To Be A Hero For Generations

Gimme Danger (2016)

Documentary

If Henry Rollins speaks full of reverence for you, and the director of your band’s documentary is named Jim Jarmusch („Night on Earth“, „Dead Man“, „Ghost Dog“, „Coffee and Cigarettes“), like David Lynch appears in another biopic of Moby, you truly must be some kind of Rock’n’Roll legend. 

Iggy Pop at the time is nearly seventy years old, still rocking the stages around the world topless like at the Rock in Vienna with „Post Pop Depression“. With „Gimme Danger“, Jim Jarmusch has set his band The Stooges a cinematographic monument. And he starts the story right away in 1973, at a point, the group had its three classic albums out, but at the same time has hit the ground.

Then it takes the viewer way back, when Iggy learned on TV in his parents’ trailer, that he shouldn’t use more than 25 words in his lyrics. In 1965, he played drums with The Iguanas on a 16 feet high platform. As a first job, significantly he worked in a record store, and covers from e.g. The Velvet Underground and John Coltrane pass the screen.

As he gets together with The Stooges, they choose their name because they did no wrong, but everyone is picking on them. They are fans of MC5 and so both bands sign to Elektra Records, what felt professional to them. In an R&B studio in New York, they produce their debut including „I wanna be your dog“. Also in NY, David Bowie wants to meet Iggy at Max’s Kansas City in 1972.

Iggy recalls the story with a lot of fun facts but also talks about the dark moments. Admirable is, how obviously The Stooges always followed, what they wanted to do. The same way Iggy was impressed by adults, who had not lost their childhood. And so they influenced generations of bands like The Dictators, Damned, Sex Pistols, Cramps, Black Flag, Bad Brains and White Stripes. „Music is life and life is not a business“, the film teaches us close to the end, and „I don’t want to belong to any of it, I just wanna be.“