Iggy Pop: Open Up And Bleed

Iggy Pop: Open Up And Bleed

By Paul Trynka

Unrelated note about this blog post. Sheila from Book Journey challenged me to use the term "awesome sauce" in a blog post this week. I have fulfilled the challenge. Read on and see how...

Boy, do I ever read a lot of rock and roll biographies. And if you look at them, you can trace a very obvious interest in artists famous for their self-destruction. In the past two years I have read biographies (or autobiographies) about Keith Richards, Ozzy Osbourne, Motley Crue and Anthony Keidis. Iggy Pop: Open Up And Bleed seemed to be the logical end point in a reading trip to the pits of rock and roll depravity and beyond. So to say that I was looking forward to this book it a bit of an understatement. I love rock and roll depravity and there is simply nobody more depraved than Iggy Pop (except, perhaps Phil Spector, but I'll have to wait for that biography).

For anyone who has never read a rock and roll biography, allow me to explain the basic formula. They all follow the predictable pattern from precocious childhood into an adolescence full of talent and promise, a difficult rise to stardom which, in turn, provides the inevitable introduction to drugs, a brief episode of hyper creativity and bliss is always followed by the long, slow and often painful descent into depravity (the bulk of the biography). What follows is the ultimate rebirth of the artist, a phoenix rising from the ashes of self-destruction. It's a career pattern as cliche as rhyming "cry" and "die."

I've been a fan of Iggy Pop and his band The Stooges for a long time and I have always found Iggy Pop to be one of rock and roll's more enigmatic figures. He also stands outside rock and roll to a certain degree. During his peak creative years between 1969 and 1979, Iggy Pop (first with the Stooges and then with David Bowie) created music so ahead of its time that it was seen as (at best) a curiosity or (at worst) noise.

Only year later would critics and music fans comprehend the very real impact that Iggy Pop had on both the punk and new wave movement in the late 1970s and pop music as a whole. But Iggy Pop is simply the myth behind the very real man known as Jim Osterberg. I was ready when I opened the book. I wasn't going to be surprised to find out that Iggy Pop was simply a talented man with substance abuse problems like all the rest. He was (and to a degree, still is) rock and roll's wild child and the stories are legendary. Iggy Pop is the unpredictable madman famous for cutting himself onstage with a steak knife, rolling around in broken glass, throwing feces on his band, exposing himself at every turn and vomiting his awesome sauce all over the audience. If anything, Iggy Pop was known as the performer most likely to die onstage rather than the influential artist he has become over time. This book was going to follow the pattern to a tee and I wasn't going to be surprised.

Except I was.

And for a good portion of the book I was confused.

To say I was disappointed in this book is an understatement. A biography about Iggy Pop should write itself. It's not like there's a shortage of stories about a man who sacrificed his body for his art night in and night out and survived to tell the tale. I mean he spent a large portion of his life in and out of mental institutions and snorted enough blow to power a mission to Mars. He once performed a show entitled: Killing a Virgin. How could this book fail? Get these stories down on paper and let his fans bask in their depravity.

This book bothered me from the very beginning. Paul Trynka's work is so exhaustive, so expansive and so detailed I had to continually check to see whether I was reading the biography of Winston Churchill or John F. Kennedy or some other such historical heavyweight. And for a time I was inclined to trash this book when it came time to write this blog. I very nearly did. But I figured out what it was about this book that was bothering me.

Trynka's research is so painstakingly thorough. He has collected interviews from literally everyone from Jim Osterberg's life (everyone that was still alive in 2007, that is) and combed through reams and reams of material (school records, newspapers, magazine articles, medical records etc...) in order to put this work together. It's not really a rock and roll biography at all. Paul Trynka has written an academic work on the life and work of Jim Osterberg. The book is so scholarly (the endnotes by themselves would make a decent sized biography) that there were points where I had to read passages two or three times over. Iggy Pop: Open Up And Bleed is an opus. It's so definitive that I can't imagine anyone ever writing another word on the subject of Iggy Pop, unless it was a revisionist history (and if someone did hypothetically write another academic work on the life of Iggy Pop, I suppose someone would then have to write the historiography. Egads!).

