.lapossibiliteduneile-lefilm.com/
Synopsis
Who, among you, deserves eternal life? Daniel is a highly successful stand-up comedian who has made a career out of playing outrageously on the prejudices of his public. But at the beginning of the twenty-first century, he has begun to detest laughter in particular and mankind in general. Despite this, Daniel is unable to stop himself believing in the possibility of love. A thousand years on, war, drought and earthquakes have decimated the earth and Daniel24 lives alone in a secure compound - his only companion, a cloned dog named Fox. Outside, the remnants of the human race roam in packs, while Daniel24 attempts to decipher his predecessor's history. In a nightmarish vision of the implosion of the modern world, he, like his predecessor attempts to fathom the meaning of love, sex, suffering and regret.
About the Author
Michel Houellebecq lives in County Cork, Ireland. He is the bestselling author of the Atomised, Platform and Whatever. He is also a poet, essayist and rap artist.
Editor's note: According to his rep, the 7 songs are very Sinatra-like (low voice and all). Cool. Interesting and nothing like what he's been doing.
In 1972, James Williamson found himself taking over the guitar duties for the legendary proto-punk band the Stooges. Derek See interviews Williamson about his guitar work on the famed Raw Power album, the Gibson Les Paul Custom he used on that recording and his current love (slack-key guitar). In addition to vintage photographs of Williamson with the Stooges, this article features several new, close-up shots of Williamson’s beat-but-beautiful Les Paul.(FBJ)
From James himself to iggypop.org: "The article was written late last spring. The picture was taken on the Big Island of Hawaii in August in a sacred place called Lapakahi where ancient Hawaiian villagers used to live. Actually, I provided the FBJ with about 8 differant pictures and the picture with the grass shack was my least favorite since I'm kind of squenting due to the sun, but none-the-less that's the one they choose. Perhaps they saw the same thing you (cb) saw in the photo and liked it. It is a quarterly publication so should run through March with back issue available for those who are too late. Frankly, I mainly did the article for get exposure for the luthiers that I've been working with who are simply amazing at what they do. For those reading the article and interested in the Herman Weissenborn spanish neck guitar restoration, I'll incude this clip of me noodling on a work in progress that I'm calling "Pokii" which means "little sister" in Hawaiian. Its a little rough and I've left a rather big flub in there, but you can get the idea of what the guitar sounds like from it."
James is now an executive with Sony and a frequent visitor to Hawaii, having just recently returmed.
"Secondly, I wanted to pass on this short story about our recent visit to the Big Island of Hawaii. While there, my wife and I went on an awesome hike over a very rough a'a (sharp lava) field to a totally secluded black and white sand beach called Ke-awa-iki. Nearby, are some pools which are covered in gold lava rock (see picuture.) This Hawaiian Shrine (see picture) was in front of the pools and on instinct I found a gold flecked piece of lava and placed it on this shrine in a prominent place in memory of my old friend Ron Asheton. I think he would've liked that."
Lester Bangs 1980
Incredible 90 minute interview with legendary rock critic Lester Bangs from 1980. Lester speaks about factors within the music industry, New Wave, Punk, CBGB's & music journalism.
2.9..09:Great poster for A2 tribute to Ron Asheton Feb 28 at the Blind Pig.
Thanks Steve Morgan of Powertrane!
2.9..09: LOVE magazine premiere
Katie Grand of Pop magazine’s pet project with Conde Nast, LOVE, is debuting this month with London Fashion Week. The biannual art meets fashion mag will showcase three covers for its first issue modeled by Agyness Deyn, Iris Strubegger and Iggy Pop with his hands down his pants. Picture is featured on the ront page of iggypop.org.
Video of the week: Ron Asheton: "Ronnie...Thanks a Million" Tribute with Terry Bradley on
Bagpipes
"A fitting tribute party for Ron Asheton guitarist for The Stooges was held at the historic Music Hall in downtown Detroit. Rolling Stone magazine ranked him as the 29th greatest guitarist of all time. Close friends all mention his great sense of humor but his influence on other guitar players cannot be overstated.Ron's playing was exceptional just as the man was off stage. We will miss you Ron. RIP"
Ron Asheton Tribute - Bootsey X - No Fun
Ron Asheton Tribute - Hiawatha Bailey - I Wanna Be Your Dog, Down on the Street
R.I.P. Ron Asheton Tribute - TV interview from 2008
I-94 Bar's coverage of the event, with photos by John Holstrum of Punk Magazine -- including a great shot of the digital Music Hall marquee
1.30.09:Ron Asheton's Rolling Stone obituary by Iggy Pop, February 3rd 2009 issue(.pdf file) Thank you Steve B!
Mojo's Jan. 28 issue out now with feature on Ron Asheton
RON ASHETON: The Stooges’ guitarist, who died earlier this month, was a man whose monolithic, fuzzed-up tones ricocheted through the last forty years of music influencing generations of players in the process. But few knew the man behind the sound. Paul Trynka looks back on Ron Asheston’s life. Iggy Pop, J Mascis and James Williamson pay tribute.
“We would like to thank everyone for the tremendous outpouring of sympathy and support that we have received. The knowledge that Ron's kindness and music touched so many people around the world, has been a great comfort to us at this very difficult time.
We loved our big brother very much and we will miss him deeply. Our lives will never be the same. His spirit will continue through a foundation we plan to set up in his name.
Thank you Henry McGroggan and Cathy Benson Burke for putting together all of the condolence emails into a special book for us. Reading these messages has helped to heal the pain in our hearts.
Thank you all so much for your prayers and thoughts.
Love,
Kathy and Scott Asheton”
ULRICH STUNNED THE STOOGES OVERLOOKED FOR HALL OF FAME
2009-01-15 02:45:04 pr-inside.com
METALLICA drummer LARS ULRICH is thrilled with the band's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but shocked fellow nominees, punk icons THE STOOGES were overlooked
The Enter Sandman hitmakers will be honoured with the prestigious musical tribute at the 2009 induction ceremony in April (09).
They will be inducted alongside by English rocker Jeff Beck, hip-hop veterans Run-D.M.C., American singer/song-writer Bobby Womack and R&B group Little Anthony & the Imperials - but Ulrich insists he's holding out for Iggy Pop and his bandmates to get the honour.
He says, "It surprised me. I thought The Stooges would be a shoe in.
Hopefully another year." Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation President & CEO Joel Peresman adds, "There's never a closed door."
Scott (Morgan )on the passing of close friend Ron Asheton:
The first time I saw Ron was opening day at Forsythe Junior High School. He was just in from Davenport, Iowa. That's close to where my father grew up.
When we both decided we were going to be musicians, come hell or high water, that's when we got to know each other better. Everyone thought they had the top card, but in realty it was all just a friendly game of cans (which was a game we used to play with Dave Alexander in the breezeway of Dave's house, throwing empty beer cans in the trash.)
I don't think Ron's loss really hit me at first. I had just spent a quiet evening at his home on Christmas Eve. It was an annual tradition and very pleasant. We would have a holiday spread and a few small sips of his favorite whisky.
