Ivan and Iggy, 1979 (courtesy of Ivan Kral).

Sunday evening, I was saddened to learn that Ivan Kral had passed away earlier in the day. In 2015, I first made contact with Ivan, hoping he’d be willing to be interviewed about his time working with Iggy Pop. Thankfully, he was, and the result was the article we are re-posting today as a tribute. In 2016, after David Bowie’s death, Ivan got back in touch, wanting to share his memories of a 1979 evening spent hanging out with Bowie and Iggy, which we were, of course, willing to facilitate. Read that piece here.

*****

Ivan Kral sure has led an interesting life. The Prague-born songwriter and musician had his first brush with fame at the age of sixteen when a track by his band Saze broke the top ten in Czechoslovakia. But just as the song was breaking, his family relocated to New York City. In the early ‘70s, Ivan played in glam bands and, for a brief period, was part of Shaun Cassidy’s backing group. In 1974, he played guitar with an embryonic version of Blondie before joining the Patti Smith Group. As part of Smith’s unit, Ivan played guitar, bass and keyboards, appearing on all of her early records (including the seminal Horses), and was involved in writing a number of her songs (he co-wrote “Dancing Barefoot” one of Smith’s pivotal tunes). He’s also a documentarian, having had the foresight to capture Iggy and the Stooges on film, as well as the burgeoning punk scene happening at CBGB’s in the mid-‘70s, which became the documentary, The Blank Generation.
 

Ivan, center, with the Patti Smith Group, 1975.

The Patti Smith Group ended in 1979 when Smith began her self-imposed retirement, which left Ivan looking for a gig. He hooked up with Iggy Pop in time to play on the Ig’s 1980 album, Soldier, and subsequently became Iggy’s right-hand man, touring and writing a number of songs with the Godfather of Punk. Eight of those co-writes appeared on Party (1981), and while Ivan came up with some catchy and interesting tunes, Iggy’s lyrics often left much to be desired, and the production generally felt lifeless. If you’re in the mood for it, Party has its fair share of goofy charm, but it’s hard to imagine it appealing to fans, critics, or the general public at that time—and it ultimately didn’t. Party was a disappointment both critically and commercially, with Ivan quitting Iggy’s band before the year was out.
 

 
Ivan is a rock star in his native land (there’s even a mid-‘90s Czech TV documentary about him, with another in the works), and has released ten solo records in the Czech Republic; the most recent is called Always. For some time now he has resided in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which is somewhat ironic, as the college town is also the birthplace of the Stooges.

The following interview was conducted via email. A big THANKS to Ivan for letting us use some photos from his personal archive.

How did you meet Iggy?:

Ivan: There was an unknown blonde guy in a yoga pose—naked in my living room. He gets up, extends a hand and says, “I’m Iggy Pop and I’m producing your next album,” for Luger, my 1973 glam band. I was thinking, “Yeah sure, he’s just another nobody with big plans.” After I saw the Stooges I realized that I was the nobody with big plans.

So, I went to The Stooges show at the Academy of Music in New York City. He owned the crowd. Fans were begging to be humiliated by him. He’d spit and they’d thank him. Never saw anything like it. I was filming with my “movie camera” (no sound) anticipating his next move so I wouldn’t waste film. Every second counted. I’ve posted a few clips on YouTube.

What were the Party sessions like?:

Ivan: Fun! Torture! We were joking a lot, and I can still smell his pot from the Record Plant. At first, Jim [Iggy] didn’t want to be there. So I was in the studio recording the basics thinking, “Oh, this is going to be a great record”. Then he does his vocals and completely changes the lyrics. On one batch of lyrics he kept singing “I hear a sheep bleed.” English isn’t my first language so I asked him what it meant. He got very serious, into teacher mode, sits me down and starts explaining to me that it’s “sheep bleat” not “sheep bleed.” Then he quizzed me on it! I still haven’t heard anyone ever say it. The sessions were mostly a blast, but a few times I got put in my place.
 