While the research is obviously sound, Trynka's agenda is sometimes suspect. Trynka often overstates Iggy Pop's contribution to the world of pop music. While I would, personally, place Iggy Pop extraordinarily high on the list of the most influential artists of the 20th century, Trynka often oversteps academic objectivity and proceeds into hero-worship and often dives straight into pretension. I actually tossed the book aside in disgust at one point when he compared Iggy Pop's collaboration with David Bowie as the greatest meeting of creative minds since Gauguin and Van Gogh worked together at the Yellow House. C'mon! Really? Such nonsense has no place in a scholarly biography and only served to pile on the pomposity and compromise the integrity. Unfortunately, this book has stretches when it drips with pomposity.

In the space of 375 pages, Trynka managed to name-drop literally every single human being of consequence since the French Revolution. Again, I know Iggy Pop is an influential character in the history of rock and roll, but dropping names like Vaslav Nijinsky and Napoleon Bonaparte and Eldridge Cleaver even though hey have little to no importance to the life of Iggy Pop. I got the feeling that Trynka was trying (valiantly at times) to authenticate the mythology of Iggy Pop while his thesis was obviously an attempt to humanize him. This conflict was apparent to me throughout the book.

Despite this, Paul Trynka is fast on his way to becoming a very erudite biographer of artists that have, until now, not been given the academic treatment. This is probably a good thing. I just hope  he can keep his myth-making in check. That's the artist's job (and Iggy Pop has spent his career shrouding himself in his own myth). The biographer's job is to cut through the myth. Trynka seems to do this inconsistently at best.

However, it's difficult to dislike this book. Paul Trynka has put everything he had into this book and it will stand as the conclusive work on the career and legacy of Iggy Pop. For that reason alone, it's a must read for anyone who is interested in this particular genre of music. But it's not a typical rock and roll biography. I have since learned that Trynka has written a similar work on the career of David Bowie (which makes sense since Bowie plays such a major role in the career of Iggy Pop). I can only imagine that it too will prove to be conclusive.

I Am Ozzy

I Am Ozzy

By Ozzy Osbourne

I like to follow-up light reading with something a little deeper, more intellectual. That's why I picked up Ozzy's (auto)biography as a follow up to Milan Kundera.

I keed!

Anyway, I think I've hit critical mass for rock n' roll biographies about rockers who have no business still being alive (Keith Richards, Anthony Keidis and now Ozzy). Unless something really interesting falls into my lap, this is probably the last chronicle of drug and alcohol abuse I will read this year. I need to branch out, you know. Spread the proverbial wings. Maybe read Charlie Parker's biography.

Anyway, Ozzy.

I can't figure this book out. One the one hand, it's hilarious. Ozzy is a lot of things: madman, alcoholic, rock legend, television icon, lover of animals, walking dead. His stories are, literally awesome. Anyone who has a cursory knowledge of rock and roll history is familiar with at least a half dozen of his stories and he seems to be a natural story teller (through his ghost writer, of course). He's so self-deprecating it's endearing. You can't help but love the guy. He's the lovable loser from school. The guy that always seemed to end up spilling water on his own pants right before an assembly, forcing him to endure endless ridicule about pissing himself but takes it in stride. There's simply nothing to dislike about Ozzy. He's the original reality celebrity (long before The Osbournes, I might add) and despite all the stories, he always comes across as one of the coolest people on the planet.

On the other hand, the book reads like a hangover the day after the mother of all benders (in this case, 40 years). But didn't I already know all this? Did I have to read the book to come to this cup of black coffee and greasy food?

This all raises the question: Was there any need for this book? Ozzy professes that he wants to set the record straight about his life. But who's going to read this book? Ozzy fans, that's who. People like me who think the first four Black Sabbath albums are the pinnacle of rock and roll (I'm listening to Volume 4 as I write this. Snowblind to be specific... sublime). People like me who actually freak out when they play Crazy Train at sporting events ("Dude! Ozzy! Let's buy more beer!). People like me who think Supernaut just might be the greatest heavy metal song ever recorded (do not even think of retorting with Iron Man... You will lose all credibility). These are the sorts of people that are going to read this book. People who already know the score.