Ron loved his cats and even called me from London when he was worried about them. I admired him so much for taking care of Larry Fine in the actors' home. I think we're all in the Three Stooges fan club. We're coming to you're house to break up the joint.
As I've said before I believe Ron, Fred Smith and me were the first to use what I call a five chord. There is no third in it. Well, when we play 1969, Down on the Street, and I Wanna Be Your Dog, I believe the vibrations go straight to the Ashetons' basement.
Powertrane will host a memorial show for Ron:
SAT 02/28/2009 09:30 PM - THE BLIND PIG
208 SOUTH FIRST STREET
ANN ARBOR, Michigan 48104
Description:POWERTRANE HOSTS A TRIBUTE TO RON ASHETON. PROCEEDS TO THE HUMANE SOCIETY. SPECIAL GUESTS TO BE ANNOUNCED. www.blindpigmusic.com 734 996 8555
1.19.09:Hundreds bid Stooges guitarist farewell Legend was 'what punk rock was all about'
One of the best moments of the memorial tribute for Stooges' guitarist Ron Asheton at the Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday night came after several punkish bands had taken the stage and kicked out raw, driving numbers, including Stooges' tunes.
Out on the stage marched Terry Bradley with a set of bagpipes. He wore a plaid kilt and official bagpiper's uniform, and he stood ramrod straight as he piped "MacCrimmon's Lament," a mournful tune whose droning notes filled the auditorium and silenced the partying crowd.
As Bradley piped, video clips projected on the stage's rear wall showed Asheton playing in local bands like Destroy All Monsters and Dark Carnival. One clip showed a man wagging his tongue.
"One of Ron's last wishes was to be piped to the afterlife," Bradley said.
That sometimes strange mélange of images and sounds captured the anarchistic nature of the high-spirited tribute to Asheton, who was found dead of natural causes in his Ann Arbor home Jan. 6. He was 60.
The snowy night and a huge crowd for a monster truck show at nearby Ford Field delayed the arrival of some audience members, who drifted in throughout the evening, many with a drink or two in hand. By the end of the two-hour program, there were more than 200 people in attendance.
"This is one of those situations that Ronnie would have found hysterical," said the emcee, Colonel Galaxy, a local music scene figure. "A blizzard and monster trucks."
Rick Manore, one of the organizers, chuckled at the unrehearsed nature of the evening.
"It's punk rock. It's got to be loose," he said.
While Asheton was not a household name, he was highly influential in the world of rock and cofounded the legendary Stooges in 1967 in Ann Arbor with his brother Scott and Iggy Pop, who did not appear on stage Saturday night.
Led by the writhing, nihilistic Iggy, the Stooges became one of the most important bands to emerge from southeast Michigan. Unlike the hyperkinetic Iggy on stage, Asheton remained relatively still when playing, dressed like an average Joe. He never blew critics away with his virtuosity.
Yet Rolling Stone magazine named Asheton the 29th greatest guitarist of all time. When Asheton died, the Guardian newspaper of London said in an obituary that his "aggressive and elemental guitar playing" was responsible for much of the Stooges' jarring sound.
On Saturday night, musicians and speakers honored Asheton's memory as a pioneer who showed the way for a couple of generations of guitarists.
"Ron Asheton, in my opinion, was what punk rock was all about," said John Holmstrom, editor and founder of the New York-based Punk magazine. "For every punk band I covered in the 1970s, the Stooges were the No. 1 influence."
Ricky Rat, a guitarist for Bootsey X and the Lovemasters, who performed at the tribute, recalled when he first heard the Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Dog."
"You couldn't compare it to anything. Millions of people in the world could play the guitar to 'I Wanna Be Your Dog,' but no one could play it quite like him," he said. "He was just as unique as Jimi Hendrix."
One speaker, Mike Quatro, a well-known Detroit impresario in the 1960s and '70s, noted Iggy, despite his headliner status, was not necessarily the Stooges' boss.
"I remember Ron as the leader," Quatro said. "He signed all the contracts."
At one point, Colonel Galaxy invited audience members to come to the stage and speak. The first taker said he had gone to high school with Asheton, and proceeded to tell a disjointed story that involved Asheton, the State Fairgrounds, Milky the Clown and a chimpanzee.
As the audience hooted and organizers gently tried to convince the man his story was over, he blurted out a nonsensical punch line: "The place got robbed and they wouldn't pay him!"
The next audience member, Gary Jones, an actor who splits his time between Los Angeles and Michigan, talked of how Asheton had acted in a handful of B movies over the past couple of decades, including the 1995 feature "Mosquito," about bugs that feed on the corpses of passengers of an alien spacecraft that lands in a U.S. National Park. Asheton played Hendricks the park ranger.
"He was a really good actor," Jones said. "He would take a long time to get his lines perfect."
Offstage, Jones recalled getting a phone call from Asheton when "Mosquito" was showing on the Sci-Fi Channel.
"He would say, 'I'm watching myself on TV, and I'm looking pretty damn good.' "
Zeit1 have announced the February 10th release of Iggy Pop's "Lust For Life." This DVD was filmed in 1986 when Pop was enjoying a successful period with the release of the Blah Blah Blah album and the hit single Real Wild Child. The film captures Pop on the tour and away from the stage for a series of interviews that cover his career up to that moment in time.
Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton is also interviewed and like Pop goes into detail concerning The Stooges and their perception of why the band split. Filled with exclusive interview and archive footage, some of which has never been seen. This film paints a full picture of one of rock music's enduring talents. Order here from MVD Entertainmenr group.
Private memorial held for Stooges' guitarist Ron Asheton
by Roger LeLievre | The Ann Arbor News
Thursday January 15, 2009, 4:00 PM
A private memorial service attended by family members and close friends of the late Stooges' guitarist Ron Asheton was held Tuesday at Muehlig's Funeral Chapel in Ann Arbor.
Among those attending were Stooges' frontman Iggy Pop; Ron Asheton's brother and Stooges' drummer Scott Asheton; bassist Mike Watt; and saxophonist Steve MacKay, as well as two members of The Stooges' management team.
"Each of us just got up and said a few words. After, we all went to Weber's and had a real nice dinner," said Scott Morgan, a fellow musician and long-time friend of Asheton's. "It was pretty much local except for the band and the band people. There were a lot of close friends, people who always came to Ron's on Christmas Eve."
Asheton was found dead in his Ann Arbor home by police officers on Jan. 6. The cause of death has not been determined, pending completion of toxicology tests that are expected to take nearly a month.
Asheton was a founding member of The Stooges, which formed in Ann Arbor in the 1960s and went on to pioneer the musical style of punk rock, influencing generations of rock musicians. He was ranked at No. 29 on Rolling Stone's list of 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.
Morgan said Pop and other band members gave no indication about the future of The Stooges without Asheton.
"They are still in shock," he said.
A tribute to Asheton will be held Saturday night at the Music Hall for the Performing Arts in downtown Detroit. A local Stooges tribute is planned for late February at the Blind Pig, with details to come, Morgan said.
