★★★★☆
Because he was part of London Jazz Festival, Iggy Pop really did try to be on his best behaviour at this one-off event. He performed the slow, ruminative songs from his jazz-flecked new album Free. He displayed feminist credentials with James Bond, a single about a female version of the licensed-to-kill spy of the title. He even wore a smart jacket, not easy for a man who views clothing as something to be discarded at all costs. Then all hell broke loose.
“I’d like to play some songs from the 70s,” said Pop, 72, which was his cue to act like the rock star equivalent of a boy who has just been told Santa Claus doesn’t exist. “This was conceived in Los Angeles and born in Berlin,” he announced of Sister Midnight, a stop-start art rocker from Pop’s 1977 solo classic The Idiot. Before we knew it he was into the ferocious punk of Death Trip by his old band the Stooges while running into the crowd, throwing his microphone stand across the stage, and generally causing panic amid the Barbican’s mild-mannered ushers. He did at least refrain from stage-diving. That could have been painful in a seated venue.
Pop also used the intimate setting to remind us just how unique and, beneath the wildness, sophisticated an artist he can be. With the jazz trumpeter Leron Thomas bringing new dynamics to the music, he pulled out a few obscurities that illustrated the breadth of his repertoire. “I wrote this when I was basically depressed,” he said of I Want to Go to the Beach, a haunting, Tom Waits-style torch song from his 2009 album Préliminaires and a perfect vehicle for his cavernous vocal timbre. “Forty-five years ago I went on a journey through the discos of Europe in the entourage of David Bowie,” he said of Nightclubbing. Only Pop could make a mention of Bowie sound less like name-dropping and more like resentment at having to be in anyone’s “entourage”.
Finally, Iggy Pop told the story of his life through People, Places, Parties, a chugging rock’n’roll adaptation of Chop Chop Chop by the minimal punk-rap duo Sleaford Mods, from living homeless alongside prostitutes in Hollywood to having an unfortunate one-night stand with a fan that ended with her finger being chopped off. “Let’s get juvenile!” he shouted before dancing maniacally, advanced scoliosis giving him a loping gait that added to his all-round Iggy-ness. We already had got juvenile, thanks to him, and it was marvellous.