For example, I sincerely doubt that my mother, who I know reads this blog (Hi Mom!), would ever, in a million years, think to herself: "You know? I simply don't know enough about that guy Fozzy Ossburn. Maybe I should pick that book up and brush up on my knowledge of classic heavy metal." No sir. I can absolutely guarantee this book is not falling into the hands of non-Ozzheads.

Furthermore, this book is essentially a rehashing of all the classic Ozzy tales: The formation of Black Sabbath from the wreckage of Earth, the recording of Paranoid. Tony Iommi's finger deformity. Ozzy getting fired for being a drunken fuck-up. Marriage to Sharon. Solo career. Biting head off live bat. Biting head of live dove. Touring with Motley Crue. Suicide Solution trial. Near death experiences. The Osbournes. Drunken debauchery involving women, guns, mountains of drugs, eyebrow shaving and, like all rock and roll biographies, repeated rehab stints. No new ground covered, here.

Don't get me wrong, the stories are great. Ozzy is a fine story-teller. But we've all heard them a million and one times! Anyone who is even a casual fan of Ozzy Osbourne is familiar with the bat story and the dove story and most people know the straight dope on it as well. And even if you didn't, I'm sure The Osbournes reality show cleared a lot of things up. There's no real reason, at this late date, to set the record straight. As memoirs go, this one wasn't especially enlightening. But then again, what secrets could Ozzy possibly have? His entire career was an open book.

All that being said, I like Ozzy. I can't say a bad word about him. He comes across as one of the most genuine people in the world in print, on record and on television. Sure, he's got a boatload of problems both physical and psychological, but who doesn't? If you are a fan, go ahead and pick it up. It's a quick read and it's fun. In fact, open up a bottle or four of Hennesy while you do. I bet it would make it that much better. But if you don't like him or have no idea who he is, forget it.

It will just give you a hangover without the benefit of the Hennessy.

And nobody wants that.

P.S. I can't believe that Ozzy passed up the opportunity to title his memoirs Diary of a Madman. I mean, come ON! That shit writes itself!

Scar Tissue

Scar Tissue

By Anthony Keidis

I've never been a rabid fan of The Red Hot Chili Peppers. They've always inhabited a peripheral position among my record collection. I own a copy of Mother's Milk, Blood Sugar Sex Magic and One Hot Minute, but none of them have ever gotten heavy rotation on my stereos over the years. The problem being that, in my mind, the Chili Peppers are masters of the single but struggle to compile enough material to produce a competant album. The closest they came was Blood Sugar Sex Magic, but even that is a struggle to get through in one sitting.

So I was a little apprehensive about reading Anthony Keidis' biography, Scar Tissue. Couple that with my reservations about reading rock and roll biographies about known drug addicts and you have a very reluctant reader. But it came highly recommended, so I gave it a whirl. Since I went in with no expectations, I would rate the experience of reading Scar Tissue as good overall, but just barely.

Turns out Anthony Keidis is either one of the most genuine souls in rock and roll or his years of relapses has turned him into one of the best smooth-talkers in the business, able to sell ice to an Eskimo. While I was rooting for the former throughout the book, by the end I was fairly convinced of the latter.

The first third of the book chronicles Keidis' turbulent childhood straddled between Michigan and California. Growing up with his drug-dealing father exposed the young Anthony to a bevvy of sex and drugs at a very young age (and no small amount of jealousy from this reader). As with virtually every rock and roll biography, this is by far the most interesting part of the book. I had no idea that Keidis was essentially living with Sonny Bono through his junoir high school days.

The second third of the book chronicles the formation and emergence of the Red Hot Chili Peppers on the L.A. punk scene in the early 1980s. I liked that they defined convention at the time and played a unique brand of funk in a scene dominated by glam metal and to hell with what the scene dicatated. The rise of the band co-incides with Keidis' descent into the world of heroin and cocaine addiction, which, as I have written before, is such a cliche it's almost boring if it weren't about the very real suffering of a human being. Before he finally kicks his habit (for the first time) prior to recording Mother's Milk the book reads like "Knock Me Down" on perpetual repeat.