Family members have asked that donations in memory of Asheton be made to his favorite charity, the Humane Society of Huron Valley. Contributions can be made online at www.hshv.org (click the "Donations" link, and scroll down to the Memorial Honorarium option). Those wishing to donate should list "Ron Asheton" in the "Honoree Name" part of the electronic form.
Meanwhile, The Stooges were again snubbed by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Wednesday. The band has been on the hall's nomination ballot seven times since the mid-1990s, including this year, but has yet to win enough votes to get in.
1.15.09: Due to a large number of questions regarding Ron Asheton’s funeral and possibility of paying respects, please be advised that a private memorial service for Ron Asheton attended by family members and his closest friends was held on January 13th in Ann Arbor. It is the wish of Ron’s Family that in the event anyone wants to honor Ron, donations should be made to his favourite charity - Humane Society (full info www.hshv.org)
There are many ways to make a Memorial donation to the Humane Society of Huron Valley in honor of Ron Asheton. Memorial donations can be made through mail, on the website, or over the phone by dialing Jaci Nicols directly at 734-661-3525. If mailing in a memorial donation, please use the attached form HSHV Memorial & Honor Form and mail or fax to the following:
Humane Society of Huron Valley
3100 Cherry Hill Road
Ann Arbor, MI 48105
Fax: (734) 662-0749
Donations can also be made online by using the Memorial option on the HSHV website. Please use the following link: HSHV Memorial Donation
Those making contributions should list Ron Asheton in the “Honoree Name” section of the electronic form. If the donor would like to notification of the donation sent to a family member or friend of Ron Asheton, they just need to complete the “Notify Someone of Your Gift” Section. They can be notified by email or handwritten card through mail.
1.14.09:Iggy Pop's first interview after Ron Asheton's death with Deminsky and Doyle on Detroit's Classic Rock 94.7 WCSX, listen here.
Detroit Metro Times' Jan. 14 cover story on Ron:James Wiliamson, John Holstrom, Steve Jones, Tommy Ramone, Alice Cooper, Robert Matheu, Angie Bowie, Mike Watt, Chris Wujek (and more)here. Thanks again I-94 Bar.
IGGY POP HAS CONTACTED MOJO to reflect on the life and times of fallen Stooges’ guitarist Ron Asheton, whose death, at the age of 60, was confirmed on January 6.
Speaking to MOJO’s Editor-In-Chief Phil Alexander, the frontman admitted to being overwhelmed by Asheton’s tragic passing.
“It did seem as though he’d always be here,” agreed Iggy on the subject of Ron’s glowering presence. “Although this person was very fragile and I knew it, there was something eternal about him. He also had an eternal guitar style. It wasn’t really American muscle rock. It wasn’t R&B. It was so unique, they had to come up with a different way of describing it.”
Iggy also reflected on his 45-year relationship with Asheton, recalling his desire to form a band with him in the pre-Stooges days.
“I was a big, big fan of his even before he picked up the guitar,” commented Iggy. “I’d seen him play bass and I’d watched the way his fingers moved. He had that scuzzy, slightly ill/sensitive, unencumbered-by-musculature look that all good musicians should have. I thought, This guy would not look or sound out of place in the Stones, Kinks or Pretty Things. This guy’s got something that’s beyond just a local cover band.”
During the course of an hour-long conversation, Iggy also confirmed that he, Ron and drummer Scott Asheton had plans to record a follow-up to 2007’s The Weirdness for which material had already been written.
Iggy’s full tribute to Ron Asheton appears in the next issue of MOJO on sale on January 28.
Phil Alexander
Musical memorial planned for the Stooges' Asheton
Susan Whitall / The Detroit News Article click here.
Ron Asheton of the Stooges will be honored in a gathering of his friends dubbed "Ronnie ...Thanks a Million: An Elegant Farewell to a Beloved Friend" to be held at 9 p.m. Saturday at the Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts.
For more information on the Ron Asheton tribute, go to www.myspace.com/niagaradetroit. There will be a cash bar in the Hall as well as in the Jazz Café. The Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts is at 350 Madison in Detroit. Call (313) 887-8500 or go to www.musichall.org
Rock Hall picks Run-DMC, Metallica, leaves out Iggy Pop
The 2009 class of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees may be just as notable for who is left out than who is going in.
In are rap pioneers Run-DMC, metal kings Metallica, guitarist Jeff Beck, soul singer Bobby Womack and doo-wop group Little Anthony and the Imperials.
Shunned once again are Iggy Pop and the Stooges, the band generally regarded as the prototype for the punk movement. The timing of the announcement is unfortunate coming a week after Stooges' guitarist Ron Asheton was found dead in Ann Arbor, Mich., at the age of 60.
Along with the five new members, rockabilly singer Wanda Jackson is inducted in the early influence category, and the sidemen inductees are session musician Spooner Oldham and two of Elvis Presley's musicians -- drummer D.J. Fontana and bassist Bill Black.
The induction ceremony will be held in Cleveland on April 4.
Last year, Madonna made a plea for Iggy and the Stooges by having them perform at the ceremony, and the year before that Patti Smith and Michael Stipe performed the Stooges' song "I Wanna Be Your Dog."
First published on January 14, 2009 at 3:33 pm
1.11.09: Thanks to all who sent condolences to Ron's family and the band. They were complied and professionally bound
and are on the way to Ann Arbor with Henry Mc Groggan, Iggy's lontgime road manager and Stooges' representative. I would never have been able to do this without the help of the Stooges' representative Ania Marzec, sincere thanks. I did not mention Mike Watt or the crew -- who make the Stooges shows possible -- in my hasty request for codolences, but many of the letters I received rightly did: Jos Grain, Eric Fischer, Rik Hart and Chris Wujek
The global press coverage, personal memories, castinand obituaries continue. Tribute pages are appearing already. Here's the latest.
Sky TV's "From the Basement" will be rebroadcasting their Dec. 17 show featuring Iggy Pop and the Stooges. Times TBA, check here.
RON ASHETON TRIBUTE NIGHT
Niagara and Colonel Galaxy invite friends to pay tribute to the late Stooges guitarist, Ron Asheton as they host, “Ronnie…Thanks A Million”, Saturday, January 17th at 9PM at the historic Music Hall Center For The Performing Arts in downtown Detroit. read more posted by our friend the Barman's website, the I-94 Bar.
He has also started a Ron Ashton tribute page here.
The rock world lost an unsung hero this week with the death at age 60 of Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton. Born in the District, Mr. Asheton had a brutalist style of riffing that created a template for punk rock, as connoisseurs of the genre universally acknowledge. Here are five of the man's musical legatees.
Johnny Ramone - The Ramones formed out of mutual love for the same music; they were the only four guys in Queens who liked the Stooges and the New York Dolls, the late Dee Dee Ramone said. Guitarist Johnny Ramone, in particular, studiously replicated Mr. Asheton's fierce rhythm-guitar attack.
Steve Jones - The Stooges, never big record sellers, had secret admirers on the other side of the Atlantic, too, including the riffmeister of the Sex Pistols. At a 1978 concert that would be their last for decades, the U.K. punks concluded with a cover of the Stooges' "No Fun."
