Rock Doc Gives Fun Look At The Stooges

For anyone who was 14 in 1975 and forming a rock band, the song to start with was Deep Purple’s “Smoke On the Water,” because it had a very simple riff.

Move ahead a few years and a similar kid was probably taxing his brain with “I Wanna Be Your Dog” by The Stooges because every punk band in the world covered it, and the riff was even simpler.

But what none of the punk pretenders had was a shirtless, bug-eyed, twitching freak apparently in the last stage of a complete mental breakdown for a lead singer.

I am referring, of course, to Iggy Pop, aka Jim Osterberg, the frontman of the legendary Stooges.

Jim Jarmusch is the Official Indie Filmmaker and apparently in a position to do what he wants, because he’s made a documentary, “Gimme Danger,” about The Stooges. The rock band, not the comedy troupe. Although sometimes it’s hard to tell.

Iggy remembers that one member of the group went so far as to track down a phone number for Moe Howard of the Three Stooges to ask if it was OK to use the name,

The reply was affirmative, albeit expletive-laden.

The star of the show is Iggy, who looks like he’s been aged in an oak barrel with plenty of tannins. He is affable, garrulous, intelligent and charming as he natters away about the band’s history.

Which is mostly one of commercial failure, drugs, confusion and general misery.

The story is told more or less chronologically, with modern-day interviews of people involved, period footage, lots of Iggy and some pointless interjections of clips from 1950s TV shows just to show how sterile and conformist it all was.

The Stooges made three studio albums in their brief career, and if you combine the best tracks from 1969’s “The Stooges,” 1970’s “Fun House” and 1973’s “Raw Power,” plus Iggy solo efforts like “Lust for Life,” you’ll have a CD’s worth of toe-tapping weirdness.

(The Stooges released albums in 2007 and 2013 to no avail. They shouldn’t even be considered Stooges albums.) 

Their influence is out of proportion to their output, but that never stopped anyone. You could say the same for Neil Diamond.

Besides, nobody in a position of authority ever considered casting Neil Diamond as Peter Pan for Broadway. But David Bowie’s manager was looking hard at Iggy in the role. It’s a stunning thought. It stunned Iggy so bad he went back to Michigan.

“Gimme Danger” is fun stuff and doesn’t go down the usual rock doc road of treating rock musicians as demigods. 

And unlike every other film I’ve seen that has even the slightest connection with punk rock, it does not feature Legs McNeil. And there was much rejoicing.

“Gimme Danger” is streaming on Amazon Prime. It is rated R for drug content and language.