Interview w/ Irving Welsh, Author of Trainspotting

http://psychicgraffiti.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html

Irvine Welsh On The Liberating Music of Iggy & The Stooges by Dean Cavanagh


“Jesus Loves The Stooges” was an instrumental. It didn’t need words. It was a given that the original rebel with a cause was a fan. Why wouldn’t he be? Iggy once said ”What did Jesus really do? He hung out with hard drinking fishermen”

If Jesus loved The Stooges they had nothing to fear from Beelzebub. I mean, come on, if it had been The Stooges instead of Robert Johnson selling their souls to the devil at the crossroads, The Stooges would have gone through with the pact then stole their souls back from him. No flies on these Michigan street kids.

Shaped by their environment and existing between a rock and a hard place of redemption and sin The Stooges were the perfect antidote to the summer of love. Whilst America went through the death throes of the sixties, The Stooges elected to define themselves in their own inimitable fashion. There was no shortage of people vying to be spokesmen for their generation but the Stooges stayed in the backroom brewing up the Molotov cocktails. It is this unvarnished realism that has endeared them to people who shy away from supping at the fluoride saturated mainstream.


“The Stooges came into being at exactly the right time. They were the sound of young America seeing through all the hippy shit and getting back to violence as the alternative. They were always more Altamont than Woodstock, which to me is far more preferable.”

Irvine Welsh would never admit to being the spokesman of a generation, but his incendiary novels certainly made literature relevant again and opened the gates for others to take up the pen and say something about the times they were living through.

Wearing a punk DIY ethic on its sleeve, “Trainspotting” gave the literary establishment a much needed kick up its fat arse and spoke volumes to young men and women who recognized a world that existed far outside the parameters of respectability. “Trainspotting” has the double-edged distinction of being the most shoplifted novel in history but the film version – unfortunately - became roped into the New Labour media spin of “cool Britannia” in the late 90’s, much to Welsh’s dismay. Co-opting is something Welsh and Iggy Pop have railed against. Welsh baulks at fads and hype and remains steadfastly passionate about the authentic avatars in culture that have inspired him. Not for Welsh the easily packaged and sanitized pale imitations of rebellion, it’s either the real thing or nothing at all. No wonder he’s such a fan of Iggy Pop and The Stooges.

“It was through Bowie that I got into The Stooges. Bowie was always one step ahead of the game and it just made sense that he’d bring them to a wider audience. The first album I bought was T-Rex “Electric Warrior” followed by Bowie’s “Ziggy”. When Bowie started championing The Stooges there was never a question of not going out and buying the three albums. Those albums were like nothing else out there!”

Those albums: “The Stooges”, “Raw Power” and “Fun House” represent the unholy trinity of the bands output. Three finer examples of pure unadulterated rock and roll would be impossible to find. Mojo magazine recently cover mounted a CD compiled by The Stooges and on it you can hear Little Richard, Link Wray, Howlin’ Wolf, The Last Poets and Bo Diddley, what immediately jumps out is the fact that like these inimitable artists The Stooges carved out their own sonic paths. Linked to the past but forever pushing forward, they were the next step in the evolution of rock n roll. The fact that The Stooges were full of genuine attitude didn’t go unnoticed either.

“How could you not be into them?” asks Welsh rhetorically, “They were just so exciting and edgy and they looked like nobody else. They looked like a street gang. A gang you’d definitely want to join.” The Stooges oozed danger and walked it like they talked it. They were the logical conclusion of Elvis shaking those hips and wetting the gussets of red blooded girls all over the world. This was merely foreplay for what was to evolve though. The Stooges were pure sex visually and sonically and once witnessed live they left you psychically tattooed.




The poetry of Iggy Pop’s lyrics has always intrigued Welsh, “There’s no bullshit or artifice in his words. It’s colorful and imagistic but it remains accessible and truthful.”

Welsh doesn’t have much time for fakers.

”Iggy versus that whining bore who was the prototype for Viz’s Spoilt Bastard, Jim Morrison? No chance. In my opinion, real people that grow up in trailer parks draw from that. They don’t go claiming they’ve got the spirit of red Indian shamen in them.”


Welsh doesn’t argue with me when I remark that The Kingsmen’s lyrically autistic “Louie Louie” says more about the primitive appeal of rock and roll than a “Riders On The Storm.” could ever do.

“Yeah, people aren’t stupid. They know what connects. Songs like that capture an essence. Pure, real. It moves you without having to resort to cliché or trying to be clever. The Stooges have always wrote songs like that.” Says Welsh.

The story of The Stooges living on the razors edge are legion. Often these stories obscure what a great band they were – and as you’ll see, still are. The mesmeric live performances proved beyond doubt that they could cut it anywhere they landed. Passion and energy more than made up for lack of polish. What you saw is what you got.

