Iggy Pop's arrival on stage at 9pm on Saturday night in front of a crowd of 3000 fans was electrifying. The crowd was all ages, from teenagers up to fans in their 70s. Almost every single leftfield and punk band t- shirt you can think of was being worn somewhere in the building. His band filed onstage, two guitarists, a drummer bassist, keyboard player and two piece horn section, and then Iggy appeared to a roar from the crowd. By the time he'd reached the microphone stand he'd ripped his waistcoat off and was topless. The band then careered into TV Eye from the 1970 Stooges album Funhouse. TV Eye is reduced, mechanised rock 'n' roll, the 60s rock dream brutalised and moved to Detroit, Iggy boiling his lyrics down to just two phrases, 'see that cat', and 'she got a TV eye on me'.
Iggy Pop is 78 years old. Occasionally he sat on a stool for a few seconds between songs but for most of the ninety minute set he prowled and worked the stage, his voice sounding great, strong and growly, leading the band through a 20 song set that was exactly what you'd want him to play. Iggy knows what his back catalogue should sound like and this band played them as they should be played- plenty of late 60s and early 70s punk rock menace, with that groove that The Stooges had, and the horns adding the free jazz element. When not singing he works the crowd, standing at the front of the stage, slightly lopsided due to the decades of physical abuse he's put his body through, waving his arms, pointing at people in the crowd. There isn't much chat between songs- 'fucking Mancunians' he says approvingly at one point, and he introduces Some Weird Sin by saying it's 'time for some poetry'.
The Victoria Warehouse is a large brick hall. People have been critical of it as a venue in the past- the security for being over the top, the sound being muffled, it being oversold- but there are no issues tonight, its a seething mass of Iggy Pop fans. In front of me a 20- something couple dance and bounce around, clearly having the night of their lives. Beer is flung across the crowd, there are some crowd surfers- gigs can sometimes be very sanitised affairs these days- the mayhem around us is a joy to behold and as the gig goes on it gets hotter and hotter. I didn't go to the bar once during the gig. There was no way I was going to miss any of what was going on and carrying three drinks back through the crowd without spilling them would have been risky (especially at £8 a pint).
The first half of the set is sensational, one classic after another, a steam train of proto- punk and 70s rock, Iggy blasting through them with the energy of a man half or a third of his age. TV Eye is followed by Raw Power, then I Got A Right and Gimme Danger slowing things down a little. Five songs in he plays The Passenger and follows it with Lust For Life- that's two of his best and best known songs played in the first 20 minutes. Lust For Life is spectacular, the drums swinging and guitars punching, Iggy at full throttle. Then Death Trip and Loose (those horns really adding to the Funhouse songs) and I Wanna Be Your Dog, the audience chanting the chorus back at him. During the guitar solo he hurls his microphone stand across the stage and at the end of the song asks, 'where's my fucking microphone stand'.
By this point I'm a mess. It's hot, my shirt and jacket are stuck to me, I'm dancing around, Iggy is twenty feet in front of us, the sound is loud and punchy, the band sound superb, he's playing all the songs we want to hear. After the crowd pleasing, ecstatic thump of Lust For Life he plays Search And Destroy, the ghost of James Williamson's squealing guitar re- animated, Iggy's Vietnam stream of consciousness unfurling, those lines about being a streetwalking cheetah with a heart full of napalm and of love in the middle of a firefight spat out in that gravelly tone. Iggy plays the crowd- at one point a girl in front of us is up on her boyfriend's shoulders, phone in hand. Iggy spots her, head and shoulders above the crowd, a girl young enough to be his grand daughter, points straight at her and sticks his tongue out.
He goes into a few deeper cuts- Down On The Street, 1970 with a wailing free jazz trumpet, Iggy telling us that the song is what it was like to be alive 55 years ago, I'm Sick Of You and Some Weird Sin. It's high octane and exhilerating stuff, genuinely life affirming despite all the nihilism of the songs, Iggy as Godfather of Punk, the originator, last man standing, still there, giving it his all, 2 years short of 80. It slows down a little for the last 20 minutes. He plays Frenzy (from 2022, a song that starts with the line 'I got a dick and 2 balls, that's more than you all'), the song ending with a full band freak out, drummer thumping round the kit, guitars howling, horns blaring and out of this cacophony the drum machine lurch of Nightclubbing emerges, Iggy back to the front of the stage, singing his 1977 song about Bowie and the cool crowd, numbed out in West Berlin. Nightclubbing doesn't stick around for long and Iggy introduces a recent song, Modern Day Rip Off, muttering that he feels like he's been cheated his whole life.
We're nearing the end. Iggy wanders over to a speaker stack mid- song and gives it a few tugs but decides against pulling it over or climbing it. Then they play I'm Bored, from 1979's New Values, Iggy as apathist in chief, 'I'm bored/ I'm the chairman of the bored'. After nearly ninety minutes he's having a bit of a rest, slowing it down, the sound slightly muffled, but it doesn't last long as Iggy and his band slam into Real Wild Child, the song sounding huge now shorn of its 80s production. The pair of 20- somethings in front of me are still dancing, occasionally stopping to shout lines of songs into each other's faces. Iggy finishes us off with Funtime, his 1977 gothic/ kraut lurch with its blank eyed chant of 'all aboard for funtime', a fine way to leave, and after singing his last line he wanders off stage, the band left to see the song to its conclusion. No encore, house lights on, an exhilarated and sweaty crowd wandering out into the Old Trafford streets, wrung out and spent.
That sounds like wonderful, life-affirming stuff Adam. How fabulous to hear about a gig where everyone was in the moment and letting themselves go. Too many gigs these days feel like they are just ab extension of a social night out where groups of people continue their irrelevant chat.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds frankly brilliant!
ReplyDeleteExcellent review. I'm quite jealous.
ReplyDeleteBlissful read Adam.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that Iggy radiated a fair bit of energy into our universe that night.
It was seriously amazing. As Nick says it was life affirming and where I was everyone was into it, no one chatting, no one not enjoying it. The slight chaos of flying beer, dancers and crowd surfers made it feel like a proper gig. And Iggy! I don't like the word legend, its overused and devalued- but if there are some genuine, actual legends around, Iggy's one of them.
ReplyDeleteExcellent review! 78, my God - I'm 22 years younger and not half as fit as him apparently!!
ReplyDeleteA fantastic review of what I imagine was an unforgettable evening. It's remarkable that he's still performing at this level in his 79th year.
ReplyDelete