The segment devoted to his first clean stint (the time period between the recording of Mother's Milk and the end of the Blood Sugar Sex Magic tour) is also a fun read. Keidis is a bit of a world traveler and I enjoyed is recollections about trekking through Borneo, touring Japan and his irrational and incomprehensible love for New Zealand.

It's when Keidis relapses for the first (of too many to count) times that this book derailed. I hate to complain about the narrative of a biography, but the story went from slightly repetitive to a broken record of scoring drugs, driving to a motel and getting high for a few days then flying somehwere warm, weaning off the drugs, playing a few gigs, attending to a few responsibilities, repeat. I'm not kidding, this formula went on for over 200 pages. In the meantime people were born, people died, he changed girlfriends and guitarists more often then I change my underwear and his band recorded two albums.

This is not to say that the book was without merit. In fact, I found myself revisiting a lot of Chili Pepper albums while reading this book. While I still maintain that they have never recorded a great album, I had forgotten how good many of them were. Also, I found that I had never really given them thir place among the great rock and roll acts of all time, which they most certainly are, if not in the studio, certainly for their brazen live performances. I was especially pleased to not that Keidis wrote specifically about a show in Toronto that I attended in the late nineties (a free show at the corner of Yonge and Dundas). That was kinda cool.

Also, the first half of the book was devoid of that smarmy self-help remorse that so many former addicts have. He's recollections of a childhood and early adulthood consuming drugs and playing rock and roll were entirely without regret or remorse. I liked that he could look back fondly on a time he would not necessarily like to revisit rather than spent that portion apologizing to everyone and their brother about the pain and suffering he put them through. That makes great psych couch conversation but terrible reading.

But the book ultimately falters. It was when the 12-step philosophies began to creep into the narrative that things really took a turn for the worse. While the recollections on band life, touring and his travels remained fun to read, his intellectual musings on the nature of addiction and healing got nauseating (granted, I have never had a heroin problem so who am I to talk). Lots of new-age, self-help mumbo-jumbo and psuedo-religious ramblings that only served to prove that his years of drug intake had done their best on his brain.

As I mentioned to the guy who leant me the book, you can't help rooting for Anthony Keidis throughout the book. He seesms so genuine. Each time he cleans up you are hoping it will be his final detox only to have him disappoint you time and again. But the end when he (supposedly) cleans up for the last time, I could barely manage to feel anything for a guy who had thrown away so many chances.

Anthony Keidis is a really lucky man. Not because he is the frontman of one of the world's most successful rock and roll outfits, although that is certainly pretty cool. He's lucky because he has continuously been surrounded by people that never gave up on him. Despite lying, cheating and abusing them, his family, friends and bandmates never abandoned him. Considering his behavior over time, he should count himself blessed to have a support network as dedicated. If only he was that dedicated to himself.

Scar Tissue. It's the One Hot Minute of rock biographies. Full of promise, an all-star cast, some really, really spectacular moments, but in the end fails to inspire much beyond a curt nod to say, "Yep. I've read that now. What's next?"

The Rolling Stone Interviews

The Rolling Stone Interviews

Edited by Jann S. Wenner

Before I get into this, I want to note that I really did like this book. As an entirety, it's a good read and I blasted through its monstrous girth in three days. I don't want the rest of this blog post to sway anyone from reading The Rolling Stone Interviews. It is very, very worth it.

This book made me feel old. Allow me to explain in a slow and convoluted way.

Growing up, I was obssessed with rock n' roll. Not so much with the cult of personality that surrounds the genre, although that was part of it, but rather with the virtually instantaneous legend-generating power it carried over to its performers. I liked the fact that stuff I was listening to went from obscure to relevant, then iconic then legendary, often in the span of a single calandar year. It's a fun process to watch from the sidelines. I always wondered what it would be like for the performers.

And, of course, I really dig music. Still do.

I never really got into the People Magazine side of the equation. Who was screwing who, what band was suing what other band and what sorts of drugs so-and-so was using at the Grammys last night. That stuff didn't concern me nearly as much as the music and the energy it conveyed. Who cares what Kurt Cobain thinks or does? It's all about the guitar riff, It's about the lyrics. It's about the rock. I would like to assume I was too punk-rock for all the other nonsense, though, if I'm honest, I know I wasn't. I was simply nose deep in Michael Creighton novels and Martin Scorsese movies.