“Yeah, with The Stooges, you get exactly what it says on the tin.”

The Stooges had single-handedly invented and deconstructed punk before anybody could even think of labeling or selling it as a fashion.

Welsh smiles, “You don’t market somebody like Iggy Pop and The Stooges. By their very nature they’re not marketable. People got into The Stooges by word of mouth, you know, recommendations. You didn’t hear them on the radio or see stuff about them in the music papers. It’s almost like you were meant to discover them under the radar. That makes them even more special as far as I’m concerned.”

Is the simplicity of their songs the reason why they still sound fresh and exciting today?

“The dirty blues funk of something like “No Fun” is so simple it’s genius. It’s got the same power as a Charles Bukowski poem, you know, stripped, lean and rhythmic. It’s a poem of experience. You just know it’s been lived and that’s why it stands the test of time.”

Maybe it’s this real deal that has shone through for many fans and kept the band relevant. In an age where embellishment and hype have infected rock n roll and broader culture in general, to have Iggy and The Stooges still going strong is a hopeful sign.

“Casualties are boring. They become lionized when they don’t necessarily deserve it. Survivors rule. Iggy’s never been anti-life, in fact, he’s just the opposite.”

The life affirming spirit of The Stooges music has never been denied. It’s impossible to listen to classic tracks like Shake Appeal, Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell, 1969, TV Eye, Search and Destroy and Greedy Awful People and Trollin’ off of this years The Weirdness album without wanting to move in accordance. Theirs is a music of restlessness and a celebration of the primal urges in us. If it is anything anti it is anti-stasis. It’s sonic blues for a generation in touch and respectful of its past but all too aware that culture must resist nostalgia lest in fall into entropy.

Welsh nails the appeal of The Stooges with hard to deny logic, ”Honesty, intelligence, sexiness and passion. A human being can’t fake those things and those qualities are all there in the music. Nobody could fake The Stooges!”

Iggy’s “Lust For Life” scored the legendary opening of the Trainspotting film and filtered into cynical ad campaigns eager to capitalize on the success and energy of the film. Maybe the shill grabbers in Ad Land were missing the point somewhat?

“The film probably wouldn’t have happened without Iggy Pop. I had the attitude but it was him and his work that went a long way towards determining my aesthetics. It was a masterstroke by (director) Danny Boyle to use that song for the opening. You just can’t imagine it without “Lust For Life” being in there.”

“Lust For Life” is indeed a clarion call to the dispossessed and marginalized and it fit perfectly with Welsh’s tale about the choices you make in your life and how you define yourself through them.

Welsh fondly remembers his youth and how The Stooges were a galvanizing and defining part of it “When you’re young you can get away with loads – be a total, drug-addled, nihilistic, fucked up jakey basically. I loved that I could pull out the album sleeves and parents, teachers, friends of my Mum and Dad would cringe before you even stuck it on the turntable. There was just something dangerous about them and that’s very rare nowadays. They didn’t need the word “bollocks” spread across the cover of their albums for anyone to realize that they were subversive. If you have to telegraph your subversion you’re not subversive.”

What about the bands of today, does Welsh see any of them having the staying power and longevity of cultural import as Iggy and The Stooges?

“It’s a bit hard on rock n rollers of today, basically because it’s an old discipline now and it’s difficult to come over as the wasted pioneer with any credibility. People like Iggy are genuinely subversive, while kids who follow that are now more likely to be dismissed as just another tiresome fucked-up twat going down a familiar and well-worn path. Even if some of them aren’t.”

So he thinks Rock n Roll has seen it’s best days?

“No, but it’s a disposable product these days. People listen to it differently and there’s so much of it. My missus goes through loads of music and changes stuff on her i-pod all the time. Being older, I tend to let stuff enter my pantheon of greats and keep it there. It’s hard to see new bands having that shelf life. It doesn’t mean they won’t last and be appreciated though.”

Welsh got to meet his idol after Trainspotting became a worldwide success. I ask him if the old maxim of meeting your idols and being disappointed is true?

“Absolutely not in this case. I’ve met and got to know him and he really is an excellent guy. He’s easily the most intelligent, well-read and erudite man ever to front a rock n roll band, but at the same time remains a down-to-earth guy who hates poseurs and pretension. If anything, meeting him exceeded my expectations, which were already sky high. If anybody is ever hostile to Iggy in a feature or interview, you can rest assured that they are a soulless, jealous and bitter. It’s the ultimate litmus test. Trust me on that one.”

It’s a measure of greatness that the band can still inspire such loyalty forty years after forming. Let’s hope that some of the other bands around today use the raw power of rock n roll to inspire generations to come. If one of today’s bands can create something as exciting, durable and neighborhood threateningly brilliant as Down On The Street there’ll be hope for rock n roll.