Many rock stars of a certain vintage are in a look-don’t-touch phase as late autumn descends on their careers.
Then there’s Iggy Pop. The 63-year-old singer with the perpetually naked, perpetually sinewy torso is just fine if the fans want to touch and even manhandle the merchandise. In fact, he encourages it, the crowd’s enthusiasm a necessary ingredient in what is routinely the best show in town on whatever night in whatever city he happens to be playing.
In a filled-to-the-gills Riviera on Sunday (after the show was moved from the larger Aragon), Pop was still in stage-diving, microphone-hurling, room-wrecking mode with the latest reconstituted version of his ‘70s proto-punk band the Stooges. The current lineup includes James Williamson, who has spent the last 30 years as a computer programmer in California. But Williamson wrote much of the music that propelled the Stooges’ most popular album, the 1973 release “Raw Power,” and his presence was apparent from the get-go.
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Iggy Pop and James Williamson in London, 1972. (Courtesy of Columbia Records)
When Iggy Pop and the Stooges played their final concert in 1974, Pop was knocked cold by a bottle hurled from a hostile audience. The band disintegrated amid broken glass, blood, drugs and ill will.
Yet over the last few decades, the lasting validity and impact of the Stooges’ three studio albums –
“The Stooges” (1969),
“Funhouse” (1970) and
“Raw Power” (1973) – has been recognized, and Pop has become a punk godfather. At 63, he’s one scary godfather, too, the type of performer who still leaves overturned speaker cabinets, shattered microphone stands and blown minds wherever he goes.
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