The Stooges' 'I Wanna Be Your Dog' as Archetypal Worship Song

So messed up
I want you here
So messed up
I want you here
In my room
I want you here
Now we're gonna be
Face-to-face
And I'll lay right down
In my favorite place

And now I wanna
Be your dog
Now I wanna
Be your dog
Now I wanna
Be your dog
Well c'mon

Now I'm ready
To close my eyes
And now I'm ready
To close my mind
And now I'm ready
To feel your hand
And lose my heart
On the burning sands

And now I wanna
Be your dog
And now I wanna
Be your dog
Now I wanna
Be your dog
Well c'mon





As someone who hopes to lead others into worship of the living God, I'm always on the look out for songs that really capture something of the attitude, heart-motivation, and experience of true worship. There are quite a lot of these type of songs out there - and some of them were even written by Christians.  Sounds facetious, I know, but there seem to be a whole load of 'secular' songs which seem to 'hit the spot' just as much, if not more, than 'Christian' songs written specifically for the purpose of worship.  Because I spend so much time listening to music (mostly, but by no means exclusively, during my two daily 40 minute commutes) and because I am cursed/blessed with an analytical mind, I'm always thinking: what does this song say about worship?  Is the singer articulating a worship attitude or impulse - perhaps without even knowing it?  Or: is this person perfectly aware of their worshipfulness (to use Han Solo's term) but not aware of its misguidedness?  We all worship something, whether we believe in God or not.

And so on to The Stooges.  I don't know much about Iggy Pop's religious affiliations, but you can bet your life he believes in rock 'n' roll.  To a lot of people he IS rock 'n' roll.  Mike Watt of the Minutemen speaks in hushed, reverent tones about Iggy, as he saw things playing bass for him in the reformed Stooges.  The way he speaks about him, it's like Iggy's his spiritual father.  Watt comes across as one of the most passionately humble dudes on the planet, so I listen when he speaks about something.  There's a sort of awe there - in the way a religious person might be sort of in awe of a great leader or a prophet.  I think it's based on Iggy's totally uncompromising hardcore devotion to the art of rocking.  Hard.  Whether you think this pursuit dubious or nay, it's safe to say that few can match Iggy Pop. So perhaps then, if Rock is Religion for Iggy, his songs are worship.  The infamous track in question is case in point.  Disclaimer: Now, I'm NOT saying that we should be singing I Wanna Be Your Dog in church this Sunday.  I'm not saying there's much holy, good or pure about the Stooges. But what I AM suggesting, is that the primal simplicity of Iggy & Co.'s tune displays a certain elemental impulse toward worship which the church would do well to pay attention to, REDEEM and impassion our current worship climate with. We're all worshipping SOMETHING, and God can redeem ANYTHING.  Ok, let's jump in:

So messed up I want you here - Is there any greater or more succinct articulation of the attitude of worship than this opening line?  For me as a Christian, these seven words pretty much sum up my conversion experience, and my subsequent opening up to the intimate Presence of God in my life.  Alone and without the 'other', we are messed up.  Without our Father, we are Orphans.  Messed up is what the world is.  'Here' is where that messed up world is.  In worship we say to God - I want you here.  We long for the Real Presence of God in the midst of our mess.  Right off the bat, Iggy is desperate.  Desperation to me is a key part of what compels us to worship.

In my room I want you here - This to me speaks of the intimacy of the worship-seeking heart.  Jesus said: But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. (Matthew 6:6).  We have to invite God into 'our room'.  For Iggy, here's something gloriously teenage about this too - Iggy doesn't say: 'in my house' - he says 'in my room' - a teenager's cramped, stinky but sacred space within an (indifferent?) parental home.  He wants the object of his worship to come in to his Sanctuary.  Into the place where no-one else is permitted.  It's clearly sexual, but then the worship-metaphor of sexual intimacy is a rich one in Bible terms.  The Jews are thought to have seen the sexual love and desire of the Song of Songs as a picture of the longing and desire which the soul has for God.  The worship experience is 'like' the sexual experience - filled with longing, desire, playfulness, vulnerability, giving and taking, and, if you're lucky - ecstastic satisfaction.  Iggy's sexual longings might be debased, immoral, even perverse.  But what is the impulse to worship, but a redeemed version of this - a sanctified desire, with all the intimacy and ecstasy, but none of the fallen twistedness and misdirection?  I want you here.  The Presence, the Holy Presence of God is the only thing that will quench our thirst for something beyond ourselves.

Now we're gonna be Face-to-face  Whenever the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance to the tent, they all stood and worshiped, each at the entrance to their tent. The LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend. Then Moses would return to the camp, but his young aide Joshua son of Nun did not leave the tent. (Exodus 33:10-11)  Over the years, many people have marveled at the intimate relationship Moses seemed to have with his Creator.  Many people will also hold these verses up as contradictory when contrasted with other verses which say no-one can 'see God's face' (Exodus 33:20, 1 Tim 6:16, John 1:18).  I think this is to misunderstand the meaning of the phrase 'face to face'.   To me this is just one of those paradoxical truths of Scripture.  Of course, none of us can 'see God's face' and yet, God chooses to reveal himself.  God chooses to make himself vulnerable, approachable, intimate with us.  Jesus is of course the ultimate expression of this - that looking into the mirror of another human face, we should see the face of the Almighty.  That we should see the compassion in the heart of God, through the compassion in the eyes of Jesus. 'Face to face' for Moses, and for us, then, stands for the intimacy with God we can find nowhere else but in worship.  And equally for the intimacy without which true worship (as opposed to empty ritual) cannot take place. For Iggy and the Stooges, of course they get this intuitively.  The desire for intimacy, for the Presence of the Beloved, is about as elemental as it gets.

