“Fall In Love With Me,” Iggy Pop

“The Adventures of Pete and Pete” is a show that I treasure having had the chance to see when it first aired on Nickelodeon, back before it became simple a nostalgic touchstone for thousands of former kids (and in my case, at the time that it was on, former pre-teens) to join Facebook groups about. There was something deliciously off about the show, as it defied the “Saved By the Bell” model of “preppy kids with whom I have nothing in common” by featuring kids whose lives were absurd, even bizarre. It prepared me for the adult world, in a way, by showing that grown-ups didn’t have it any better figured out than us kids. It was the anti-“Wonder Years,” though I liked that show too. I watched a lot of TV as a kid, is what I’m saying.

Iggy Pop, the once and future king of Detroit’s seedier rock and roll scene, became a regular character on the show, playing the father of Young Pete’s best female friend (when I see Michelle Trachtenburg today, all sexy and hot, I feel like a dirty old man because I remember when she was a young’un. It’s the same thing with the Olsen twins, though they made these easier for former “Full House” viewers by going on the “no food shall pass between these lips” diet). At the time, I had no idea who Iggy was, nor was I aware of the truly subversive notion that having him on a kid’s show was. This was back when Nickelodeon didn’t try to out-Disney Disney, by having their headliners record horrible records as well as do horrible shows with canned laughter accompanying sub-Three Stooges physical comedy (funny how I went with a Three Stooges reference there, given that Iggy’s band was the Stooges).

Iggy Pop, as I later learned, was the doped-up, strung-out lead singer of America’s best rock band that no one had ever heard of, the Stooges. I bought their first album, simply called “The Stooges,” and while I eventually sold it I did wear the hell out of it at times, because it was great. “Raw Power” I didn’t respond to quite as much (the touches of glam rock might have something to do with it; there was one rock genre that I could never truly embrace, either because I’m a latent homophobe or the music was on the whole iffy. I prefer to think the latter, as my appreciation of the Smiths and their ambiguous singer Morrissey gives me the right to say I’m not homophobic. Granted, that’s like saying I can’t be racist because I have black friends). But it was his 1977 solo record “Lust for Life,” with the title track and “The Passenger” and “Success” and “Fall In Love With Me,” that I really liked. I enjoyed the Road Warrior-esque “Passenger” because at the time I wasn’t driving myself, I relied on rides from friends, and the extent to which we were still friends depended on how often they were willing to cart my lazy ass around with them.

“Fall In Love With Me,” coming as it does from the admittedly creepy Iggy (just look at the album cover and tell me you don’t get the “windowless van full of puppies” vibe), is a tender love song, albeit one couched in drug addiction in the druggiest of all European cities, West Berlin. Having some German ancestry led me to develop a lifelong interest in the country that gave the world Haydn, Hitler, and Hasselhoff. Part of it was trying to figure out why such an evil as the Holocaust came to pass, and how the German people dealt with that legacy of being the world’s worst mass murderers (hint: they embraced David Hasselhoff as their cultural icon. I think that indicates just how well they dealt with being Holocaust perpetrators). Being history’s bad guys can lead you to do nutty things, such as make Fassbinder films or ingest massive quantities of heroin, both of which Berlin was known for in the Seventies when Iggy and David Bowie (champion of the then-underappreciated Stooges and Velvet Underground) went there to record Pop’s first two solo records, “The Idiot” and “Lust.” The record as a whole reads almost like a great high followed by the lowest of lows, with some great guitar riffs thrown in. “Fall In Love” caps off the record, which began in the hedonistic rush of the title track (used to great effect to start off the greatest film about Scottish heroin junkies ever made, “Trainspotting”). It’s sinister and a little sexy, and it would be the perfect song of choice to play for your girlfriend if she were into bondage and leather.

Having said that, I’m not sure that I’d want a girl I date to be into that stuff. I didn’t like the idea of getting spanked as a child when it was my grandma; why would I get off on it now because it’s being done by a woman who might be paid to do so? Oh, the psycho-sexual hang-ups of a former English major don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world, but still…I think about these things.

Iggy Pop and the Stooges reformed, and it was perhaps predictable that they recorded a new album, one which I’ve actively avoided (because it’s the rare creature that is a satisfying reunion album from a band that broke up when all their members were still in their twenties). But as always, I can stick with the classics. I found a best-of CD for the alt-country group Uncle Tupelo (literally the forefathers for Wilco, as Jeff Tweedy was in both bands) on which they cover “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” It’s a disarmingly clever cover, at least until the last furious onslaught of guitars at the end (I kinda enjoyed the almost bluegrass reading Tweedy and the boys gave the song). If there’s ever a “Pete and Pete” movie, I feel some hope that Iggy will be asked to revisit his part, and he’ll do a good job of it. But without the heroin, without the saloon in West Berlin, without the table made of wood, it’s just not the same, is it?