Thurston Moore- For the Sonic Youth noise-punk pioneer, the Stooges "were the perfect embodiment of what music should be." Mr. Moore collaborated with Mr. Asheton on the soundtrack of the 1998 movie "Velvet Goldmine." During the project, he said he appreciated anew "that Asheton swing ... the way he rocked the chord grooves."
Kurt Cobain - The late Nirvana founder once called Stooges frontman Iggy Pop "my total idol." The outsize persona may have belonged to Iggy Pop, but the grinding power chords were Mr. Asheton's.
Jack White - Steeped in blues and classic British rockers such as Led Zeppelin, Detroit's Mr. White was equally inspired by the tonal primitivism and theatricality of hometown heroes the Stooges. Mr. White has cited the band's second LP, 1970's "Fun House," as the greatest rock album ever.
Ron Asheton, whose abrasive and scorching electric guitar work behind singer Iggy Pop in Michigan punk band the Stooges established a model of raw emotion for a succeeding generation of punk, grunge and alternative rockers, has died in Ann Arbor. He was 60.
Ann Arbor police Sgt. Brad Hill says there were no signs of foul play, and Asheton appeared to have died from natural causes. His body was discovered after his personal assistant had been unable to reach him. Police said it appeared he had been dead for several days. Autopsy results are pending.
“That first Stooges album and the second one had a big influence on me,” Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones said Tuesday. “The Stooges albums and the New York Dolls were my blueprint for how to play guitar.”
The Stooges charted a short but influential career from the time the band formed in 1967 until it disbanded seven years later. Like New York’s Velvet Underground, the Stooges had minimal commercial success, but the act's recordings and explosive live performances, during which Pop was known to cut himself, vomit and even defecate on stage, put primal emotion front and center, paving the way for a whole new strain of rock music.
"We really did open up the gate,” Pop said last year, “and through that gate came rats, scorpions and all sorts of things."
Ron and his drummer brother Scott Asheton reunited with Pop in 2003, with bassist Mike Watt from the Minutemen and Firehose taking over for the Stooges original bassist Dave Alexander, who died in 1975.
The Stooges’ reunion performance at the 2003 Coachella Valley Arts & Music Festival in Indio became one of the highlights of the event, and last year they released their first album in 24 years, “The Weirdness.”
“In many ways Ron was the heart of the Stooges, and the Stooges were the creators of punk rock,” Paul Trynka, author of the 2007 biography “Iggy Pop: Open Up and Bleed, said Tuesday. “If you don’t understand Ron, you don’t understand the Stooges, and if you don’t understand the Stooges, you don’t understand punk rock.”
Asheton, who was born in Washington D.C. and went to Ann Arbor High School with Pop, then using his given name Jim Osterberg, had played in a variety of bands between his stints with the Stooges, none of them capturing significant attention.
"I've always had a band, not to much success, but I've always kept my hand in,” Ron Asheton said in an interview last summer. “And it's great to have people say 'I never thought I'd get to see the Stooges.' "
-Randy Lewis
Stooges guitarist was a punk inspiration
Lynne Saxberg, Canwest News Service (nationalpost.com, Canada) Published: Thursday, January 08, 2009
Matthew Peyton, Getty Images For Virgin Records
Hours after the Stooges' guitarist Ron Asheton was found dead in his Ann Arbor, Mich., home on Tuesday, a message went up on Iggy Pop's website, iggypop.org: "I am in shock," the singer is quoted as saying. "He was my best friend."
Asheton's death comes at the start of a year in which the Stooges have another shot at being inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. The quintessential Detroit garage band is one of nine acts on the 2009 Hall of Fame ballot, their sixth nomination. The successful candidates are expected to be announced this month.
If the voting goes their way, it would be a triumph for a band often maligned for Pop's vulgar antics. The wiry front-man was known for performing smeared in blood or peanut butter, or exposing himself onstage.
In the 1960s, Pop originally envisioned the Stooges playing a mutated form of blues. He recruited Asheton, his drum-bashing brother, Scott, and bassist Dave Alexander to round out the lineup. The late, legendary rock critic Lester Bangs, an early supporter, wrote that they formed the band before they actually knew how to play.
"None of them have been playing their instruments for more than two or three years, but that's good," Bangs wrote in a 1970 review of the Stooges' seminal FunHouse album. "Now they won't have to unlearn any of the stuff which ruins so many other promising young musicians: flash blues, folk-pickin', Wes Montgomery-style jazz, etc. F---that, said Asheton and Alexander, we can't play it anyway, so why bother trying to learn?"
Though often overshadowed by Pop's behaviour, Asheton's greasy, over-amplified guitar work stuck out like a sore thumb in the psychedelic climate of the late 1960s. His electric guitar was a defining feature of the band's first two albums, but Pop forced Asheton to switch to bass on the third, Raw Power.
None of the albums sold well, and the Stooges broke up in 1974, with Pop spiralling into heroin addiction. Asheton went on to other pursuits, including forming his own short-lived band, The New Order, and acting in a series of low-budget horror films.
Ronald Frank Asheton was born in Ann Arbor on July 17, 1948. In Michael Dean's 2002 indie documentary, D. I. Y. or Die: How to Survive as an Independent Artist, Asheton tells how he caught the performing bug after a family visit to an amusement park. Because he knew the words to the Davey Crockett theme song, a park minstrel invited a young Asheton to sing with him. Life was never the same, Asheton recalled.
"I remember lying in bed at 10 or 12, going 'I don't want to go to college, I don't want to get a job, I don't want to have family, I don't want kids. I just can't do that.' Even then I knew I didn't want to do that. I was always worried about what would happen, how it would come to be that I wouldn't have to be a normal person," he said.
Over the years, it became clear that Asheton's playing with the Stooges was well ahead of its time. The list of acts who drew from his influence includes such heavy hitters as the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, Nirvana and the White Stripes. He's considered one of the architects of punk rock.
In 2003, Rolling Stone named Asheton the 29th greatest guitarist of all time. The same year, the Stooges reunited with a drug-free Pop and played a series of concerts, finding a new generation of Stooges fans hungry for the music. The band even wrote and recorded a new album, The Weirdness, which came out in 2007. Having a decent crop of new tunes, coupled with the newfound respect of fans, meant the band's prospects were brighter than ever.
In a message on the band's website, members recalled Asheton as a great friend, brother and musician, describing him as "irreplaceable."
"For all that knew him, behind the facade of Mr. Cool & Quirky was a kind-hearted, genuine, warm person who always believed that people meant well even if they did not," the band's statement said. "As a musician, Ron was The Guitar God, idol to follow and inspire others. That is how he will be remembered by people who had the great pleasure to work with him, learn from him and share good and bad times with him.
Stooges Guitarist Ron Asheton Found Dead In Michigan Home
Cause of death is still unknown for guitarist, who founded Stooges with Iggy Pop in 1967.
By James Montgomery, mtv.com
Jan 6 2009 11:46 AM EST
Ron Asheton, an original member of influential proto-punks the Stooges, was found dead in his Ann Arbor, Michigan, home early Tuesday morning (January 6). He was 60 years old.
