Iggy Pop at Tokyo Garden Theater, April 2nd 2025

 

 

In the early 2000s the band Mogwai was at the peak of their critical acclaim. One of their best albums started with a song that sampled an Iggy Pop interview he gave in Canada in 1977. The sample quoted him over a slow guitar arpeggio saying that “punk is a word used by dilettantes and heartless manipulators of music. It takes up the energy, the bodies, the hearts, the souls and the minds of young men who give everything they have to it. It’s a term based on contempt, fashion, style, elitism, satanism and everything that’s rotten about rock and roll…” It painted a clear picture of the confrontational, anti-establishment, constantly innovating and somewhat contradictory stand of an artist like Iggy Pop.                         

Musically he, along with the rest of The Stooges, issued a similar statement thirty years prior on the first song off of their first album. 1969 starts with a hypnotic guitar lick unheard at the time that fades into a Bo Diddley beat. The lyrics say “It’s 1969, okay / all across the USA”, but to me it sounds almost like he’s saying “war across the USA”. Later he reinforces the nihilistic aspects of the song when he says “last year I was 21, I didn’t have a lot of fun / Now I’m gonna be 22, I say an “oh, my..” and a “boo-hoo”. Then the fuzziest guitar solo kicks in around the minute forty second mark announcing the birth of a new style of music (punk?). This first song from his first album establishes what it will be a constant presence in his whole career and will influence dearly what music and lots of different art forms will be like in the next fifty years. Extreme complexity and innovation coming from simplicity. Iggy Pop is without a doubt one of the key figures in the history of rock and roll.
 

This was his second show in Tokyo after headlining Punkspring 2025 three days ago. According to setlist.fm, his last visit to Japan as a solo artist was in 2003, when he headlined the White Stage at Fuji Rock Festival. At that time Anthrax and The Mad Capsule Markets opened for him. This time it was The Cro-Magnons. The lead singer and guitar player were also the founders of The Blue Hearts and The High-Lows, both legendary bands in Japan. Their music is basically pop with a bit of a punk attitude. They were fun and played a short thirty minutes set that was well received by their fans in the audience.

A couple of minutes before eight o’clock the band lead by Nick Sinner from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs walked to the stage followed by the one and only. He yelled to the mic and  what came next was one of the most appropriate songs to open a concert, another prophetic output from the Stooges. With hundreds of phones pointing at him “she got a TV Eye on me” made perfect sense. The crowd went nuts. As you know, prom previous posts, I go to lots of metal shows, but not since Slayer in 2015 have I seen this much pushing and constant moving on the pit at a show. He opened with four Stooges songs, TV Eye, Raw Power, I Got a Right and Gimme Danger. Hearing one of my favorite lyrics, “There’s nothing in my dreams, just some ugly memories / Kiss me like the ocean breeze” sung by the amazingly powerful baritone of this 77-year old man who originally delivered it in his twenties was pure magic.

Then he followed with the one-two punch of The Passenger and Lust for Life. In the latter he leaned over the crowd and I got to hold the man as the panicking staff came to his rescue. This happened another couple of times during the show. I suspect that he’s been advised not to do that, but someone with that amount of stamina and energy is nearly impossible to contain, in spite of his visibly physical limitations. On top of that, as I mentioned earlier, his voice is still powerful, he doesn’t show any signs of exhaustion during the show. Every once in a while he will sit down for a bit, but that was it. The ninety minutes were non-stop energy.

Corey King on trombone and Leron Thomas on trumpet added a welcomed extra layer to the songs arrangements. Urian Hackney on drums and Brad Truax on bass were more than an effective solid rhythm section, they took leading roles when the songs needed, like in the previously mentioned Lust for Life and Gimme Danger. I also mentioned Nick Sinner earlier, the band’s director, who along with Ale Campos on guitar, gave life to some of the most iconic riffs in history. The gentleman on keyboards, I haven’t identified who it was yet, also killed it in the Hammond.

It took to song number 10 on the setlist for the show to catch a bit of a breather and it was with one of my favorite songs from his catalog. Before getting to it, in addition to the ones already mentioned, we got Death Trip and Search and Destroy from the Raw Power album, Loose from Fun House and the iconic I wanna Be Your Dog, the only song played from the Stooges’ debut album. Song number 10 was Down on the Street, the opener to quite possibly the best rock album of all time. That in the pocket groove from the recording is nearly impossible to recreate, but this band was really, really close. I loved hearing that song played live.

Same from the following one. Another hard hitting one from the Fun House album, 1970. It was introduced by Iggy as a sequel to 1969 from the first album. The last Stooges song of the night was one that doesn’t appear in any of the official first three records. I’m Sick of You. Iggy described it as the idiosyncratic Stooges take on She’s Leaving Home from The Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s album. He then played Some Weird Sin from Lust for Life and two songs from last year’s Every Loser, Frenzy and Modern Day Rip Off. In between the band teased Nightclubbing with its iconic machine drum pattern, too bad they didn’t play it. The show closed with three songs from the eighties. First I’m Bored and then Real Wild Child. They both brought the house down and as the musicians were about to put their instruments down, Iggy turned to them and said let’s play one more. The last song played was Five ft One.

It was ninety minutes of pure energy from a performer that started his career almost sixty years ago. It was mesmerizing. I was lucky to see The Stooges twice. Once without Iggy with Ron Asheton on guitar and the second time after he passed with James Williamson and the late Steve McKay on sax. That second time was of course one of the best shows I’ve ever witnessed. This concert at Tokyo Garden Theater was another for the history books. It was exhilarating to have an audience of this caliber with a living legend.
 
Thank you for reading. Please follow me on Twitter for updates at @ConcertTokyo. You can also click the Like button and get notifications at The Tokyo Concert Experience on Facebook.