Iggy Pop on Miles Davis’ ‘Sketches Of Spain’ (1960)

This sadness does something to you.

I remember exactly how I bought Sketches of Spain in a store for used vinyl at Mercer Street corner Bleecker in New York, for $3,99. It was the time after CD’s had conquered the market and people sold their vinyl records in order to replace them by discs. That’s why people all over Manhattan rented empty stores and turned them into pop-up record stores. In such a store I discovered a totally worn and scratched copy of this record one day. I had never heard it before, and it completely blew me off. For a long time I have basically lived with this record.

As far as I know, it was recorded only on two or four tracks, and without overdubs. Only the arranger and conductor Gil Evans, the instrumentalists, and a few microphones in one room. So if you hear a change in dynamics, then it’s because the musicians have played louder or quieter, stepped closer towards or further away from the microphone. This makes the album sound clearly more organic. Besides that, it lives from its simply very sad, beautiful and enthralling melodies. Most of the times at least, since the record does sound more cheerful on some of its parts. But for me the album was highly important back then. Before, I had rather listened to stuff like On The Corner and Jack Johnson from Miles, those had been the important records for me.

I was in Los Angeles with the Stooges to record our second album Funhouse (1970), when I started to really get into Miles. There was a woman called Eve Babitz that became famous for a photo that showed her naked and playing chess with Marcel Duchamp. I drove home with Eve, who happened to be kind of a groupie to the Stooges, and she put on Bitches Brew (1970). I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! The strange thing was that we had already finished writing Fun House, and many of the things that we tried to do on it, Miles was doing on Bitches Brew– the same boundary crossing non-chalance, the somewhat raunchy and more modern funk-vibe. From that point on I truly immersed in his music. I digged into his older stuff and often listened to ‘So What’ or ‘Blue In Green’ from Kind of Blue. Or to ‘Shhh’ and the album In A Silent Way (1969- read our review here) in general. Sketches Of Spain probably still stands out today because Miles benefited from the structure that the classically trained Gil Evans imposed on him. At most of the sessions, Evans eventually took the lead.

Most of the times I listen to the entire album, but I really like the first three minutes most- this sadness does something to you. Elsewhere, I also memorize the single tracks exactly, but when it is about the music as a whole like it is here, I let go. Jazz has had a big impact on me overall. Today it is often being sold as academic state-affair, but most Jazz musicians want to shift away from exactly that. There are also people like the English DJ Gilles Peterson, which want to get the genre out of this corner and combine Jazz with drum-loops and similar things, but that doesn’t change much. I always liked Sun Ra, because he didn’t care for such conventions. I have played a few gigs with him, he got on stage with all his trash costumes and set up a real show, the brass section jumping wildly across the ballroom, that was really good. Today there’s the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble for example, they play really wild stuff. They all are the sons of Phil Cohran, who played trumpet with Sun Ra. Or Shabaka Hutchings (read our review here)- incredible guy! He prefers working with electronic or synthie- artists. Or Nubya Garcia, a real exciting saxophonist…

Without Miles, all of that would be unthinkable. On my new album there is a song which is based on a Lou Reed poem, We Are The People (read our review here). The music is the result of me asking my partner Leron Thomas to create something in the spirit of Miles’ soundtrack to Ascenseur Pour L’Échafaud (1958). That is a 50’s Louis Malle film about a French Femme Fatale, played by Jeanne Moreau. She lets her husband get murdered by her lover, who then gets caught- while she remains free and unpunished. I wanted that same mood for my song.

by Iggy Pop

(Read about other artists’ album choices and reviews here)

(In collaboration with the German MINT Magazin, print edition published in MINT No. 30 – 08/19.
Photo: Mary Beth Koeth)