Perhaps to the surprise of all, Iggy Pop turned 60 today, celebrating forty years as an artist. Responsible, in part, for birthing punk. Iggy once commented that it was seeing a really bad Doors concert, in which Jim Morrison, drunk and bloated, displaying obvious contempt for his audience, that inspired the creation of the Stooges and the confrontational persona of Iggy Pop. To have survived, let alone continue to make music and perform live with an intensity rarely equaled by performers half his age (we saw him at SXSW this year) is astonishing in and of itself, but to consider that he created music within a context of self-destruction, alcoholism and drug abuse, elevates that success to another level entirely.
For the record, "The Passenger" is one of our favourite Pop tunes of all time (that, and virtually anything of Raw Power), since it provided the soundtrack of our meeting our good Bassano del Grappa. On a student summer tour of Europe, backpacking through northern Italy, a few of us were enjoying some gelato at a local gelateria, when "The Passenger" came over the speakers. Perking up, we caught the attention of del Grappa who explained that we were listening to a cover version performed by some friends of his, and that they would be headlining a small outdoor concert later that night in the piazza. del Grappa offered to show us and around, arrange tickets, and find us a place to crash, and the evening ended up being one of the highlights of the trip, as afterwards, del Grappa and his friends dragged us through the back streets and drinking holes to celebrate the successful show. "The Passenger" had been their finale, and the song's stranger in a strange land atmosphere became very real for us.
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