Sunday, January 4, 2009

Snob's Music

Snob's Music

Iggy Pop: Open Up and Bleed- Book Review

Posted: 04 Jan 2009 01:11 AM CST

Iggy Pop: Open Up and Bleed is the latest in a line of biographies about the life and career of the musician often referred to as the Godfather of Punk.

Author Paul Trynka traces Pop's life from childhood and teenage years as Jim Osterberg of Ann Arbor, MI, through his early work in bands like The Iguanas, to his now legendary turn as the lead singer of one of the most influential acts in alternative music history: The Stooges.

Unfortunately, Trynka's accounts add little to the story that we have not heard before. Anyone who has read Legs McNeill's stellar Please Kill Me can skip right through the first 180 or so pages of Open Up and Bleed. What it takes McNeill fewer than 50 pages to do takes Trynka almost four times as long.

Where Open Up and Bleed does succeed (generally) is in the telling of Pop's post-Stooges career, including his times and connections with David Bowie.

However, Trynka's writing has a schizophrenic habit of alternating between Iggy Pop superfan and harsh musical critic. It's difficult to overlook the fact that Trynka's opinion of Pop and the way he illuminates his subject ebbs and flows with the consensus music critics have of Pop's work at the time in question. It is a distracting "go-with-the-flow" approach that calls many of his assertions into question.

On the plus side, the book's collection of photographs is tremendous. They shed a light on many of the subjects and events which takes place. The full frontal nude of Iggy is perhaps unnecessary however.

While Open Up and Bleed is a comprehensive account of a charismatic musical icon, there are far more concise and compellingly penned accounts available. This is only for the Iggy Pop completist.

Iggy Pop's website

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