….before you heard Iggy Pop’s songs chopped up into bits to sell whatever shiny new product was on TV, Iggy Pop was dangerous and making the type of immediate music that needed to be made – not the kind of guy you would want to be with on a luxury cruise with. Anyway, I always hated how this song managed to be mangled into the main riff and the “la, la, la” part when the whole song is so good…so here it is in it’s entirety.
The Passenger by Iggy Pop – in lieu of a good live performance of this one or a suitable video, I thought I would link to this one which is set to classic scenes in cinema…I guess if the music has to carry something, it’s better for it to carry something of substance rather than poorly made cars or overpriced cruises….
Sixteen by Iggy Pop – this is NOT the guy who corporate America wants to align with. Now can I have my deviant heroes back please?
i don’t think i ever knew the passenger was by iggy pop. how sad.
Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.
Iggy’s early work was with the band the Stooges – it’s mostly aggressive, raw, raunchy blues influenced tunes and just good old punk/garage rock – minimal chords, maximum energy kind of stuff. In the mid seventies they disbanded due to his out of control drug problem. David Bowie came to his aid in the late seventies to help him revive his career(The Stooges weren’t commercially successful in their time). Bowie got Iggy signed and they collaborated to produce Iggy Pop’s first couple of solo albums – of which the two tracks above come from. As you can imagine, the stuff Pop did with Bowie is more song oriented and better produced than the three chord live take rock from Pop’s Stooges days. Most of the more well known songs of Pop(like Lust for Life) came from this period. Pop actually originally recorded China Girl as a song Bowie and him co-wrote and of course Bowie rerecorded it and made it a big hit in the 80s.
…here is a good example of Stooges era Iggy:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=BLCQU8iKalA&feature=related
Let me know if you want any of this stuff – I have all the Stooges albums, and the first two or three Iggy solo albums.