How James Brown inspired Iggy Pop to become punk’s perfect frontman: “You feel different”
As a modern-day journalist, I am often subjected to the misery of having to ask musicians a quick-fire social media question. To make it bearable and still interesting, I’ve often asked them to name one musician in history that they would see live, were they given one limitless wish. Nearly all of them have said James Brown.
Subsequently, he has become my own answer to that question, as the curiosity their answers have provoked have forced me to go back and watch endless footage of his enigmatic performances. He was famously unpredictable off stage, but as soon as he set foot on it, he was locked in. Feeling the power of every rhythmic change and guiding the melody with his voice that oozed personality, he was the master of funk and the extroverted embodiment of soul.
But that didn’t mean his inspiration was confined to just that genre. His inspiration extended way beyond his own genre and sparked a performative style amongst a generation of rock artists in the 1970s. He gave them permission to outrightly lose their inhibitions on stage and become more animated.
This is where Iggy Pop’s truly raucous style of performance originated from. He said, “The big thing I got from him was, don’t just stand there and look at your shoe. Fuck that. It had to be like something’s going on here. He always sounds like he’s breaking loose. Once you’ve made the decision to go out in front of people and start moving around, it frees up so many things. You’re now creating movement in a society that’s based on order. And within yourself, you feel different. That motion makes you make decisions as a vocalist, decisions that free you from the stilted stuff.”
The parallels of influence can certainly be drawn; however, there were some distinct differences between Iggy and Brown. Brown was fearlessly in tune with the music around him to the point that, if he heard a note played ever so slightly out of time, he would cast a stare so mighty it would strike fear into the heart of his band.
Iggy, however, was occupied with something truly hypnotic once he set foot on stage. Sure, Brown gave him permission to loosen up his movements, but he then took it into something that extended beyond the music and existed separately. Harming himself on stage and puking all over the audience wasn’t in the remit of Brown’s how-to guide.
But it wasn’t just Iggy who was inspired. The musician who perhaps made rock and roll performance famous, Mick Jagger, famously named Brown as his inspiration. After Brown opened for them at ‘The T.A.M.I Show’, he left a mark on Jagger’s approach. In fact, Keith Richards remembered it as the moment when Jagger realised he could become the band’s de facto leader.
“It was a fantastic show. Mick’s looking at his foot moves. Mick took more notice than I did that day – lead singer dancing, he calls the shots.”
There was a connection between the body and the music that Brown illuminated for modern rock musicians, and in essence, inspired a generation of performers from the genre.