 
“Eggs on Plate” is a really interesting track that is a lot different than the other material on Party. How did that song come to be?:

Ivan: I originally wrote it for Mick Ronson as a completely different kind of song. Just a simple riff, no melody. It wasn’t cool enough so Jim turned it into a launch-pad to get creative. We were singing vocal backgrounds and rolling on the studio floor, hysterical. The producer was mad as hell, yelling “This is enough!”
 

 
Iggy fans seem to have mixed feelings about Party. What do you think of the album, 30-plus years later?:

Ivan: Well, who else can say they wrote Iggy’s worst album? It became his joke album. I didn’t know he had a personal vendetta against the record company and intended on recording a lousy album. I wasted all that time trying to write great songs, but he wanted the opposite. So, I don’t know if that’s a compliment or not. However, “Pumpin’ for Jill” and “Bang Bang” get licensed often, so it can’t be too bad. Most recently “Bang Bang” was on a TV show called State of Affairs.
 

 
What was it like to get the news that David Bowie had covered “Bang Bang” on his 1987 album, Never Let Me Down?:

Ivan: Unbelievable. I saw Bowie’s Glass Spider gig at the Meadowlands and was blown away when he performed “Bang Bang.” Such a thrill to see choreography and production on some little song I just whipped up out of boredom one night. I needed the income then, so it was a blessing on many levels. Thank you, David.

Years ago, while reading the Iggy biography, The Wild One, I learned you wrote a lot of material with Pop. A couple of outtakes have been released over the years. Is there a chance we will hear more someday?:

Ivan: Oh, I think I remember that book because Jim was mad at me about something in it. Anyway, I have cassettes of some great unreleased stuff we wrote in my apartment between 1979 and 1981. One song is so sentimental. He has a sweet side and it shines through all that blood, guts and cocaine.
 

Iggy and unidentified in Chicago, 1980 (courtesy of Ivan Kral).
 
One of the unreleased tunes that has seen the light of a day is a punky number called “Puppet World”—such a fun song! It’s a shame it didn’t end up on Party.:

Ivan: Someone just recently told me that she plays “Puppet World” when she wants to get out of a bad mood. You can’t help but love that.
 

 
In 1983, Iggy stepped away from the music business for a couple of years, and the early ‘80s are now seen as a dark period for him. What was it like working with him during that time?:

Ivan: His system was conditioned to handle large amounts of drugs and alcohol. Then he’d sweat it out while performing. It’d just evaporate. That was okay, but then there were times when he got scary and mean. I worried about him and dragged him to the doctor when we returned to New York. I wanted him to clean up, but I think he resented my good intentions.
 

 
What are up to currently and what are your future plans?:

Ivan: My new European album has a few tunes that sound like old Stones. Some songs have that Detroit sound and were recorded with Tino Gross at his Funky D studio [in Royal Oak, Michigan]. I’ll be gigging in the fall. Until then, I continue writing with my lyricist for visual media, and even some classical stuff. I like it all.
 

 
A live video of Iggy playing one of the unreleased tunes you wrote with him, “Don’t Put the Brakes on Tonight” (which includes the “sheep bleat” lyric), recently appeared on YouTube. Have any memories associated with this song?:

Ivan: The record company “installed” us at the Iroquois Hotel for four weeks and basically said “don’t come out until you have an album of hits.” I think that was one of the first ones.

You can be seen playing guitar in the video of “Brakes,” which was filmed in Oakland on Halloween in 1980. Recall anything special about that night?:

Ivan: If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
A night spent hanging out with David Bowie and Iggy Pop: Ivan Kral tells us what it was like

 
Much has been said about musical miracle man Ivan Kral here on Dangerous Minds. Born in Czechoslovakia where rock ‘n’ roll was heavily frowned upon, Kral came to the United States with his diplomat parents in 1966. After the Warsaw Pact Invasion in 1968 he decided to stay here as a refugee.

Young Ivan bought a Super 8 film camera to keep a visual diary & filmed loads of rock n roll starting with Murray The K shows in the mid 60s. As time progressed this all around talented musician played with Blondie, Shaun Cassidy’s teen glam band Longfellow, a long and fabled stint with the Patti Smith Group, Iggy Pop and many many more. During the early years of the dawning of punk he was filming everything, much of which was edited into two underground films Night Lunch and Blank Generation which were shown all the time at Max’s Kansas City, and were the first glimpses my generation got of the early days of our favorite bands that we had just missed due to our age.
 

