Gimme Danger

Iggy Pop seems a little surprised to discover that it’s 2016.

(2016) Musical Documentary (Magnolia/Amazon) Iggy Pop, Ron Asheton, James Williamson, Scott Asheton, Danny Fields, Steve Mackay, Mike Watt, Kathy Asheton, Ewan McGregor, Ed Sanders. Directed by Jim Jarmusch

 

The aphorism is that true artists are not appreciated in their own time. That is certainly true of the Stooges, a seminal Midwestern hard rock band that erupted from Ann Arbor, Michigan in the late 60s only to self-destruct in 1971, only to return a year later like a bad penny, then break up again for nearly 30 years in 1973 until a resurrection in 2003.

Their music received scathing reviews from critics who didn’t know what to make of them and the public took little interest; their record sales were tepid at best. Still, they became one of the founding influences of punk rock and their music influences nearly every heavy music artist of the 80s and afterwards.

Indie auteur Jim Jarmusch is a clear fan of the band, having cast frontman Iggy Pop in two of his movies and it is equally clear that this is essentially a love letter to the band. Although incomprehensibly Jarmusch begins his film with the 1973 break-up, he then goes back to their roots and tells the story in a more linear fashion from there.

Mostly told through the music documentary tropes of talking heads interviews interspersed with performance footage and animated recreations of events, the movie captures the band’s management woes along with their descent into drug addiction – nearly the entire band was at one time on heroin which led to missed gigs, sloppy performances and poor decisions. In their glory, the band was raw and primal, a kind of primitive rock and roll which would have been equally at home with banging on rocks as it was with electric guitars.

Pop was the consummate front man, performing shirtless and dancing like an epileptic male exotic dancer whose DNA was equal parts Mick Jagger and Tina Turner. His bandmates – guitarists Ron Asheton and James Williamson, bassist Dave Alexander, saxophonist Steve Mackay and drummer Scott Asheton – tended to stare at the floor and move very little allowing their frenetic frontman to do the heavy lifting.

Pop and Williamson are the only surviving band members of the band’s glory years and each of them is compelling in their own way (Mackay and the Asheton brothers both lived into the 21^st century and there are plenty of interview clips with them; Alexander passed away in 1975 and as a result we see him only In performance clips and publicity stills). Pop is surprisingly intellectual and a pretty entertaining raconteur; Williamson, who spent most of their post-breakup era as a software engineer for Sony, has a much more objective perspective of the band.

The solo career of Iggy Pop, which netted classic rockers like “Lust for Life,” isn’t mentioned here although the post-Stooge efforts of the other band members is gone into in some detail. There is also little outside perspective of the band itself; nearly all of the interviews are with the band members, Danny Fields and Kathy Asheton, sister to the Asheton brothers. Only bassist Mike Watt, who performed with a 21^st iteration of the band, is interviewed.

There is also surprisingly little of their music used on the soundtrack. We do get to hear those magnificent opening chords to “I Wanna Be Your Dog” but we hear it several times during the film. I get that there is precious little performance footage from the band’s 1970s era but one gets a sense that what we’re seeing here is pretty much readily available elsewhere, or at least that’s what I get from Internet comments on the documentary by fans of the group.

I was a bit surprised at how ordinary the documentary was. Jarmusch has a reputation for turning convention on its ear, but this is as conventional a music documentary as you’re likely to find. Maybe Jarmusch is too close to the subject; they are surely worthy of a documentary but this is one of those occasions where the subject of a documentary isn’t done justice by the documentary itself. Still, the Stooges are so compelling a story, Pop so entertaining a storyteller that I can freely recommend this to not only fans of the group but students of rock music history in general.

REASONS TO GO: The Stooges make for compelling subjects and Iggy is an interesting storyteller.
REASONS TO STAY: The film is disturbingly light on actual music.
FAMILY VALUES:  Plenty of profanity and drug references here.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT:  Danny Fields had been sent by Elektra Records to scout the MC5 for which the Stooges were opening; impressed by both Michigan groups, he signed the MC5 for $20K and the Stooges for $5K.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 11/20/16: Rotten Tomatoes: 94% positive reviews. Metacritic: 72/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: We are Twisted Fucking Sister
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Doctor Strange

Advertisement

Lambert & Stamp

The debonair Chris Stamp.

