WILD LOVE (Song)
Writing for Allmusic, Cub Koda says of Year of the Iguana: “This is an interesting collection that's primarily culled from other Bomp CD collections and 10” vinyl LPs. If you’re into Iggy and the Stooges enough to have made it this far, this collection of alternate mixes (‘Death Trip’), raw rehearsal tapes (‘Rubber Legs’, ‘Head On’, ‘Till the End of the Night’, ‘Wild Love’, and an extended run-through of ‘Raw Power’), and ‘suppressed masters’ from the original Raw Power sessions (‘I Got a Right’, ‘Gimme Some Skin’, and ‘Scene of the Crime’) will almost seem like a greatest-hits package of sorts. And for the new fan who’s just discovered the chaotic magic that was the Stooges – and has heard the rumors that there's material far more incendiary than their three studio albums – this compilation will serve just that purpose, sifting through the unending maze of unissued Stooges material to make a single-disc package that hits on the spots.”
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Greg Shaw continues in the liner notes for the Wild Love album: “But there were other songs, also endlessly rehearsed, that never seemed to get beyond the practice stage, though some have every bit as much potential as the ones taken on the road. Among these I would include ‘Wild Love’, ‘Pin Point Eyes’, ‘Hey Baby’, and ‘How it Hurts’. Most interesting of all is ‘I Come from Nowhere’, a fairly well developed song with impassioned vocals and very personal lyrics, and some magnificent instrumental parts. It’s a pity that they never played this one in their live show (that I know of). Though several rehearsal versions exist, this is the only one that is complete.”
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.
Charles Spano writing for Allmusic says of Wild Love: “Though lacking the teenage venom of cuts like ‘1969’ and ‘I Wanna be Your Dog’ off of The Stooges and the unadulterated raw power of, well, Raw Power, Wild Love is still essential for die-hard fans. The album, culled from rehearsals in Detroit, Los Angeles, and New York for the band’s 1973 tour, runs the gamut from full-fledged, ready-to-record tunes to the types of swampy jams that the band has claimed indicative of their studio songwriting process. Gems like the three minutes of rock & roll bliss dubbed ‘Wild Love’, the rambling, grinding ‘Pinpoint Eyes’, the Stonesy ‘I Came From Nowhere’, and the eerie, sprawling ‘Til the End of the Night’ could have given Iggy Pop the material for a stunning solo debut as early as 1973.”
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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. The liner notes cite previous releases of some of the songs with very different names: “Wild Love” showed up on bootleg releases in both France and England as “My Girl Hates My Heroin”; a French bootleg referred to “I Come from Nowhere” as “Born in a Trailer”; and “Till the End of the Night” was on one previous release as “I Got a Problem”.
(December 2017)
