Death Trip: Iggy and the Stooges 1972-74 by Michael S. Begnal (Reaktion Books)

by admin  21st Jul 2026 Comments [0]
Iggy Death Trip

Review by Duncan Fallowell

 

The Ancient Greeks invented beat music when Crotus, satyr of Mount Helicon, clapped his hands in time to the singing of the Muses. Beat is hypnotic and soon became essential to the public Dionysiac rites in which music, dance, intoxication, and all forms of sexual activity liberated participants from the quotidian. Christianity stamped out the Dionysiac; and it didn’t return in either the Renaissance or the Enlightenment. But it did in my lifetime, in the Rock Revolution that began with the Beatles and reached a climax in the late 1960s and early 70s.

In order to do this, the pop song had to be extended in time. Jazz and funk were too polite.

Progressive rock was composed-through and too fixed. Enter Andy Warhol, the greatest taboo-breaker of the twentieth century. He told his band the Velvet Underground to create extended rivers of throbbing music in live happenings. Long-groove/wall of sound was born. But the Velvets left Warhol’s orbit and went twee.

So where could we Dionysiacs go after this? There were two options. Firstly Can from Cologne, who had come out of the electronic avant garde, discovered beat, and were the first to make long-groove/wall of sound their staple vehicle on LPs – with astounding results. Secondly the Stooges from Detroit. Their second album Fun House (1970) was extreme, not only in the stripped-down roar of the band but also in the lyrics and behaviour of their front man Iggy who lacerated himself in performance. But was it long-groove? In part, yes; and that was clearly their direction.

Then the Stooges disappeared.

Suddenly a London concert was announced: July 15th 1972, the King’s Cross Cinema. It began at midnight. Some concerts transcend their programme to become cultural markers.

Beethoven, December 22nd 1808, Vienna. Judy Garland, April 23rd 1961, Carnegie Hall. And I would add this one. In 1972 theatre-in-the-round, audience participation, performance art were highly current, but they’d never been married to the Dionysiac. In the UK we had a Dionysiac performance artist in Stuart Brisley who put on hair-raising events, cutting up live chickens, throwing blood around. But Stuart didn’t have a band. Iggy certainly did; and on that unforgettable night he became Crotus the Satyr, stripped but not seductive, very confrontational, very strange, his voice ranging from sweet to howl. He repeatedly and violently rushing into the auditorium, prowling, predatory. And he was backed by the most pitiless long-groove/wall of sound I’ve ever heard. The audience was terrified. Finally the band dumped their guitars on the speakers and left the stage, to feedback whines and gurgles. We stumbled into the night bewildered, euphoric. It was the Stooges only appearance outside America. True to performance art, it was not a show, not a repeatable act. It was a one-off and became a legend. That concert is why this book is being published.

Its author was born in 1966, so he wasn’t there. An obsession comes from a desire to reach the unattainable. Much scholarship is driven by this and Begnal is scholarly. Since he can’t experience the Stooges directly he zooms in on the album that followed the London concert, Raw Power, with a forensic examination of how each track came into being. Every reference is immaculately noted. His commitment revs up to an amphetamine squeal.

Begnal’s analysis is a labour of love; and in its way an extraordinary act of performance in itself. However I do feel that it is based on an underlying misjudgement, namely that Raw Power represents the Stooges career high-point simply because it is the first Punk album. Maybe it is the first Punk album. Others have said so. But Punk, for all its seering verve, was a return to snappy little numbers. Begnal’s book duly demonstrates Raw Power’s ancestry in the trad rock catalogue of short songs.

What had happened to the Dionysiac, the long-groove, the unique and special in the Stooges? David Bowie had come into Iggy’s life. Bowie, the genius of rock lieder – and of packaging. Bowie produced Raw Power and packaged Iggy. Perhaps he also gave the album its naff title. When Raw Power was released I remember feeling let down. I gave it a positive review (which Begnal quotes) but more in loyalty and hope than conviction. The promise of Fun House, of King’s Cross, had not been realised.

Dionysiac outburst flared briefly in the Sex Pistols later, then died. As for the book’s title Death Trip – Iggy is still living, comfortably, near Miami. And what of long groove/wall of sound? With the arrival of the 12-inch single, it merged with Disco, Funk and computer electronics, leading to Dance, Trance, Techno, Rave, Drone, and when all that turned into mere knob-twiddling clichés, it slipped over to the classical world where it had always had a sibling, from Corelli to Morton Feldman, and became a fruitful new form among the conservatoire set. You may sometimes hear it, not always shorn of its elemental terrors and drive, on BBC Radio 3’s wonderful New Music Show.

 

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