In 2015, Iggy Pop sent a text message to Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age. He was looking to make a new album – potentially his last one, he felt at the time – and wondered if Homme would be interested in collaborating.
After they spoke on the phone, Iggy sent him lyric ideas and notes about his time working with David Bowie in the 1970s. Three months later, Homme sent lyric ideas back to Iggy, after which they agreed to go ahead with the project.
The result was Iggy’s twenty-third album Post Pop Depression, which Iggy describes as “discussing issues of what happens when your utility is at an end, and dealing with your legacy.” This certainly applies to one of the stand-out tracks on the album.
American Valhalla is at its core, in Iggy’s words, a sad song about growing old and hating it. Speaking to the New York Times, he said that the record’s overall theme is informed by his advancing years and asks, ‘What happens after your years of service? And where is the honour?’
Post Pop Depression was produced by Josh Homme and American Valhalla evolved out of discussions between the pair. In speaking to Mojo about the song, Homme said: “We’d talked about how the ideal of Valhalla is cool because you have to actually do something full-on to get there, you couldn’t just blow yourself up and get in Valhalla – it doesn’t work like that. You have to be brave. Then he immediately was like, ‘I wonder if there’s an American Valhalla?’”
In Norse mythology Valhalla is a vast hall with 540 doors, ruled by the god Odin. He presides there over all those warriors that were slain in battle while fighting bravely, and deemed worthy to attend. The fallen combatants spend their days fighting safe in the knowledge of never being permanently harmed.
It was not too difficult for them to find the right musical hooks to hang such ideas and concepts on. Both Iggy and Homme brought in incomplete ideas on purpose, as opposed to finished songs, so that they could work on them and finish them together.
Iggy remember one such incomplete idea clearly: “Josh sent me a shitty demo labelled Shitty Demo. It began with a steel drum and vibraphone motif. And he send me a text afterwards, building on the discussions we’d had, positing that Valhalla was the most valid and superior paradise for warriors compared to the ones from other cultures, because you had to actually do something really brave to get in there. And I texted him back saying, ‘this raise the question, is there an American Valhalla? Where is it? What is it? Is it Las Vegas? Is it social security? Where?’ After that exchange I spent a day singing in my car, sitting in my car in the carport, singing along to the shitty demo and coming up with words.”
I have no plans, I have no debts
The mind is not the carefree set
I’m looking for American Valhalla
So if it passes by, give me a holler
Please
I’ve shot my gun, I’ve used my knife
This hasn’t been an easy life
I’m hoping for American Valhalla
But if I have outlived my use
Please drink my juice
Iggy found the song to touch on something really personal to him: “In American life, because it’s so hyper-competitive, what happens when you’re finally useless to everyone except hopefully not yourself? What happens then? And can you continue to be of use to yourself?“
He had a character of sorts in mind for the song: “It was sort of a cross between myself and a military veteran. The character in American Valhalla is the same guy all the way through the album. He is a veteran. He is over 40. He has been through a great experience in his life. He’s seen real action and drama, but it has left him stripped of any specific identity, or any home. He wants to be morally correct, but he is unable to be so, and unable to decide what are the correct ethics.”
Homme found the lyrics that Iggy came up with incredibly powerful. “That notion of ‘if I outlive my use, please take what’s left of me’ is so heart-breaking and wonderful, and it’s a tear-jerker. Iggy was 68 when he wrote it, and that perspective in rock’n’roll is not represented. But I also think it resonates at 18-20-38 or whatever years old, because of its honesty and vulnerability. I love the lyrical bent of this, because it is vulnerable. It starts by saying, “I’m completely stripped. I’m not gonna bring anything with me, I’m just curious about, is it there? Can I get there? Who do I have to kill to get in, you know?”
Iggy found one suggestion from his collaborator particularly effective: “Josh emphasised a line I was singing: “I’m not the man with everything. I’ve nothing but my name.” He said, ‘I want you to say that, naked, at the end of the track.’”
