OLD KING LIVE FOREVER
Most of the 13 songs on Wild Love had never previously been released in the U.S. even as bootlegs; most of the Stooges bootleg albums and unofficial releases were made in Europe. According to the song listing, more than half of the songs – “Wild Love”, “I Come from Nowhere”, “Delta Blues Shuffle”, “Old King Live Forever”, “Look So Sweet”, “Mellow Down Easy”, and “Move Ass Baby” – are “never before released in any form, anywhere!” This is a bit over-stated; the album’s liner notes mention other versions of some of these songs that have been bootlegged elsewhere.
Some of the cuts on Wild Love are jams by the Stooges (with or without vocals). The sketchiest ones, shown on the song listing as “Delta Blues Shuffle” and “Old King Live Forever”, were extracted from a 30-minute jam by the band with Iggy Pop beginning to mumble ideas as James Williamson tried to follow them on the guitar. “Old King Live Forever” really isn’t a song yet, though it could have become one if the band had given it more attention.
As readers of these posts know, I love to find religious references in the most unlikely places; and I recognized the repeated lyric, “O King Live Forever” (and some of the other vocals as well) as coming from the Book of Daniel – the line was said several times during the Bible story, and once by Daniel while he was famously in the lions’ den. Greg Shaw didn’t know where the ideas had come from; he speculated that it could have been from something Jim Morrison of the Doors had written. Since Iggy Pop is clearly singing “O King” rather than “Old King”, I passed along what I knew to Suzy Shaw at Bomp! Records, saying that this Stooges song should really be named “O King Live Forever”.
I should point out that many of the songs by the Stooges on Wild Love don’t have official names, so Greg Shaw was coming up with his own titles based on what he was hearing.
(December 2017)
