The Stooges

Tue 3rd Apr, 2007 in Features

It’s winter in America and Scott Asheton, drummer of one of the greatest rock’n’roll bands of all-time, is in his winter residence in Florida. The Stooges skinsman moves back to his old stomping ground of Michigan for summer. It was there in 1967 that James Osterberg better known as the legendary Iggy Pop, Asheton and his guitarist brother, Ron, and the late Dave Alexander became the most fiercesome avant punk rock band on the planet. Rock would never be the same and the legend of The Stooges was writ in blood – Iggy’s blood, as he carved himself up with shards of glass and smeared hamburger meat and peanut butter on his chest as the quartet rampaged across America.

Over the next five years they released three albums that help define rock music: The Stooges, Raw Power and, to a lesser degree, Fun House are demons with no disguise. It is rock/punk at its most fundamental and potent. If these men did nothing else in their lifetimes, this trio of records would have guaranteed their place in rock’s hall of fame.

With Iggy’s drug addiction in full bloom, The Stooges slipped in and out of consciousness from 1971 until finally calling it quits in February 1974. One of its final performances is captured on the legendary Metallic KO album released in 1976.

Time skimmed the 1980s and 1990s – Iggy released 15 solo albums; Ron played with Destroy All Monsters, The New Race,The Empty Set, Dark Carnival and one-off supergroup Wylde Ratttz (formed for the film Velvet Goldmine and featuring fellow luminaries such as former Minutemen bassist, Mike Watt, Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and Steve Shelly and Mark Arm of Mudhoney); Scott pounded his way through Scot’s Pirates, Sonny Vincent’s Rat Race Choir and Rock Action, before in 2003 the trio reunited for the first time in 29 years.

Adding Watt and Fun House saxophonist Steve MacKay the primordial beast has returned for good; it’s live shows having been remarkably good, proof once again that age makes no difference the purest of punks. And now there is The Weirdness the first Stooges studio album since the seminal Raw Power. It isn’t perfect but it also isn’t bad at all. Asheton feels the same and he’s already looking forwards.

It’s a strange kind of interview. Here’s a man who doesn’t believe that his band’s new album is the best it could have done. I tell him it sounds pure. “You got that part right,” he says. “That was sort of the plan but I’m a bit more of a rocker and our albums are known as being rockier. I think January 2008 might be a good time to do another album. It’ll wheel around more of a Stooges rockin’ thing. I do think_The Weirdness_ is really interesting. That’s the most I can say about it. The lyrics a pretty much on the dark side.

One of the weirdnesses about this comeback is that the album’s title track is a slow bluesy little beast – it isn’t a Stooges seek’n’destroy kind of paint peeler. Funny thing is, it’s followed by Free And Freaky which is closer to the monster mash we’re here for.

“I tried to tell them The Weirdness should have been the title track,” Asheton says. “I would have thought Free and Freaky. That gets around a bit.” Unsurprisingly, it’s his favourite track, simply because it’s “pretty much out there, pretty much right out on the line, it’s there with what’s goin’ on”.

He also approves of album opener Trollin’ a right little strutter.
There’s a splendid honesty about Scott Asheton. When it comes to summing critical response to the album he laughs “I don’t worry too much about them; I don’t think we’ve even seen them all, although most of ‘em have been pretty positive. We just go out there and do it, man,” he says.” Thankfully, the Pop called in 2003 because it would have been shame to keep Scott sitting on his butt playing second league. “When he called, I said about time. It’s way overdue. Now we’ve got to do some catch up playing. But I’m glad that phone call came. I was like ready to go. No doubts about that. I’ll rock’n’roll to my wheels falls off. It’s in the blood, it’s there, I’m there.”

You could be forgiven that maybe it’s a little cliched, only Scott Asheton is just being genuine. This is his gig, his only gig and he’s a little saddened by how rock has changed over the years and become the corporate muckfest it is today. Bands come and go with monotonous regularity, hardly anybody lasts over 10 years. “You’re right about that,” Asheton agrees. “I was just talkin’ about that the other day. The Meat Puppets were one of those bands. I liked that song of theirs, Backwater.” Okay, so The Meat Puppets have actually been together 27 years on and off – mostly on. But we’ll keep that to ourselves.
“You either want to do it or you don’t,” he continues. “There’s no middle ground in this business. It has its ups and downs; it’s a tough, tough business. One day you might be there and the next day you’re not. That’s what happened at the end of Raw Power – nobody knew what to do with us, so we went into limbo. We sat there and had too much idle time and got into too much mischief.

“I have had a couple of weeks off now and I’m ready to go,” he continues. “I’ll tell you what though, next January it’s gonna happen. I’m going to make it happen. We’ll record the next album and it’s will be an even bigger blast. You can bet on it.”

And with that he chuckles. A Michigan rock’n’roll chuckle, “I’m just gonna keep rollin’ till the wheels fall off.”