I’m not the man with everything
I’ve nothing but my name
I’ve nothing but my name
I’ve nothing but my name
I’ve nothing but my name
I’ve nothing but my name
I’ve nothing but my name
Josh Homme: “It feels to me that when it ends, the reason to have Iggy repeat that is that it doesn’t resolve whether he makes it to Valhalla. It’s just like, ‘I’m at the gate, and I’ve got nothing but my name.’ He never actually crosses that threshold – these are the seconds before. And in a way there is a bitter-sweetness there, we never know if you make it or not. The requirement for Valhalla is that you would never turn and run. Now, life to me is about how many fears you faced. Not conquered, just faced!”
Iggy: “To me it means you do something good to get in there, and once you get it, what you would hope for is to get some peace.”
Peace does perhaps not describe relationships between Iggy and all his previous band members. In 2016, Iggy told The Guardian (referring to Stooges guitarist James Williamson): “Someone used the phrase ‘Hard pill to swallow’ to insult me earlier that year. I took the negative and thought: ‘I know this is going to be a bitchin’ line in a song.’ I was thinking: ‘What is the pill that’s hard to swallow?’ It’s knowing that you’re going to die. It’s dealing with your own mortality. It’s having to parcel out enough money until I’m 90, but on the other hand… I can’t think about it!”
Where is American Valhalla?
Death is the pill that’s tough to swallow
Is there anybody in there?
Who do I have to kill?
Iggy and Homme were on the same page in terms of the overall musical style the album, and consequently the song, should take. Homme elaborates: “We both agreed to ignore chasing down rock music, and we articulated that the heaviness would come from content and the delivery instead of distortion and easy, cheap tricks. So for American Valhalla, the words were what hit me so hard.”
Homme also underlined the importance of the vibraphone in arriving at the song’s sound: “The vibraphone is an instrument that is plugged in and goes woo-woo-woo,” explains Josh, “but I didn’t turn it on. It just played off. Then I combined it with that steel drum, which brought out that primitive trance-y underbelly of the song. The vibraphone felt Roman, almost like opera. Here’s an icon coming to the later stages of his life, the creator of punk rock, who’s survived, and displayed a willingness to be himself in the face of great odds, in a band that was hated but spawned all the good bands. Those lyrics: ‘Lonely deeds that no one sees. I’ve nothing but my name…’ He’s facing mortality and sensing none of the stuff matters. To be part of that statement felt so wonderful.”
Iggy had his own reasons for wanting to do the album and put this statement out there. “Before I called Josh initially,” he said, “I felt stifled. I thought I have to do something, but I’m gonna need help, but before I look for help I had to look into myself and see what I’ve got. I didn’t notice it, it kind of crept up on me. Some other people mentioned that the cold thing sounds valedictory, and that is pretty accurate with me. I told Josh when we were three quarters into this, that this was going to be my last album. I feel I can find more pleasure in witnessing things and being in a situation like, I like a nice sky. I like pretty clouds. I like to look at a beautiful sight. I like to bear witness more and more, and less and less be involved in [stuff]. So those are the things to me that go with the idea of a paradise.”
Post Pop Depression was eventually released on 18 March 2016, and gained a new level of chart success for Iggy at age 68 when it became his first US top 20 album and first UK top 5 album. His previous highest peaks were both in 1977, when The Idiot reached #72 in the US and Lust For Life reached #28 in the UK.
The only single from the album would be Gardenia, but American Valhalla was deemed an important enough song by its creators that they wanted to make a video for it. The video was shot by New York-based director Jamie-James Medina and stars English model Ruth Bell. We see Bell sat on a stool behind a small box that plays clips of a boxing match combined with footage of Iggy Pop. The box then disappears and the model is shown with bruises on her face.
Director Medina told Nowness the following about the video: “I was listening to American Valhalla and was reminded of this very low-key but classic fight between Dick Tiger and Gene Fullmer, which took place in Nigeria in 1963 and for whatever reason I found a connection there. There is so much history in Iggy’s voice and that seems to be a theme throughout his new record – the contender or the survivor or the last man standing. Iggy remembers watching the fight, which is incredible.”
When asked about the final line in the song – “I’ve nothing but my name” – and whether he really feel that way, Iggy says: “Well, yeah. Uh-huh. Sure. Don’t ask me what it means, but I do. That’s why it came out. I don’t know why I feel that, but that’s what I feel. It may have something to do with the game I’m in, or the position that that game confers upon you. I don’t know.
“It’s just a feeling. Not a bad feeling.”
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