Mention The Stooges, and Iggy Pop—the brash and charismatic streetwalking cheetah himself—immediately comes to mind. His self-destructive persona (onstage and off) attracted an audience like a crowd of onlookers at a horrific traffic accident. They drifted off when the bleeding stopped and the ambulance pulled away. Those few who appreciated the ferocious music stuck around to see what brothers Scott (drums) and Ron (guitar) Asheton were doing. Iggy’s confident, go-getter personality would have inevitably led to some sort of stardom or acclaim, but it was the Ashetons’ musical fury that gave him the opportunity to pull out the stops. The Stooges’ earliest gigs were considered adventurous, dangerous and fun-but-you-had-to-be-there affairs that veered toward the experimental and psychedelic. Emphasis on psycho more than the psyche. Iggy was just part of a chaotic ensemble and not the main attraction. Ron’s innovative guitar attack was more dissonant and distorted than any of his contemporaries, including Fred “Sonic” Smith and Wayne Kramer of the MC5. As neighbors and mentors of The Stooges, these ax slingers played tough riffs in the midst of a waning peace and love culture characterized by the tender harmonies of outfits like Crosby, Stills & Nash. Brother Scott was also at odds with the current drum styles headed toward extended solos and “musicianship” at the expense of the steady heartbeat a good rock and roll drummer must provide. Although his style could be like severe tachycardia, he was deceptively simplistic and economic: hard hitting with no wasted moves. Giving credit to the Ashetons is Brett Callwood’s goal in The Stooges: Head On—A Journey Through the Michigan Underground , released this month. There are countless Iggy Pop bios (Paul Trynka’s Open Up and Bleed is my favorite) but these tend to treat the brothers as mere sidemen, something even Iggy himself did with alarming frequency.Callwood managed to interview the reclusive Ron for the first version of this book (published in the U.K. in 2007 under a similar title) but outdid himself in getting the most extensive Q & A sessions ever with Scott for this new edition. Sad to say, it was Ron’s death in 2009 that spurred his equally reclusive brother to speak. This new version is not a meager update but essentially a rewrite of the first edition, adding the interview with Scott and dropping Callwood’s own personal adventure as an Englishman prowling Detroit for info about his subject.As much as Callwood’s interviews are a victory, as a writer they are also a defeat. He heavily relies on long passages quoted not only from his sessions with the brothers, Iggy and other Detroit characters, but at times from other interviewers. Presented in the body of the book, verbatim record reviews from the pages of Rolling Stone , Creem and even the New York Times feel like padding. And the less said about the afterword (two pages of poetry by Glenn Danzig?!) the better. The Ashetons’ words are valuable for musical and production details, but the brothers’ own personal stories are barely touched. Neither is Iggy’s since it’s been covered many times, but Callwood purposely and wisely chose not to rehash the too familiar details that are easily available elsewhere. If you read this after any of the Iggy Pop bios, you already know what makes him tick. Sadly, except for a few tiny clues, you do not close the last page of Head On with any clearer understanding of who the Ashetons were except as members of a band.To be fair, Head On is a biography of a band and not its members. As influential as The Stooges became—“became” is the key word here; the majority of ’70s listeners hated them—it’s unlikely the band will ever attract another author who is willing to dig even this deep into the Asheton story. Ultimately, though, Callwood is recounting facts, offering relatively little embellishment or opinion. In other words, if he has storytelling talent, it doesn’t come across here. Head On is to be commended however for giving “the other Stooges” their musical due, and for that alone, Callwood deserves praise. This book will find a cozy home on my groaning shelf sandwiched between similar but worthy efforts that provide more fact than insight, such as Nina Antonia’s New York Dolls bio Too Much Too Soon . I have a different section for revealing and in-depth biographies like Eye Mind: The Saga of Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators, The Pioneers of Psychedelic Sound ; Heroes and Villains: The True Story of the Beach Boys ; and, yes, Iggy Pop: Open Up and Bleed .
Aural Fixation: A Really Cool Time With The Stooges
The Other Stooges
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