So it was interesting to find The Rolling Stone Interviews fall into my lap a couple of weeks back. I'm certainly not insinuating that Rolling Stone Magazine is akin to People Magazine but I never read either growing up. I was blissfully unaware of the personal lives of most of the bands and musicians I enjoyed. I wasn't entirely ignorant, but the details simply didn't interest me at the time. So this book was a revisitation to my music-listening past from a different perspective.

The book itself is an anthology of dozens of interviews ranging back to the beginnings of Rolling Stone Magazine in the mid 1960s and includes interviews with everyone from Jim Morrison in 1969 to George Lucas in 1977 to The Dalai Lama in 2001. It is organized in chronological order so once I got into the interviews conducted after 1980, it was fun to watch my childhood pass as I was reading the chronicles of the stars.

Many of the non-musical interviews proved to be quite interesting. I really enjoyed reading the interviews with Bill Clinton, Johnny Carson, David Letterman and Bill Murray. Other interviews were captivating because Rolling Stone chose an unorthodox interviewer. Andy Warhol with Truman Capote, Robert Palmer with Eric Clapton. But the vast majority of the musician interviews read like laundry lists of petty disputes, drugs and personal problems leaving me wanting to slap the Holden Caufield out of them all.

The fundamental problem with rock and roll interviews is that when you get down to it, rock stars are as humdrum as lawyers, teachers or doctors. Oh, they think they are different (in the case of John Lennon... he knows he's a genius). But when you begin to read these accounts of their lives they all begin to sound oddly consistent.

They have gone from struggling musician (and have you ever talked to one of those? Yeesh!) to ultra-famous and mega-rich, pretty much overnight. And each of them from Pete Townshend to John Lennon to Axl Rose to Eminem answer questions as if they were the first musician in the history of the world to encounter troubles in the trappings of fame. Don't these guys read Rolling Stone Magazine? Didn't they ever listen to The Wall? Or Bob Seger's eponymous hit Turn the Page? It's hard no to notice the droning pattern.

This is a generic sample of the sort of answer you get from (insert name of famous musician here):

"I hooked up with {insert name of mildly famous session musician name here} in (insert the name of American or British city here). We decided to crash at {inesrt hip record company exec name here)'s house for the night. We ended up staying there three weeks tripping on acid and peyote, shooting guns and playing old {insert name of eccentric musical style here} records. It was a wild time, man. We shared something real. The (insert decade here} were a truly magical ride."

Seriously, when did being a rock star become so boring. From Pete Townsend to Eminem and virtually every pop star in between was like reading the same interview over and over. From complaining about singing the same songs night after night to to battling their heroin addictions to dealing with their "personal demons." It's all such a stereotype.

This isn't to say there weren't some really interesting bits. I quite enjoyed reading about David Letterman's friendship with Johnny Carson and Bill Clinton's musings on the evolution of the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy. Jack Nicholson's philosophies on monogamy were a riot, Truman Capote and Andy Warhol were hilariously pretentious, and Tom Wolfe is fascinating.

Nor is it to say that there aren't any musicians with something interesting to say. Patti Smith, Mick Jagger and Leonard Bernstein deliver eloquent interviews that delve a little deeper into the music and the creative process. Perhaps it has something to do with their ages when they were interviewed. Each of them had been in the industry for over two decades once they sat down with Rolling Stone.

Which gets me back to the thesis of this entire blog post. The book made me feel like an era had passed in my life. These guys (Ozzy Osbourne, Kurt Cobain, Neil Young, Eric Clapton, Jim Morrison etc...) who I idolized so much when I was younger just turned out to be snivelling, whiny kids with too many toys and not enough friends. Who really wants to read an interview with a kid with very little of anything to say other than how many drugs he took last weekend? Perhaps to many this isn't such a momentous realization but for me, someone who didn't read the gossip rag side of the music indusrty until recently, it has really spilled the smack out of the plunger.

Ironically, it is old man Mick Jagger who puts it so succinctly when he says:

"I think it's very important that you have at least some sort of inner thing you don't talk about. That's why I find it distasteful when all these pop stars talk about their habits. But if that's what they need to do to get rid of them, fine. But I always found it boring."

