Did Iggy Pop invent grunge music?
“I attended two concerts by The Doors. The first one I attended was early on, and they had not gotten their shit together yet. That show was a big, big, big influence on me. They had just had their big hit, ‘Light My Fire’, and the album had taken off,” said Iggy Pop, reflecting on a gig that would change his life forever. “So, here’s this guy, out of his head on acid, dressed in leather with his hair all oiled and curled. The stage was tiny, and it was really low. It got confrontational. I found it really interesting.”
Pop continued, “I loved the performance. Part of me was like, ‘Wow, this is great. He’s really pissing people off, and he’s lurching around, making these guys angry.’ People were rushing the stage, and Morrison’s going, ‘Fuck you. You blank, blank, blank.’ You can fill in your sexual comments yourself,” he said, “The other half of it was that I thought, ‘If they’ve got a hit record out and they can get away with this, then I have no fucking excuse not to get out on stage with my band.’ It was sort of the case of, ‘Hey, I can do that.’ There really was some of that in there.”
That’s precisely what Iggy Pop did with his band, The Stooges. The music was important, naturally, as aggression, experimentation, and layered lyricism were planted throughout their discography. However, one aspect of the band that got people’s attention was their unwavering attitude towards performance. The plan was to shock, annoy and give people a show they would never forget.
Now, here we are, decades later, the band having not performed for years and years, yet we are still frequently listening to them and reflecting on their influence. Their live show was a huge part of what made them successful, but the fact their music has remained so timeless is evidence that there is something deeper there that continues to resonate with people.
What genre does Iggy Pop think he belongs to?
When Iggy Pop was asked what he thinks it is about their sound that continues to attract an audience to this day, he said that it was likely the fact that even though their approach was so in the listener’s face, their songs had layers and meanings that could be stripped back. Sadness and sorrow are buried at the heart of a lot of their music, and people’s connection with this hidden layer continues to stun.
“I think one thing that allows people to find all sorts of stuff in our music is that we never really stuck it out in your face too much,” said Pop. “It was in your face in one way, but in another way, it had kind of a sullen and inward quality that you also find in goth music, grunge music, metal music…”
Pop has a point; this attitude towards large sounds, whether in synth or distortion, has been adopted by multiple over movements since he initially made music. When you listen to a lot of grunge music, whether that’s Pearl Jam, Nirvana or Soundgarden, you can get swept up in the sonic experience of those sounds, but once you stay with a song for a while, you begin to peel back other meanings, hidden in words, in how instruments are played and the overall theme of the song.
It would be unreasonable to suggest that Iggy Pop invented grunge music, given the significant gap between his sound and the movement’s inception; however, there are parallels and elements of grunge that Pop would have inspired.