According to The Ann Arbor News, Asheton's personal assistant contacted police late Monday after being unable to reach him for days. When officers arrived at Asheton's home, they found his body on a living-room couch. He appeared to have been dead for at least several days. Detectives told the newspaper that the cause of death is undetermined, but that investigators do not suspect foul play. Autopsy and toxicology results are pending.
Asheton played guitar and bass in the Stooges, which he formed in Ann Arbor in 1967 with frontman Iggy Pop, Ron's brother Scott on drums and bassist Dave Alexander. Asheton's signature skuzzy riffs can be heard on such classic tracks as "I Wanna Be Your Dog" and "Down the Street," from the Stooges' first two albums (1969's self-titled debut and 1970's Fun House). He switched to bass for the band's third album, Raw Power, in 1973, after Alexander was fired from the group.
Though none of the Stooges' three albums could have even charitably been considered commercial successes when they were first released, they are today considered touchstones of raw, sludgy rock, hugely influential on the punk, metal and alternative genres that would break through to the mainstream in the decades that followed. And the band's frantic, primitive live shows — which sometimes featured Pop cutting himself with shards of glass and diving headfirst into the audience — toed the line between performance art and out-and-out brutality, setting the guidelines for the mosh-pit heroics of basically every hard-rock act of the past 30 years.
After Power, Asheton left the Stooges and played in a series of bands, including the New Order and Destroy All Monsters. In 2003, he reunited with his brother Scott and bassist Mike Watt to play on Pop's solo album, Skull Ring. That same year, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him at number 29 on their 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time list.
In 2005, the Stooges reunited — with Watt once again on bass — to play a series of U.K. festival gigs. Then in 2007, they released their first album of new material in nearly 35 years, The Weirdness. They promoted the album with a lengthy tour, including raucous stops at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin and Lollapalooza in Chicago.
In September, the Stooges were nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, alongside acts like Run-DMC and Metallica. Inductees will be announced later this month.
Ron Asheton, a guitarist of the Michigan proto-punk band the Stooges, and the guiding hand of some of the most simple, satisfying and copied riffs in rock ’n’ roll, including “TV Eye,” “Down on the Street” and “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” was found dead on Tuesday at his home in Ann Arbor, Mich. He was 60.
Police officers found his body after a friend alerted them that Mr. Asheton had not been seen for several days, said the Stooges’ publicist, Angelica Cob-Baehler. A coroner’s report from the Washtenaw County Medical Examiner’s office was not yet available; Sgt. Brad Hill of the Ann Arbor police department said that foul play was not suspected.
Mr. Asheton, whose friendly if sardonic personality seemed the opposite of his loud and dirty guitar playing, lived in the house he had originally moved to with his family in 1963, and where the Stooges had their first basement rehearsals.
Three high school friends in Ann Arbor — Mr. Asheton; his drummer brother, Scott; and the singer James Osterberg, who later changed his name to Iggy Pop — formed the nucleus of what was first called the Psychedelic Stooges. Influenced by free jazz, garage rock and Chicago blues, the Stooges’ first two albums — “The Stooges” and “Fun House” — are the best showcase of Mr. Asheton’s sound: two- or three-chord riffs with an open, droning, low E string and solos filtered through distortion and wah-wah pedals.
After the high point of “Fun House,” things became more complicated. The bassist, Dave Alexander, was fired, and the band was dropped by its label, Elektra. Iggy Pop, individually, was signed by David Bowie’s production company, MainMan. A new guitarist and songwriter, James Williamson, joined the group. On “Raw Power,” the band’s final studio album, Mr. Asheton was demoted to playing bass.
The Stooges lasted from 1967 to 1974. Having progressed from a noisy, anarchic joke to a great, confrontational rock band and back to a joke, the members were broke and addicted to heroin, except for Mr. Asheton, who increasingly took responsibility for holding the band together from day to day.
In their early 1970s heyday, the Stooges were one of punk rock's archetypal bands, creating music that was to inspire and influence several generations of younger groups in America and Britain. Most attention was focused on the charismatic lead singer, Iggy Pop, but the band's sound owed just as much to the aggressive and elemental guitar playing of Ron Asheton, who has died aged 60. Paying tribute to Asheton, Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols said that the early Stooges albums had provided him with a blueprint for playing guitar.
Asheton was born in Washington DC but moved to the college town of Ann Arbor, Michigan, as a child. He and his younger brother, Scott, attended Pioneer high school there and soon became involved in the town's thriving rock music scene. At 17, he became the bass player with local groups the Prime Movers and the Chosen Few, and met James Osterberg, who had recently adopted the stage name Iggy Pop.
Pop soon left in search of a career as a blues drummer in Chicago, but according to Asheton, he abandoned this goal in 1967 and called him to suggest they form a band along with Scott, who by then was a promising drummer. With the addition of bass player Dave Alexander, the trio formed the Psychedelic Stooges, playing their first gig at a Halloween party.
Shortening their name to the Stooges, they were championed by Detroit rock magazine Creem and were given a recording contract with an advance of $25,000 by Elektra Records, which had recently signed another local band, the MC5. John Cale of the Velvet Underground produced the eponymous debut album, which accurately reflected the group's live sound on songs such as No Fun, Down on the Street and I Wanna Be Your Dog, a track that one critic said had "given birth to 50,000 bands".
The album was critically acclaimed but sold poorly, as did the next album, Fun House. The Stooges were inactive for a large part of 1971 and 1972 as Pop recovered from drug addiction. They re-formed, partly at the insistence of David Bowie, whose manager Tony de Fries undertook to find them a new record contract. With the addition of guitarist James Williamson, the Stooges played their first show outside America at the King's Cross cinema (now the Scala) in London and recorded a new album. Asheton reverted to playing bass, with Williamson taking the lead guitar role on Raw Power, which was produced by Bowie and issued in 1973.
Like its predecessors, Raw Power was a commercial failure, and in 1974 the Stooges disbanded. While Pop teamed up with Bowie and followed a solo career, Asheton formed the group Destroy All Monsters with former MC5 member Michael Davis. His later groups included the New Order and Dark Carnival.
In the 1980s and 90s, Asheton had little financial reward from his music, claiming in an interview that he often played for only $15 a night. Rolling Stone magazine rated him the 29th most important guitarist in popular music - describing him as "the Detroit punk who made the Stooges' music reek like a puddle of week-old biker sweat" - and he enjoyed the growing recognition of his influential place in the punk pantheon, especially in Europe. He told an interviewer in 2007: "It's great to be able to play in front of an audience that knows the lyrics to your songs."
His career began to revive in 1998 when he contributed music to Velvet Goldmine, a film celebrating the glam rock era. Two years later he, his brother and the bass player Mike Watt - replacing Alexander, who died in 1975 - recreated the original Stooges sound in a series of concerts.
Pop attended one show and suggested a Stooges reunion. The first shows were staged in 2003, after which the Stooges recorded a new album, The Weirdness - which, like the earlier albums, did not sell well - and toured several times, memorably performing at the 2007 Glastonbury festival.
