Rock of Pages: The Stooges: The Authorized and Illustrated Story

Beware the book in whose title lurks the words “official” or “authorized.” They usually sound the death knell of anything that might be interesting in a band’s story. Those two simple words mean that anything negative about a band is going to be far outweighed by undeserved plaudits and revisionist history.

Robert Matheu‘s The Stooges: The Authorized and Illustrated Story is just that sort of book. Any book that devotes three pages to describing the Stooges‘ reunion album The Weirdness in anything other than withering disdain would immediately be suspect. The list of random highlights from the album would be better suited with a companion list of lowlights — however, a list of that nature would be a tome of its own.

Now, were the book to be viewed on its merits as a photographic tome, it would receive higher marks. With photos going all the way back to the Stooges’ earliest days in 1968, you get to see every facet of the band on tour, in the studio, and candidly hanging around. Matheu is a stellar photographer, with the ability to capture the band’s essence as a juggernaut, capable of destroying anything its path with the power of pure rock ‘n’ roll.

There is a color picture of Iggy Pop just a little more than a third of the way through the book where he’s captured in mid-song, eyes open, covered in a silver glitter, with a look in his eyes that is something other than the steely, come-hither look with which he is usually depicted. Shown on the facing page is a small, black-and-white snapshot, taken after the show. Iggy is leaning on a mailbox, clad in a leather jacket, and a cigarette dangles from his fingers. The glitter can still be glimpsed on his face, but he looks totally at peace.

Those two photographs tell more about the Stooges than overly hyperbolic praise, like the following words about Raw Power, written by Ivan Suvanjeff:

Someone once said, “Art is what you reject.” Well, Raw Power is true, high art. It was rejected, it was humiliated, it was scorned. If The Stooges were painters, then Raw Power would be their Guernica. And here it is now in your fat, stupid face, essential and eternal.

Now, while Raw Power is a stellar rock album, and one of the greatest ever, comparing it to a painting about the horrors of war, whose enormity requires you to stand back and view it from a distance is a trifle overblown.