Ivan Kral and friends
 
Watching people in his films like the Dolls, Wayne County, Ramones, Television, Blondie, Talking Heads all before they made records (except the Dolls) and watching these films in the clubs they were filmed in while the same bands were still playing there was strange to say the least. I can’t imagine what seeing them now for the first time would feel like. These very primitive silent films were shot on crude black and white film stock that made the participants look like they could be from some decadent 1920’s Dada club, or from any time besides NOW. It’s wild to think that these films were just about two years old when I first saw them!

Of his most infamous short films that never made it to these two compilations is the footage Kral shot of Iggy and the Stooges in 1973 at the Academy Of Music on 14th Street in New York, where I spent much of my teenage life seeing middle-sized touring bands on their way up (or down). The infamous yearly Frank Zappa Halloween shows were held there before and after the name was changed to The Palladium, outside of which I can be seen as a kid making a fool of myself in the Zappa film Baby Snakes. Whenever The Stooges films have showed up they have been in black and white and very short, like under a minute.

My old friend, rock superfan and writer Madeline Bochario alerted me to this wild color footage with sound that just appeared on YouTube. A way better and quite lengthy version of the Ivan Kral footage.

Search and destroy, while you can, after the jump…

David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and Ivan Kral in Berlin, 1979

This is a guest post by Ivan Kral, a musician/songwriter, as well as the director of The Blank Generation, a documentary concerning the ‘70s New York punk scene. Catch up on Ivan’s long and interesting career via this previous Dangerous Minds post, which focused on his years working with Iggy Pop.

After David Bowie’s recent passing, Ivan shared a story of a night he spent hanging out with Iggy and Bowie.

Sometime in 1979, David Bowie, Iggy Pop and I walked to a Berlin apartment from a small, dingy studio—where we were just playing for fun and weren’t working on anything specific—a few blocks away. The entry key was in a “secret hiding place,” which was inside the torn pocket of a mustard-colored overcoat hanging on the hall wall, where anyone could’ve found it.

Once inside, we smoked marijuana, but were still lucid afterwards. David sat down on the sofa in front of the TV that was playing old silent movies, the kind where the actors appear to move quickly or in bizarre sequences because real film cameras hadn’t been invented yet. As there wasn’t any sound, text like, “They wouldn’t let the dog take dancing lessons anymore,” would appear on screen, and then cut to young ladies making exaggerated movements.

I watched the film because David watched the film, and I wanted to be like him. He alternated between thumbing through books on the coffee table and then looking up at the TV—back and forth, back and forth. So I did, too. Iggy announced he had taken some L.S.D. earlier, and offered some to us. David declined, so I did, too.
 

 
I copied David’s every move as he looked curiously at each page in a book. The book I was looking at was unique because it had photos of small tree branches that were trimmed upward with a slant skyward, as, apparently, doing so might create a little dent. When a raindrop lands on the angled tip it won’t be able to slide off, so it hugs the newly exposed angled end where it could rot and/or mold, then freeze and kill new flower buds next season. When I shared my discovery with David it blew his mind. He’d look at the book and then stare off into space, repeating several times, “One raindrop can bring down an entire forest,” which I found very profound. I still can’t relax when I see someone outside cutting down trees.

Still sitting on the sofa, David crossed his legs, so I did, too. Soon Iggy emerged from the bathroom wearing mismatched socks and girl’s underwear. He had too much energy for the small place, so he left to walk up and down the halls.

David smiled at the flapper girls on TV doing the Charleston, so I did, too. Before he disappeared again, Iggy draped a bed sheet over his body so it looked like a toga. David just stared past him at the starlets still dancing on TV, so Iggy left in a huff, marching back into the hall. David and I continued with our discussion, trying to figure out how many branches are on a tree. We obsessed over it for quite some time that night.