Asheton's body was found at his Ann Arbor home. The cause of death was unknown, but unconfirmed reports said he had been dead for several days.
He is survived by Scott.
• Ronald Franklin Asheton Jr, guitarist, born 17 July 1948; died 6 January 2009
Mike Watt, bassist for punk groups the Minutemen and Firehose, was invited in 2003 by Iggy Pop to join the Stooges when the seminal Michigan band reunited for its first performance in nearly 30 years at the Coachella Valley Arts & Music Festival. He continued to perform and record as a Stooge for the next 5 1/2 years alongside founding members Ron Asheton, the guitarist who was found dead this week at age 60; his brother, drummer Scott Asheton; and saxophonist Steve Mackay. Watt spoke Tuesday to The Times' Randy Lewis about being in the band with Ron Asheton. What follows is Watt's remembrance of his close friend and colleague.
As a musician, he was a pioneer -- very singular, very unique. To get to be onstage with him was incredible for me. We all looked up to Ronnie with that guitar sound. Man, it was a sound, but especially in those days in the early '70s. Most people at my high school, they didn't like that sound. They were like, "You like them?" We took a lot of [flak] for liking them in a way.
Then the punk scene comes, and the Stooges was the common ground. That scene, which was not very popular here in Southern California, was just all these different weirdos from different places. The one thing in common was the Stooges. It was kind of anti-arena rock -- more like Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard than what was happening in the '70s. I can't even imagine our scene without that band.
And then I get to play with these cats. So much stuff comes third-, fourth- and fifth-hand, but I got to go right to the source. I was born in '57, so I was 10 years behind them. I'd never been in the little brother role before, but especially being around these guys, my ears grew to the size of elephants' and became like sponges -- I just wanted to absorb everything.
In 1997, I got to make an album with him in a group called the Wylde Rattz, which had a song on the soundtrack for "Velvet Goldmine." We did a whole album, but then London Records folded and it never came out. The song came out in the movie, but that's when I actually got to spend a bunch of time with him in the studio.
In 2000, J Mascis [of Dinosaur Jr.] asked me to go out on tour with him -- after I almost died from an infection and used Stooges songs to get strong again -- and sing some Stooges songs with him in a project called J Mascis -- the Fog. When we got to Ann Arbor, he says, "You know Ronnie, right?" I called him and he came down to jam and then ended up touring with us.
He'd come to see me in my band, whenever I was in Ann Arbor. Ronnie was up on stuff because he was in a bunch of bands: Dark Carnival, Destroy All Monsters. After the thing with J and later with Scotty as Asheton, Asheton, Mascis and Watt, this is when Ig called him and his brother to do a few songs for "Skull Ring" [Pop's 2003 solo album].
I was on tour at the time in Tallahassee, Fla., and I get this call. It's Ig, and he says, "Ronnie says you're the man." He said, "They're gonna get the Stooges back together for Coachella. Can you wear a T-shirt? I know you like those flannels." I said, "How about Levi's and Converse?"
It was a mind blow. Them songs had been living in my head for all those years, so I would just stand there onstage and stare at them. I had to struggle to keep focused because I was just like one of the gig-goers, but I've got this bass on.
I felt deep in my heart I owed these guys the best notes I could ever play. Still, when I think about it, it seems impossible that life had put me in this situation. I would think of D. Boon [the Minuteman singer-guitarist who died in 1985] just up there laughing. "I'm playing with the Stooges!" and he'd say "Shut . . . up!"
On the last tour, Ig gave me a 16-bar bass solo in "Little Electric Chair." I played with D. Boon and he would get all trebly and chicken-pluck and leave all this room for me, and I'd play a lot of stuff up high on the neck. It sounded really lame, but then Ronnie helped me construct a solo down in the low end one day on tour in Slovakia and that fit really well. The Stooges taught me about being a bass player when it was time to record "The Weirdness" album. Ig said, "Mike, I want you to get in touch with your stupid side."
I just feel so indebted to them, as musicians and as people too. They were so kind to me. They knew about a lot of stuff. Maybe because of the name the Stooges people didn't know that, but Ronnie was a lot about history, Scotty about nature, Iggy about culture, Steve Mackay about politics. And they listened a lot too.
They told me they got "Little Doll" from Pharoah Sanders. "Fun House" is actually their take on James Brown. Ig said, " 'Shake Appeal,' that's me doing Little Richard." All these trippy things, as though they invented this whole thing -- and they did, their way, but they also were in touch with a lot of the stuff that happened before them.
I'm going to get more intense with my work, my music. That's what I was thinking when I paddled out today. I went in the kayak after somebody told me they found him. I'm in San Pedro Harbor and I'm always running or kayaking.
This is going to push me with music ever more. It's a shame it takes something like this to do that, but I know all the playing with him has rubbed off on me big time.
I loved being his bass player.
STEPPING INTO HISTORY: Bassist Mike Watt, left, jams onstage with Stooges band mate Ron Asheton in 2004. Credit: Peter Whitfield.
IN APPRECIATION
Ron Asheton: The godfather of punk guitar
By Greg Kot, Tribune critic chicagotribune.com
January 7, 2009
(thanks Mud from Chicago)
The godfather of punk guitar, Ron Asheton of the Stooges, was found dead Tuesday in his Ann Arbor, Mich., home.
Asheton, 60, had not been heard from for a few days, and the guitarist's personal assistant called police to Asheton's home to check on him. An investigation continues, but police do not suspect foul play.
The Stooges emerged in 1967 out of Ann Arbor with Iggy Pop (a.k.a. Jim Osterberg) on vocals, Asheton on guitar and his younger brother, Scott Asheton, on drums. Dave Alexander played bass. The band fused experimental techniques, including the use of amplified oil drums and blenders as percussion devices, with Pop's charismatic stage presence and Ron Asheton's driving guitar to create a dynamic, divisive new sound. The quartet was never commercially successful, but its live shows achieved legendary status, and their first three studio albums—"The Stooges" (1969), "Fun House" (1970) and the David Bowie-produced "Raw Power" (1973)—are now regarded as blueprints for punk, post-punk and alternative rock.
Asheton and the rest of the band came from blue-collar families. He played accordion as a child but picked up the guitar at age 10 and was playing in bar bands around Michigan when he formed the Stooges with Pop while still a teenager.
"We were outsiders in this college town," Asheton recalled in a 2007 Tribune interview. "The frat boys would throw cans at us when we were walking down the street—way before we even got onstage people were throwing stuff at us. We would go into restaurants and not be served because of the way we looked. [Pop and the Asheton brothers] were like the real 'Three Stooges,' hence I came up with the name 'Stooges,' and we just added acid, so at first we were the Psychedelic Stooges."
The band reveled in free-form concerts and never formally wrote songs until it was signed to a record deal and went into the studio in 1969 with Velvet Underground founder John Cale to make its first album.
"We go in, and we start to record, and we're used to playing how we like to play, which is through a Marshall stack set on '10,' and the engineer says, 'Fellas, you don't do that,' " Asheton said. "So we had a little sit-down strike where we actually did go into the vocal booth and sat on the floor. Then Iggy brokered a compromise. We could set the amps on '9.' So we turned down a little bit. After that it was fine."
