Iggy Pop “Brick by Brick”
Since the very beginning, Iggy liked to work. Not just in the “I’m gonna give you everything -- my blood, my spit, my piss” kind of way. Though he certainly did that. And not really in the Detroit “I’m gonna show up and punch my card every day” sort of way, either. For sure, Iggy had both of those instincts in him. But, in retrospect, Iggy just worked to live. It seems it was all he could do to not completely fall apart. Between 1977 and 1990, he released ten albums, only taking a break when he had no record deal and couldn’t get hired. The two “Bowie Berlin” albums in 1977 were a literal lifeline -- helping Iggy get clean and solvent. Iggy sounds inspired on those records but it’s unclear how much Bowie was propping him up, or, frankly, vice versa. The 1980s albums, however, starting with “Soldier,” are another lot altogether. They sound lost. They sound plodding. They sound like shit. They sound like a man who needed to turn something -- anything -- in to his employer in order to fulfill a contract and get paid to tour. Iggy Pop in the 80s is the sound of a guy working hard at a shitty job that he wasn’t very good at.
Gradually, though, brick by brick, he had begun to build a life for himself. He got married. He made some money from the publishing gifts that Bowie provided for him. His eyes and head got clear. He got back to reading books. He acted a little. He showed charm and grace whenever he was name-checked by Punks and Goths. By the end of the decade, he bordered on adorable. Shorter hair. Crooked smile. Polite and earnest in every interview. But always candid and self-aware. The Iggy Pop reclamation project was underway.
As was the case roughly a decade earlier, a not so secret admirer came knocking to help lead the project. This time it was not Bowie but multi-instrumentalist and soon to be “Producer to The Stars,” Don Was. A longtime Stooges fan, Was was not there for the payday. He was there for all the right reasons -- to help Iggy find his voice and sound. They would work together again in the future. But their first collaboration, 1990s “Brick by Brick” would mark the apex of the Iggy Pop Reclamation Project. With it, Iggy was reborn as the wise old dog of contemporary Alternative Rock. He’s been generally playing that role — smiling, tan and shirtless — ever since.
To ensure that Iggy was fully reclaimed, Was brought in extra muscle. Session superstar Waddy Wachtel handles much of the guitar on “Brick by Brick.” Slash and Duff, at their G ‘n’ R peaks, also join, with Slashing co-writing one of the tracks, “My Baby Wants to Rock & Roll.” The most notable “guest” appearance on the record is unquestionably Kate Pierson, of the B-52s, whose voice almost single-handedly propelled the single, “Candy,” towards unlikely mainstream radio success. John Hiatt also contributes a song and some backing vocals to the album with “Something Wild.” And though the other names mentioned are more recognizable, it is the sound that Hiatt perfected -- a wiser and more cynical brand of Roots Rock that was not quite Country and not quite Alternative -- which most defines “Brick by Brick.” It’s true -- aside from the singles and a couple updates on the Stooges’ flavor of Metal, “Brick by Brick” is really a Roots Rock record.
As the title suggests, “Brick by Brick” is all about the work we do -- little by little, day in and out -- to build a life, a home and a love for ourselves. It is equally about the ways in which our society and culture have obscured the value of work and the actual grit required to create human equity and value. Iggy’s politics are his own home blend. He can sound decidedly proletariat. He can sound like a prescient civil right crusader. And he can sound like a staunch, anti-elite, anti-celebrity. And, often, he can sound like them all at once. It’s hard to imagine and possibly harder to write, but much of this album sounds like vintage John Mellencamp played by a garage rock band. And I mean that generally as a compliment.
