walking upstream…
Iggy and the Stooges
photo: aurelien guichard · cc by-sa 2.0 ↗Iggy and the Stooges
sourcesWikipedia — Iggy Pop (biography, formation of the Psychedelic Stooges, Sonics/MC5/Doors influence) · Vice — Without Jim Morrison's Controversial Performance... Iggy Pop Might Have Never Existed (Iggy on the 1967 Doors show) · Grunge.com — Iggy Pop Credits These Two Iconic Frontmen for His Career (Morrison's mic technique) · Soundblab — John Coltrane · Red Bull Music Academy Daily — Iggy Pop on the Stooges' Early Experimentation (Asheton brothers, blender-as-instrument) · Far Out Magazine — The 1960s act Iggy Pop called "the first garage band" (Sonics quote to Duff McKagan)
In the fall of 1967, an underage James Osterberg stood in the crowd at a University of Michigan homecoming show and watched Jim Morrison work a microphone stand like nothing he had seen before. "If they've got a hit record out and they can get away with this," he decided, "then I have no fucking excuse not to get out on stage with my band." He had already drummed through Ann Arbor's blues circuit and taken his nickname, Iggy, from a group called the Iguanas. By 1967 he had formed the Psychedelic Stooges with the Asheton brothers, absorbing their teenage boredom as a persona and turning a sixteen-dollar blender into a percussion instrument. Elektra signed the band in 1968; by 1970's Fun House, Iggy had converted a jazz saxophone's shriek into a physical language for the rock frontman, and proto-punk had its first true believer.
the sound in question
1969
I Wanna Be Your DogIggy and the Stooges
walk the tributaries ↓
The Doors1960s · Psychedelic rock / Rock
Iggy had never seen anything like it. "They had a really unique style and it wasn't easy for them to sound good live, at first," he said of the show — Morrison working a room so small "the stage was tiny and it was really low." "It got confrontational," Iggy remembered. "I found it really interesting." He went home certain a frontman didn't need polish, only nerve; within a year he had a band built entirely on that premise, borrowing Morrison's stance at the mic and his contempt for the audience's comfort.
listen: upstream & here
1967
Break On Through (To the Other Side)The Doors
1970
Down on the StreetIggy and the Stooges
listen forMorrison's baritone on "Break On Through (To the Other Side)" was, Iggy said, the reason "he was the first person I'm aware of to sing rock 'n' roll with a full baritone" — a low, chanting delivery rather than a shouted one. Listen for that same register on "Down on the Street": Iggy drops into a flat, muttering near-monotone under the Stooges' one-chord grind, trading Morrison's reverb-soaked menace for something colder and more mechanical, but built from the same refusal to sing pretty.
John Coltrane1960s · Jazz / Modal jazz / Spiritual jazz
Asked years later to name the songs that shaped the Stooges, Iggy put John Coltrane's "Village Blues" on the list — proof that the sax colossus was inside the band's formative wiring long before Fun House. He described what drew him to Coltrane's playing over a fixed vamp: "I liked the way he was dancing over, above, under, within, and without this rock solid motif that didn't change... It seemed timely, spiritual, and earthy all at the same time." That trance became the blueprint for a rock band without a horn.
listen: upstream & heresource: Bibliolore — Iggy Pop and John Coltrane (Iggy's own account of hearing A Love Supreme) ↗
1961
Village BluesJohn Coltrane
1970
Fun HouseIggy and the Stooges
listen for"What I heard John Coltrane do with his horn I tried to do physically," Iggy said — and Fun House is where the trade gets made literal. Coltrane's tenor on "Village Blues" circles a fixed bass figure without ever settling into a clean melody, restless and unresolved. Saxophonist Steve Mackay does the same to the Stooges' title track, refusing to phrase inside the beat, his skronking runs fighting the rhythm section the way Iggy's own voice and body fight the mic stand.
The Sonics1960s · Garage rock / Proto-punk
Introducing the band's Detroit-blues origins, Wikipedia credits Iggy's return from Chicago with a specific short list of role models: "the Sonics, MC5 and the Doors." Of the three, the Sonics were the rawest precedent — a Tacoma band that had already proven a garage combo could sound feral on record. Telling Guns N' Roses bassist Duff McKagan about them decades later, Iggy didn't hedge: "Man, that was the first real garage rock band, and that band influenced The Stooges."
listen: upstream & here
1965
PsychoThe Sonics
1969
I Wanna Be Your DogIggy and the Stooges
listen forPlay the Sonics' 1965 single "Psycho" against the Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Dog" and the debt is in the distortion: both tracks push guitar and vocal into the red rather than clean them up, riding a riff simple enough to repeat past the point of comfort. The Sonics scream where the Stooges throb — Ron Asheton's one-note guitar line is a slowed, heavier descendant of the same overdriven attack Sonics singer Gerry Roslie unleashed five years earlier.