That album produced classic songs such as "I Wanna Be Your Dog" and "No Fun." A 1970 follow-up, "Fun House," was named after the Stooges' hangout in Ann Arbor and added free jazz solos inspired by John Coltrane and a funkier beat borrowed from James Brown.
"You take a little of the truth from everyone and mix it with a little bit of your blood, and it comes out with your music," Asheton said.
His iconic riffs were the basis for many of the band's best-loved songs. He played in a simplified style that cut against the grain of the guitar-god era, when long blues-based solos were the standard by which musicians were judged. Yet a few years ago he was ranked among the top guitar players of all time in a Rolling Stone magazine poll.
"Everyone thinks it's really simple: 'Hey, it's three chords. I can do that,' " Asheton once said with a laugh. "It's not true. A song like 'TV Eye' sounds simple, but it's that groove, and I've never seen anybody else hit it. Even with Iggy when I've seen him in his bands as a solo artist, he does Stooges songs, it's not the same."
The feeling was apparently mutual. After the band broke up acrimoniously in the mid-'70s, Pop went on to a long solo career. But he sought out the Ashetons a few years ago and reformed the Stooges, with Mike Watt taking over on bass for the late Alexander.
The punk-era bands kept the Stooges' legacy alive, and when the original trio started playing reunion concerts with Watt in 2003 they were hailed as icons. In 2006 they came to Chicago to record a fourth studio album, "The Weirdness," with Steve Albini engineering. The next year, the band played a triumphant show in Grant Park at Lollapalooza, joined by hundreds of fans dancing madly on stage while Pop exhorted them and Asheton hammered out chords that had become a permanent part of punk's DNA.
The guitarist was thrilled by the response, a dramatic turnaround from the reaction the band usually received in its first incarnation.
"We'd go to places like the Boston Tea Party where we opened for Ten Years After, and we finished our first two songs, and there's like four people applauding in the whole club, and that's our fan club president and her vice president, secretary, whatever," he said. "And everybody else is booing. That was part of the fun. To get any reaction that strong out of somebody was cool. But now it really is great to go and play and have the crowd know the songs, totally love it, enjoy it. It feels like we're being vindicated."
1.7.09:Ron Asheton July 17, 1948 - January 6, 2009
Such sad news to start the new year, the death of Iggy and the Stooges' guitarist, Ron Asheton, found deceased by Ann Arbor police in his house Jan 6th. His longtime personal assistant, Dara Hytinen let them in with her key, after contacting them, concerned that no one had heard from him in a few days. It is now thought that he died of natural causes, autopsy results pending toxicology reports. See the official statement on the front page of this site.
I ditched work today, I am not ready for prime time. I couldn't bring myself to do much more than post the official statement yesterday and read mail about all of this. My site had more visitors than it ever has, far surpassing even the Stooges reunion. I'll gather all the press about this sad event today, the breadth of which is truly astounding. The autopsy won't be final until the toxicology reports come in. I will forward any info about funeral services -- to what extent they will be public -- here and if you want to send letters of condolence I will forward them to management.
Condolence letters to Scott, Kathy and Iggy will be printed out
Saturday and taken to Michigan Sunday by Henry McGroggan, their
representative and hand delivered. Send them here.
Famed rock-and-roll guitarist and longtime Ann Arbor resident Ronald "Ron" Asheton was found dead in his home on the city's west side this morning, police said.
Asheton, 60, was an original member of The Stooges, a garage-rock band headlined by Iggy Pop and formed in Ann Arbor in 1967.
Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton was found dead early today in his Ann Arbor home.
His personal assistant contacted police late Monday night after being unable to reach Asheton for days, Detective Bill Stanford said. Officers went to the home on Highlake Avenue at around midnight and discovered Asheton's body on a living-room couch. He appeared to have been dead for at least several days, Stanford said.
Detective Sgt. Jim Stephenson said the cause of death is undetermined but investigators do not suspect foul play. Autopsy and toxicology results are pending.
Asheton was born in Washington, D.C. His brother, Scott, who lives in Florida, is the band's drummer. In 2007, The Stooges reunited and released "The Weirdness," their first album in three decades.
Asked how it felt to be back with The Stooges, Asheton told The News in an interview that year that it was "great to be back on the road."
The Stooges were part of a 1960s music scene in Ann Arbor that included such bands as the MC5, Bob Seger, Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, and The Rationals.
Art Aisner can be reached at aaisner@annarbornews.com or by phone at 734-994-6823.
Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton found dead The Stooges
Guitarist's body undiscovered at home 'for several days' say police
Jan 6, 2009 NME.com
Ron Asheton, the guitarist and bassist with The Stooges, has been found dead today (January 6). He was 60.
Asheton was found at his home in Ann Arbor this morning, according to police.
A cause of death is yet to be confirmed, although initial reports suggest that Asheton died of a heart attack.
Detective Sgt Jim Stephenson told local paper Ann Arbor News that foul play is not suspected. He added that Asheton's body was found on a living-room sofa, and that he appeared to have been dead for at least several days.
Autopsy and toxicology results are pending.
Asheton was a founder member of The Stooges, along with his brother (and drummer) Scott Asheton, Dave Alexander (bass) and frontman Iggy Pop.
Ranked as Number 29 on Rolling Stone's '100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time', Asheton played the seminal riffs on Stooges' classics including 'No Fun', 'Down On The Street', and 'I Wanna Be Your Dog'. He switched to the bass guitar for The Stooges third album, 'Raw Power' (1973).
After the commercial failure of 'Raw Power', Asheton left The Stooges and played in a series of bands including The New Order (not to be confused with the UK band of the same name), and Destroy All Monsters.
He later recorded a number of tracks for 1998's cinematic paean to glam rock, 'Velvet Goldmine', along with Mudhoney's Mark Arm, The Minutemen's Mike Watt, Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and Steve Shelley.
In 2000, Asheton, along with his brother Scott and the aforementioned Mike Watt, began playing shows together. The band were dubbed 'The New Stooges' by fans, and after Iggy Pop saw them perform, the four decided to reform The Stooges properly.
The Stooges played their first reunited show in 2003, and went on to release an album of new material ('The Weirdness') in 2007, with Asheton restored to lead guitar duties.
We've picked out Asheton's five greatest riffs on the NME Office Blog.
You can also view our photo tribute to Asheton at NME.COM/PHOTOS.
Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton found dead in Ann Arbor home
January 6, 2009
BY STEVE BYRNE AND BRIAN McCOLLUM
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS
The world didn’t always give Ron Asheton his proper dues. But the Stooges guitarist certainly paid his dues to the world, helping transform the sound of rock music.
Fans and fellow musicians are mourning the death of Asheton, who was found dead early Tuesday at his home in Ann Arbor. The death remains under investigation, though foul play is not suspected, said Ann Arbor Police Sgt. Brad Hill.
Asheton was 60.
“I am in shock,” said Stooges singer Iggy Pop. “He was my best friend.”
