Ramblings

I saw Iggy in Crystal Palace Park in 2023, and very good he was, topping a bill which included Blondie and Generation Sex (half Generation X, half Sex Pistols). A gig at Alexandra Palace for 28 May 2025. was announced: I guess he likes playing palaces. Probably Buckingham Palace next time, I imagine His Majesty is a bit of a fan.

Buying a ticket for this gig was risking disappointment: he was two big years older. But last time was so good that I wanted more, and indoor gigs usually summon more intensity, so I took the chance.

We used to live near Highgate tube station and walk to Alexandra Park for the fireworks each November, so I took a nostalgic trip on a beautiful warm evening along the same route.

Installed inside with a refreshing lager, I took in the first band, Joe & the Shitboys. Their mission sounds beguiling:

The queer vegan shitpunks, Joe & The Shitboys, formed with the intention of calling out shitty behaviour in the conservative Faroe Islands, where the rock scene is filled with boneless homophobes and meat-eating misogynists – and continue to take their aim at general vibe killers everywhere.

I mean, good luck to them. They’re a favourite with Iggy himself apparently. But to my ears, a work not yet in progress. All attitude, no music – and I say that as a punk rock fan for almost fifty years. Undoubted energy and volume, but undirected. A lot of swearing. Iggy swears a lot, but hey, he’s earned the right. Coming from a slightly porky bespectacled vocalist approaching middle age, wearing pyjama shorts and scruffy tee shirt, without any obvious talent to back it up, it came across as a toddler tantrum. Sorry if I killed the vibe, boys.

Next up were Bob Vylan, a very different proposition. Bob Vylan is/are a London punk rap band duo. To avoid confusion they go by individual stage names Bobby Vylan and Bobbie Vylan. This gig, of course, was before they achieved infamy with their incendiary Glastonbury appearance.

Singer Bobby Vylan has a charismatic stage presence, dreadlocked, loping and athletic: his banter between songs is friendly, relaxed, funny and self-deprecating, but his anger is at injustice is never far away. He announced their first song saying “We’re going to start off as usual with a few light stretches.” I assumed this was a joke, but no, that’s what we got, a full track called Guided Meditation and Light Stretching to meditate and stretch to.

I was already intrigued, but their next song, I Heard You Want Your Country Back, a blistering and furious rant against right-wing nostalgia for Old England was mesmerising:

I heard you want your country back
Shut the fuck up
I heard you want your country back
Uh-uh, you can't have that
I heard you want your country back
Shut the fuck up
I heard you want your country back
Well shit, me too

It’s hard to argue with this sentiment. How else are black people – or anyone of non-white descent – who grew up in the UK supposed to respond to white people who “want their country back”? Where should they go? Bob Vylan’s anger did not seem disproportionate, and there was plenty left over for the atrocities in Gaza. The band went down well with the punk crowd.

A month after this gig they found fame – or rather infamy – at Glastonbury where Bobby led the crowd in a chant of “Death, death to the IDF” (Israel Defense Forces). Clearly the chant was deliberately provocative, and if he wanted notoriety it certainly worked: Keir Starmer, who had remained tight-lipped for months on Israel’s actions in Gaza, decided that it was now time to speak out, calling it “appalling hate speech”.

The Mail on Sunday went with the headline “Now arrest punk band who led “Death to Israelis” chant at Glastonbury”: there was no such chant. Obviously it was directed specifically at the Israeli military, but this truth was sacrificed by the need for the Mail on Sunday to stir as much outrage in its readers as possible. Note the “Now” – a common tabloid trick to wind people up about how things are getting so much worse, these days, Meanwhile Bobby posted on Instagram that he had been inundated with messages of “support and hatred”.

Was it hate speech? Or dog-whistle racism? Plenty of that around from all sides. It certainly wasn’t pleasant, but by accident or design it was perfectly calibrated: they upset only the people who would hate them anyway. Meanwhile, millions of people who might like their music had been encouraged to try it. Whether they can seize the opportunity and establish a mass audience will depend on their recordings and live performances. I certainly found them compelling.

It was time for Iggy Pop. Due on stage at 9.10 pm, he didn’t appear until 9.12, which I found disappointing: one thing you expect from Sir Igworth Newell Poplington is punctuality.

Once on stage, though, he was a wild beast. The crowd, a very broad spread of ages, greeted him as the returning hero which he is: the last survivor of the three godfathers of punk, since we lost Bowie and Reed. As usual his jacket lasted about thirty seconds before he cast it aside and we were treated to a full view of that torso on the big screen, his trousers as low slung as any teenager would dare. And those gleaming American teeth, conjuring an image of Iggy obedient and passive in the dentist’s chair.

His most commercially successful recordings were collaborations with David Bowie: the albums Raw Power, The Idiot and Lust for Life. He played three of his biggest songs in the first six: Raw Power came early, and confirmed that at 78, Iggy has lost none of his ferocity.

He came with a young-ish, energetic and tight band including Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and a two-man horn section added class and drive and fleshed out the sound: the perfect platform for Iggy to storm the audience from.

And storm them he did. I’ve never seen such commitment to a performance from any artist, old or young. He doesn’t roll around in broken glass any more, but we must forgive him that. Every ounce of his energy was put to work.

Iggy didn’t mind a catchy tune, especially in his Bowie years, and out came the phones and the la-la-la-la-la-la-la-las for the irresistible shuffling beat of The Passenger.

Next was the song which is surely his anthem and will one day be his epitaph: Lust for Life. Pure joi de vivre. Gone was the combativeness and audience bating of early Stooges performances; never mind that the rhythm was borrowed from You Can’t Hurry Love: Iggy stomped across the stage as if possessed, and the audience transformed into a seething, joyful mass. The love between him and his audience was palpable. Plenty of bald heads in evidence, but also plenty of young people come to witness a legend in action while they could.

At Crystal Palace Park, he had looked down from the stage and observed wistfully “I wish this stage wasn’t so high, or I’d come down and create some fuckin’ mayhem!” This time he did descend into the audience to sing Loose.

The only time I saw the mask slip was when he was being hauled back on to the stage by roadies, when a flicker of anxiety crossed his face: it had finally occurred to him I could get hurt doing this.

Plenty more bangers still to come: I Wanna Be Your Dog, Search and Destroy, the song that first turned me on to Iggy back in ‘73. Another personal favourite, Some Weird Sin:

Well, I never got my license to live
They won't give it up
So I stand at the world’s edge 

Iggy took the odd sitting break but the intensity never let up. Finally the coffin which had been lurking vertically at the side of the stage was brought into service: in he went and he was wheeled carefully offstage like the precious thing he is. Suddenly the lid was flung open, and Iggy beamed out at his people.

One day, he seemed to be saying, perhaps soon. But not tonight. Not tonight.

Set List

• T.V. Eye
• Raw Power
• I Got a Right
• Gimme Danger
• The Passenger
• Lust for Life
• Death Trip
• Loose
• I Wanna Be Your Dog
• Search and Destroy
• Down on the Street
• 1970
• I’m Sick of You
• Some Weird Sin
• Frenzy
• L.A. Blues / Nightclubbing
• Modern Day Rip Off
• I’m Bored
• Real Wild Child (Wild One)
• Funtime