In last year’s absorbing and colourful memoir, Spaceships Over Glasgow: Mogwai, Mayhem and Misspent Youth, Scottish musician Stuart Braithwaite likens witnessing Iggy Pop perform in Glasgow’s hallowed Barrowland Ballroom in early 1991 to “a baptism of sorts”. A few short months later, Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit sent a shock wave through popular culture. Kurt Cobain repeatedly said that Raw Power by The Stooges was his favourite album of all time. Two years after Cobain’s death, Pop enjoyed a big career renaissance after Lust for Life featured in the opening scene of Trainspotting.
Today, the Godfather of Punk, who is known on his passport as James Newell Osterberg Jr, is 75. In addition to being one of the most enduring and iconic performers in rock history, he successfully moonlights as a BBC 6 Music personality, presenting a Friday night show that has championed Irish artists such as CMAT and Fontaines DC.
Every Loser is his 19th studio album, a tally which doesn’t include his output with The Stooges, or numerous collaborations and guest appearances with David Bowie or New Order. Since the release of his last studio album, Free, in 2019, Pop has worked with Belgian composer and violinist Catherine Graindorge and reworked an Elvis Costello song in French.
Albums rarely grab your attention so immediately and effectively as Every Loser, with a dramatic curtain opener track entitled Frenzy, a joyous blast of righteous noise that steamrolls the listener with the opening line, “Got a dick and two balls, that’s more than you all”. Guns N’ Roses stalwart Duff McKagan adds his trademark coruscating guitar, while Chad Smith from Red Hot Chili Peppers anchors proceedings behind the drum kit. It’s exactly three minutes long and pretty much perfect.
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Pop has said of the album’s roll call of guests: “The players are guys I’ve known since they were kids, and the music will beat the s**t out of you. I’m the guy with no shirt who rocks; Andrew [Watt] and [his label] Gold Tooth get that, and we made a record together the old-fashioned way.”
Every Loser sounds like an album that will fully come to life live, although Pop has said he is abandoning stage-diving at this stage in his career. He is a great choice to lead the charge at this year’s Altogether Now.
When I saw him headline Glastonbury’s Other Stage in 2007, by the end of his performance there appeared to be as many people onstage as there were in the audience. With a face and torso like rock’n’roll’s Mount Rushmore, Pop is still up there giving it loads, the guy with no shirt whipping up another frenzy.