On “Brick by Brick,” when the music stays in the realm of Roots Rock -- acoustic guitars, syncopated to the beat -- and Iggy doesn’t have to race to catch up to the riffs, his politics and songs fare best. When he, Slash and Duff gesture towards The Stooges, or Metal, the songs can feel a little showy and the lyrics a little “on the nose.” On the album’s opener, “Home,” Iggy struggles to find his footing. Not quite Punk and not quite Roots, “Home” is almost a rockabilly track about how much we take the idea and physical shelter of Home for granted. It’s a profound idea underserved by a rickety Garage Rock band. But it establishes the voice and thesis that Iggy revisits frequently on “Brick by Brick.” Nothing good comes for free. Everything that is worth anything requires work. And that, gradually, we’ve not only forgotten this fact but we’ve come to disdain it.
Iggy works through his argument on “Main Street Eyes,” “I Won’t Crap Out” and “The Undefeated,” which, are each, in the own ways, among the most straight ahead and melodic tracks on the record. The former posits that the singer’s ambitions are only towards Main Street. He wants a decent life. He wants to work for it. That’s all. The notion of incremental, hard work frames “I Won’t Crap Out,” wherein Iggy promises his love that they can have a great, beautiful life together, so long as he doesn’t crap out. Like an old car, he will work hard and look good. There will be bumps. Some failures. But if they tend to the problems and work at things, it will be a great drive. The latter of this trip is the most sardonic and the biggest reach. A big acoustic Rock number with a singalong chorus, “The Undefeated” takes aim at the stupidity of privilege and the insidiousness of hegemony. It is an arrow aimed at all of those who were born on third base and proudly (and wrongly) assumed they had hit a triple.
In the early 1990s, with CDs costing nearly twenty dollars, there was an urge by legacy artists to pack more songs per record as a gesture of good will towards fans shelling out an unprecedented amount for albums. This led to many sprawling, under-edited records. And “Brick by Brick” is one such. At fourteen songs and nearly an hour, it is clear that Iggy and Don Was could be successful and prodigious together. But the partnership did not, by any means, produce fourteen great songs for “Brick by Brick.” “Butt Town” and “Neon Forest” both cop Metal riffs to conjure the Stooges in songs about the emptiness of glamor and celebrity. Both songs are heavy and professional, but only serve to confirm that if the Stooges tried to be even ten percent more clever, they would have failed. These songs break at the seams between sonic weight and bluntness and conceptual deftness. They simply don’t mix well here.
The Slash collaboration, for all of its promise, ends up simply as five minutes of impressive guitar wanking under a par baked vocal idea from Ig. It never really congeals into a song. It simply shows off a great guitarist and a singer that he admires who, in turn, appreciates that the guitarist donned his cap.
Across the record, there are genuine love songs of various sorts. Most are ones of sobriety,, acknowledging that the singer may not be the easiest person to love, that he knows it and that he always promises to work hard and to be better. Though not uniformly great, they all read as sincere and poignant. The great outlier among these love songs is, of course, “Candy,” which is not about a present love or working relationship but, rather, of a lost love -- a reminiscence. The track would become a Modern Rock hit, a mainstream Pop hit and in constant rotation on MTV. The song, ostensibly two bass chords and a chorus, is a revelation due to the interplay of the two singers voices -- Iggy’s deep and sad, Kate Pierson’s soaring and vulnerable. When they harmonize, it’s both surprisingly pretty and affecting.
“Brick by Brick” is not a great album. It’s not even a great Roots Rock album, to the extent that it could be called one. But it is a very professional, focused and hard working record that features several excellent songs and one transcendent one. It also benefits from comparison to most everything else he released in the prior decade. This was something for Iggy to be proud of, for sure. He went everywhere and talked to anyone he could about the album. He hammed it up with Arsenio. He humored straight laced English journalists who asked him about “Drugs” and “Punk.” He co-hosted MTVs “120 Minutes.” All the while his message was clear, “I’m here to work. I want to make more music. I want to act in movies if I can. I want to make a living so that I can have a better life and one day retire.” Throughout these interviews, he often removes his leather jackets to reveal a tight fitting t-shirt. Soon, onstage, he would remove the shirt altogether. Then, while on tour in 1991, he would remove his pants. Iggy Pop was back.