(2014) Musical Documentary (Sony Classics) Chris Stamp, Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, John Hemming, Terence Stamp, Kit Lambert (archival footage), Heather Daltrey, Irish Jack, Richard Barnes, Robert Fearnley-Whittingstallt6. Directed by James D. Cooper

Few bands have had the impact that The Who have had in their career. It can be argued that of all the bands in rock and roll, only the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys have had the kind of influence on the medium that they have had. Guitarist and principle songwriter Pete Townshend is considered one of the best songwriters in the history of rock and their rock operas Tommy and Quadrophenia expanded the art form and of course their songs continue to be staples of classic rock radio even now.

Once upon a time, though, they were a scruffy band playing in dingy clubs to crowds of diffident Mods. There, they were discovered by nascent filmmakers Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, who met as assistant directors at Shepperton Studios. Both were devotees of French New Wave cinema in general and Jean-Luc Godard in particular and both aspired to become great directors in their own right. They hit upon the idea of filming in London’s rocking underground club scene and focusing on a single group, which after seeing their wild performances they hit upon a band called the High Numbers.

The film never came to pass but the band so impressed the two filmmakers that they were inspired to become their managers and  this fortuitous encounter would lead to some of the most potent rock and roll in history. Lambert, an Oxford-educated homosexual (in an era where it was illegal in England to be one) and Stamp, a rough and tumble Cockney who was a ladies’ man couldn’t have been more different if they’d tried but somehow they meshed together well; Lambert furnished Townshend with classical recordings to help his songwriting form while Stamp helped their stage show become one of the more talked about of its time.

All the elements are here for a documentary film that should have been absolute amazing; the film taken by Lambert and Stamp of the band in their High Numbers days alone would be enough to recommend the movie. Sadly, though, the film is overloaded with talking heads. Stamp, who passed in 2012 after his interviews were recorded, is a pleasant enough raconteur (and looks the part, dressed in a tux for Townshend and Daltrey’s Kennedy Center Honors) but just watching him talk is not in and of itself compelling enough.

Most of the interview time goes to Stamp, Townshend and Daltrey – Lambert died in 1981 after years of drug problems which would lead to the pair being fired as manager and an extended estrangement between the band and their former managers. Strangely, Lambert’s death is implied through the interviews and nothing concrete is really said about his death or its effect on Stamp or the band. Even Keith Moon’s untimely death was only mentioned in passing as reference to a legal meeting between the Who and their former managers. Considering the importance of Moon and bassist John Entwhistle to the sound of the band, it is kind of odd that they get very little attention in the documentary.

Given the richness of the source material and some of the really amazing archival footage, this is a disappointment. The movie is at its best when delving down into the creative process of the band, and when we got to know them (and their managers) more personally; Stamp talks about a notorious fistfight between Daltrey and Moon onstage that nearly splintered the band early in their career and how he intervened in getting Daltrey to find other ways to resolve conflicts rather than using his fists. We also get a sense of how wounded Stamp was when the band chose Ken Russell to direct a film version of Tommy, once again frustrating his dream of being a film director (he and Lambert assumed they would get the job). There is also footage of a young Townshend playing an acoustic version of “Glittering Girl” for Lambert and Stamp, both nodding approval as he plays.

Don’t get me wrong; there are some wonderful anecdotes, like friend John Hemming joking that chain-smoking Lambert only used one match in his entire life – the one that lit his first cigarette. Moments like that are swamped by endless discussion of minutiae that will only be of interest to diehard Who fans, who admittedly are going to love this movie a lot more than those viewers who aren’t into the band as much, which is a shame because there’s a whole generation that would benefit from discovering their music, which is some of the best rock and roll ever made. When the interviewees talk facts and figures, you’ll find yourself nodding off. When the interviewees open up, so does the movie. Sadly though that doesn’t happen enough to make this a memorable film.

REASONS TO GO: Wonderful subject. Some great archival performances.
REASONS TO STAY: Unforgivably boring. Too many talking heads.
FAMILY VALUES: Some rough language, a bit of drug content and one scene of brief nudity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Chris Stamp is the younger brother of actor Terence Stamp.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 5/19/15: Rotten Tomatoes: 89% positive reviews. Metacritic: 75 /100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Kids are Alright
FINAL RATING: 5/10
NEXT: 3 1/2 Minutes, 10 Bullets