Continues after the jump…

Ivan and Iggy, 1979 (courtesy of Ivan Kral)

Ivan Kral sure has led an interesting life. The Prague-born songwriter and musician had his first brush with fame at the age of sixteen when a track by his band Saze broke the top ten in Czechoslovakia. But just as the song was breaking, his family relocated to New York City. In the early ‘70s, Ivan played in glam bands and, for a brief period, was part of Shaun Cassidy’s backing group. In 1974, he played guitar with an embryonic version of Blondie before joining the Patti Smith Group. As part of Smith’s unit, Ivan played guitar, bass and keyboards, appearing on all of her early records (including the seminal Horses), and was involved in writing a number of her songs (he co-wrote “Dancing Barefoot,” one of Smith’s pivotal tunes). He’s also a documentarian, having had the foresight to capture Iggy and the Stooges on film, as well as the burgeoning punk scene happening at CBGB’s in the mid-‘70s, which became the documentary, Blank Generation.
 

Ivan, center, with the Patti Smith Group, 1975

The Patti Smith Group ended in 1979 when Smith began her self-imposed retirement, which left Ivan looking for a gig. He hooked up with Iggy Pop in time to play on the Ig’s 1980 album, Soldier, and subsequently became Iggy’s right-hand man, touring and writing a number of songs with the Godfather of Punk. Eight of those co-writes appeared on Party (1981), and while Ivan came up with some catchy and interesting tunes, Iggy’s lyrics often left much to be desired, and the production generally felt lifeless. If you’re in the mood for it, Party has its fair share of goofy charm, but it’s hard to imagine it appealing to fans, critics, or the general public at that time—and it ultimately didn’t. Party was a disappointment both critically and commercially, with Ivan quitting Iggy’s band before the year was out.
 

 
Ivan is a rock star in his native land (there’s even a mid-‘90s documentary about him, with another in the works), and has released ten solo records in the Czech Republic; the most recent is called Always. For some time now he has resided in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which is somewhat ironic, as the college town is also the birthplace of the Stooges.

The following interview was conducted via email. A big THANKS to Ivan for letting us use some photos from his personal archive.

How did you meet Iggy?:

Ivan: There was an unknown blonde guy in a yoga pose—naked in my living room. He gets up, extends a hand and says, “I’m Iggy Pop and I’m producing your next album,” for Luger, my 1973 glam band. I was thinking, “Yeah sure, he’s just another nobody with big plans.” After I saw the Stooges I realized that I was the nobody with big plans.

So, I went to The Stooges show at the Academy of Music in New York City. He owned the crowd. Fans were begging to be humiliated by him. He’d spit and they’d thank him. Never saw anything like it. I was filming with my “movie camera” (no sound) anticipating his next move so I wouldn’t waste film. Every second counted. I’ve posted a few clips on YouTube.

More from Ivan, plus a live Iggy video, after the jump

 
If you’re a regular Dangerous Minds’ reader than you most likely know how much I hate the newly-released CBGB movie. It makes Tommy Wiseau’s The Room look like Citizen Kane. Over the weekend CBGB sold a miserable $4000 worth of tickets in New York City, the one place where the movie might have had an audience. That translates to less than 300 attendees (tickets are $14).. Dire. The upside: the film will have negligible impact on the way the club is perceived by future generations. Unless, of course, it finds an audience on Netflix. There it could turn into the next Birdemic.

For a grittier and more honest view of the early days at CBGB, check out Ivan Kral and Amos Poe’s 1976 cinéma vérité, low-budget (but beautifully shot) The Blank Generation. With its post-dubbed sound and chainsaw editing, the movie doesn’t work as a strait-on, conventional documentary but it does capture some important rock and roll history, a time when rock was starting to feel dangerous again.

And for those of you who think I’ve got it in for the hacks who made the new CBGB movie, you’re right. I do. For several years in the 70s, CBGB was my church and I get upset, real fucking upset, when people piss in the holy water.

The Blank Generation with

  Richard Hell
  Patti Smith Group
  Television
  Ramones
  The Heartbreakers
  Talking Heads
  Blondie
  Harry Toledo
  Marbles
  Tuff Darts
  Wayne County
  The Miamis
  New York Dolls
  The Shirts