Amen, Mick.

Of course, egoism is not nearly enough to devalue the wonderful music many of them made. I will simply go back to listening to the music and turning a deaf ear to their nonsensical ramblings. It only reenforces my opinion of recluses. The less you speak, the more you say.

Life

Life

By Keith Richards

For me, choosing a book to read while traveling is of the utmost importance. Long waits at train stations and airports and hours spent on trains and airplanes afford me large blocks of time in which to read. (fun fact: we travel on the cheap, which means longer waits than you). Additionally, my wife falls asleep on anything that moves and in virtually any waiting area so you can understand why the choice of book becomes importance as a way to fend off boredom.

But the most crucial reason for a good book while traveling owes to my lingering distrust of aviation. After three decades, thousands of hours in the air and countless long-haul flights over the Pacific Ocean, I have never assuaged my fear of flying. My rational side explains to me all about the safety mechanisms that are in place both on the ground and in the plane that make accidents virtually negligible and the millions upon millions of flights that take off and land every day without a hitch. I argue with myself that the law of averages are firmly on my side and flying is safer than driving a motorcycle in Southeast Asia, which I do with impunity... blah, blah, blah...

But all that goes out the little oval window once the wheels leave the tarmac. At that point I have thousands of meters of empty space under my feet and I spend hours conscious of the things that might go wrong. Most people complain about the cramped conditions of flying coach. I never get that far. I'm imagining a horrific mid-air collision between two 737s. Blocks of people in airplane seats being sucked out into a five minute free fall. I'm also sure that guy waiting for the bathroom is going to accidentally slip and open the cabin door, depressurizing the cabin, killing us all.

I know, I'm not that fun at parties.

But I have found a solution for the worse of this irrational fear: A good book.

No, not The Good Book, although there are some out there that might argue that I might find solace in the ramshackle, slapdash writings of superstitious ancient Hebrews and Greeks. But I'm talking about any good book. And finding just the right book for the flight is imperitive to my psychological well-being.

Good books on the ground and good books in the air are two very different things. For example, Richard Dawkins is an excellent scientific writer who I enjoy reading, but his work is extraordinarily taxing and requires a lot of brain power, something I cannot count on when I'm in the air thinking about random air pockets that might send the plane careening into the ocean at 600 km/h. Conversely, Kurt Vonnegut is probably my favorite author of all time, but his books tend to be a bit on the short side, creating a horrifying possibility: I might finish the book mid-flight and be left with thoughts of my own fiery demise.

A good airplane book needs to be long (The Stand, anything by Neil Gaiman), not intellectually taxing (Harry Potter has always served me well on airplanes) but not stupid (sorry Twilight), cannot have any mention of airplanes or fiery demises (Catch-22 is a bad choice and so is the Bible). It needs to be light, preferably funny and immensely readable... as in eyes-on-the-book-for-six-hours readable.

Over the years I have had some pretty good luck with in-flight books. The Harry Potter series, as mentioned above, has got me through at least three flights. Other books that engaged me though the perils of flying include The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood and Hollywood by Gore Vidal.

A famous failure was The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl which I mistakenly took on a flight from Hong Kong to Toronto a couple of years ago. It was so mind-numbingly boring that I had to actually (gasp!) watch the in-flight entertainment. Six straight episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond and a viewing of Along Came Polly. These atrocities frayed my sanity so much it took me a week, two books and a viewing of the Big Lebowski to settle down after landing.

Life by Keith Richards (and a ghost writer, obviously) fell seamlessly into its role as caretaker of Ryan's psyche on our trip to the Philippines. It was long and infinitely interesting. It was actually the sort of book that I would have read voraciously no matter where I was because I'm a sucker for rock n' roll biographies. Nothing like anecdotes about famous rock stars (Gram Parsons!!!!) and overdoses (Everybody!!!) to keep me turning pages (never mind that the bits about Maggie Trudeau didn't come until page 500 or so... that also kept me reading).

Keith Richards was a safe bet for me. Wildly entertaining. And after The Dante Club, I'm not particularly interested in wagering on a book come boarding time.