Ann Arbor police had taken a call from a friend of Asheton, who said he had not heard from the guitarist in a few days. Police entered Asheton’s home and found his body.
As a musician, Asheton was no technical virtuoso, and his career never brought him a glittery celebrity life. But his electric guitar work, which was the starting point for most of the Stooges’ songwriting, was widely influential within hard rock and punk music.
With his brother Scott Asheton on drums and local wild kid Iggy Pop on vocals, Asheton cofounded the Stooges in his parents’ Ann Arbor basement in 1967. The raucous group went on to become an area sensation, making its name at venues such as Detroit’s Grande Ballroom.
The Stooges, who reunited earlier this decade, are widely recognized as one of the most important rock acts to have emerged from the Detroit scene. The group found little commercial or critical success during its initial run with Elektra Records. But by the time the Stooges disintegrated in the early ’70s amid infighting and drugs, its primal sound — with Asheton’s droning, guttural riffs at the core — had helped etch the template for punk rock. The band’s body of work later proved hugely influential during the alternative-rock revolution of the 1990s.
Early Stooges classics such as “I Wanna Be Your Dog” were cited by guitarists as varied as Kurt Cobain, Thurston Moore and fellow Michigan rocker Jack White — who once called the Stooges’ 1969 album “Fun House” the greatest rock album ever. In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine named Asheton the 29th greatest rock guitarist of all time.
He made the “Stooges’ music reek like a puddle of week-old biker sweat,” the magazine wrote. “He favored black leather and German iron crosses onstage, and he never let not really knowing how to play get in the way of a big, ugly feedback solo.”
Asheton’s post-Stooges career in the 1970s included stints with the bands the New Order and Destroy All Monsters, where he played with members of the MC5. His real comeback came in 2003, when the Stooges reunited for a series of shows and wound up as a regular touring act. In 2007 the group released “The Weirdness,” its first new album in three decades.
In a statement issued Tuesday, the surviving Stooges paid homage to a “great friend, brother, musician, trooper.”
“For all that knew him behind the facade of Mr. Cool & Quirky, he was a kindhearted, genuine, warm person who always believed that people meant well even if they did not,” read the statement.
The Stooges’ future is now unclear, though a single word in the band’s tribute statement — “irreplaceable” — provides a possible hint.
Von Bondies guitarist Jason Stollsteimer, 30, is among a younger generation of rock musicians who soaked up Asheton’s influence.
“To me, he was the epitome of raw punk,” said Stollsteimer. “He wasn’t flashy or over the top. It was raw. The riffs he wrote stood the test of time.”
Stollsteimer’s band opened for the Stooges at a 2003 homecoming show at DTE Energy Music Theatre. It was a triumphant reunion that brought the Stooges a level of attention and respect they hadn’t previously enjoyed.
“He was like a kid in a candy store, just so excited,” Stollsteimer recalled of that night. “He wasn’t afraid to show it. Some people are too cool, but he was obviously very happy and proud.”
The Stooges have been regular nominees for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame the past decade, but have yet to triumph in the final round of voting. Amid a growing outcry about the band’s rejection, many music insiders expect this to be the band’s year. The 2009 inductees list will likely be released later this month.
In a 2003 interview with the Free Press, Asheton said he got great satisfaction from the recognition the Stooges had begun to receive — even if it was a long time coming.
“When I was a young guy coming up, going to the Grande Ballroom every weekend, I got to see my heroes play. Jeff Beck, the Who, everyone. I didn’t want to be a fanboy, but I’d stand there and wait — ‘I just want to say hi, this was great.’ I saw them walk by me with blank stares like they were zombies. I said to myself, you know, if I ever make it, I’ve got at least one minute for everybody who wants to say something. So I talk to people, and that’s what’s exciting now.”
Staff Writer Lateshia Dowell contributed to this report.
Ron Asheton: 1948-2009
Gigwise remembers the legendary Stooges guitarist...
byJamie Bowman
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Photo by: wenn
“We invented some instruments that we used that first show. We had a blender with a little bit of water in it and put a mike right down onto it and just turned it on. We played that for like 15 minutes before we went on stage. It was a great sound, especially going through the PA all cranked up. Then we had a washboard with contact mikes and Iggy would put on golf shoes and kind of shuffle around.” Ron Asheton of the Stooges in 'Please Kill Me'.
In a week where the UK’s TV viewers have been treated to Iggy Pop’s shameful selling of insurance, the news of fellow Stooge Ron Asheton’s tragic death comes as a further, yet far more upsetting occurrence for those who hold the Stooges as a totem of all that is pure, simple and true in rock n roll.
Asheton who has died of a suspected heart attack aged 60, was a founder member of The Stooges. A man of simple pleasures who loved playing the accordion and obsessed about the Beatles, he nevertheless created a a blistering guitar sound that came to define and mirror punk attitude 10 years before his snotty English disciples sold it to the world.
Emerging from Detroit, their early shows supporting the MC5 created a perfect storm of primitive rebellion it’s hard to even imagine these days. Signing to Elektra Records in 1968, their John Cale produced debut still stands as one of the 20th Century’s truly wonderful works of art. Decamping to New York in June 1969, they recorded the songs from their seven month old live set. Recording took two days.
If you want to know all about Ron Asheton try digesting this: in that one night between sessions Ron came up with the riffs for two additional new songs Not Right and Real Cool Time. A day later and the perfect album was hatched: angry, fucked up, sexy as hell, today it still burns with a fire that few bands have even imagined in their widest dreams. This album will brand itself onto your soul and kick your ass down the stairs. Believe.
Asheton’s sullen, malevolent wah-wah underpins the whole thing with a devilish menace and slabs of noise like 1969, I Wanna Be Your Dog and No Fun are now rightly seen as standards. Check out the bit during the stuttering clatter of No Fun when Iggy cajoles Asheton to let rip with a yelped “C’mon Ron!...C’mon Ronnie” and Asheton spits out a molten spurt of fuzz so ugly it’ll knock you sideways. Beautiful.
1970’s Fun House saw the Stooges further animate both mind and body with an album so loose it seemed to mix James Brown’s tight pants funk with the Stones low slung sleaze to create a whole new synapse in your brain – one where normal human tasks became constricting chains and paranoia was the place to be. Smeared all over it like radioactive slime was Asheton’s stratocaster. Ron’s guitar playing here and throughout the entire album is like none other on record. You’d be hard-pressed to find any semblance of comparison with any other guitarist who preceded him. There really is no guitarist like Ron Asheton, and never will be again, ever. On Fun House, Ron laid down the solos in real time, overdubbing the rhythms afterwards!
Perhaps true believer Lester Bangs summed it up best “The Stooges carry a strong element of sickness in their music, a crazed quaking uncertainty and errant foolishness that effectively mirrors the absurdity and desperation of the times, but I believe that they also carry a strong element of cure, of post-derangement sanity."
It was Ron that gave them this “crazed, quaking uncertainty”. Iggy meanwhile described him as “basically a thug”.
Matthew Peyton, Getty Images For Virgin Records
