I’ve felt time’s winged chariot about to grind me into the tarmac for the last four or five months, during which I’ve done maybe 80 interviews, but I feel I’ve turned a corner today, after a dozen key interviews in the last six days, including Carlos Alomar, Danny Fields, Roberta Bayley, Hunt Sales, Gerard Malanga, Leee Black Childers and Bill Laswell, plus several phoners, with another dozen or so lined up for the next week, among them Bob Sheff, Bebe Buell and Mick Rock.

 

The Fields and Leee Childers interviews were quite gruelling. They’re both used to talking about Iggy, but getting genuinely unheard stories, or clarifying crucial points, is tricky. But they’re both terrific raconteurs; Danny’s was a very emotional story, particularly when we delved into the period of time when Iggy, who at the time was being ‘managed’ by Danny, started getting involved with Steve Paul, who was one of Danny’s best friends. Leee is not at all objective, but extremely lyrical. One typical quote, of an early Stooges New York appearance, probably at Ungano’s early in 1970: “ So it was brand new and performed by someone who literally everyone wanted to have sex with, male or female. At least they all wondered what it’d be like to have sex with him.  Isn’t it wonderful that everyone got to find out?” (Lawyers’  note - Iggy himself points out that, although not repulsed by the idea of having sex with a man, he’s never done so).

 

Carlos Alomar was particularly  intriguing on the subject of Iggy’s friendship with Bowie. There were many useful observations and insights, but what was most intriguing is the way that, when the two got back together in February 1976, their friendship suddenly seemed fully-formed. The two had first known each other, of course, when Iggy had signed to MainMan; then the Stooges had been dropped by Tony Defries, with David, on the brink of huge success in Japan, reluctantly persuaded to ‘let them go.’ The two had met again on and off in 1974 and 1975, when Bowie, who was in something of state himself, attempted to record a session with Iggy in LA, only for Iggy to disappear. Finally they hooked up again in San Diego, at the start of the Station To Station tour, and at this point, says Alomar, their friendship appeared deep and fully-developed: “Having met Jim the first time [in February] I really didn’t have a reference for why they were friends.  Nor were they musical friends.  They were just friends.”

 

The two seem to have been natural and open with each other through some sort of instinct, without even going through the process of detailing their own travails. They both intuitively knew they needed each other. Iggy, today, is half casual in explanation of this, mentioning that Bowie had got bored of his previous sidekick and simply needed a new one. But Iggy was much more than a simple sidekick.