And I'll lay right down In my favorite place -  People get their knickers in a twist about the 'correct' and 'appropriate' posture for engaging in worship.  Even the word 'posture' makes me moan.  'I have very bad posture!' declared Kurt Cobain gloriously in 'Pennyroyal Tea'.  Our obsession with looking like we have poles stuck up our jacksies surely must be the enemy of worship.  Iggy, one of the most physical frontmen in rock,  gets this, and, letting his backbone slip, he lays right down in his favourite place.  Does this sort of physicality make us feel uneasy?  Can't the position and the posture of the body be redeemed and expressed just as much as the position and posture of the mind?  Some of my most wonderful experiences of God have been when I've been flat on my back on the floor.  If what the Bible records is true, people used to fall down to the ground all the time when the presence of God came. It's an expression of submission.  It's an allowing of the good and powerful God to take us over.  Our deep-seated fear of losing control, losing face, and losing our stiff posture of judgmentalism has all but eradicated intimacy in many expressions of corporate worship.  Thank God for the charismatics (and for Iggy Pop) who teach us so much.

And now I wanna Be your dog - The hook line of the Stooges' song, and perhaps the least palatable to our Christian ears.  Surely being someone's 'dog' carries with it a distasteful if not wholly masochistic tone which, when it comes to worship, is best left behind with the flagellations of medieval history.  Well, yes and no.  Far be it for me to suggest any kind of abusive power relationship between us and God.  Jesus taught us to call him Friend, not Master.  This was no doubt astonishing to his listeners - used as they were to an image of God as unapproachable, all-powerful and dare we say it, angry and punative.  Well, to be honest, when I read a lot of the Old Testament, I can kind of see where they might have got some of that from (although I must add, I can just as easily see where the roots of Jesus' portrait of the Father come from too).  In any case, I think we are left with a picture of God which I can only describe as an "AND YET" picture.  He is all-powerful AND YET vulnerable.  He is mighty AND YET meek.  He is destructive AND YET restorative.  He is just AND YET merciful.  More of those paradoxical truths we have to learn to live with, for fear of underplaying either attribute through tempting, yet ultimately impoverishing compromise.  Anyway, back to Iggy.  It is often said that the Kingdom of God turns the world back to front - therefore could we be God's dogs? Perhaps this takes things a step too far.  But worship to me has to be about submission.  It has to be about the willingness to serve.  It has to be about the awareness that we are NOT the Master - we are NOT in control - but HE is.  We have to be willing to be God's dogs, even if, in the end, he makes us his Sons.  In the story of the Prodigal Son, the younger son, after a debaucherous life of which even the illustrious Mr Pop would have been proud, makes a decision to return to his father.  But his attitude is astonishing.  He's willing to give up his sonship.  He's willing to become a servant in order to even just get close to his father again.  He's willing to become a dog, just to know the kind hand of the Master on his life again.  As the Psalmist writes: Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked. (Psalm 84:10).  So back he goes, and of course his father will allow nothing of the sort.  He is fully reinstated to full sonship, receiving even more than he had ever imagined.  When we come to worship therefore, are we willing to be God's dogs?  Are we coming because we expect God to bless us because we deserve it?  Or are we so aware of our own sinfulness - clinging to our ragged clothes like pig crap - that we throw ourselves upon God's mercy with a whimper and a howl?  This isn't about debasing ourselves - we've done that already, before we even thought of turning back to God.  This is about recognising that ALL of our worth comes from our Father - all of our identity and status and being comes from Him whose outrageous love calls us in from the dog house to the best place at the table of heaven.

Well c'mon  - the way Iggy sings this...the way his voice cracks... man, surely our 'call to worship' should have something of this passion and urgency.

Now I'm ready To close my eyes
And now I'm ready To close my mind - here Iggy's worshipful impulse gains momentum, and threatens to totally consume him.  Now of course we can worship God with our eyes - reading the words, looking at creation.  Of course we can worship God with our minds - understanding His words, meditating on His laws.  But what I think we can get from Ig here is the experience of stretching out to God with our souls.  'Let go your conscious self - reach out with your feelings' (another Star Wars quote, this time Obi Wan Kenobi instructing the young Luke in the ways of the Force).  As Evangelicals (that's me!) we can sometimes be deeply afraid of this type of thing.  The idea of closing our minds  brings with it the threat of our greatest fear - that we will abandon our Evangelical convictions about the Bible, and about doctrine.  It's almost as it we need to keep one corner of our mind permanently switched to Red Alert, lest anyone or anything threaten to undermine it.  This is a huge area I'm grappling with, and to which I can't do any real justice here, but I think mental anxiety (which quickly turns to emotional anxiety) is one of our biggest problems as contemporary Evangelicals.  The power of both the charismatic and contemplative paths of Christianity has been to get us to 'chill the heck out' about our fear that core doctrines will suddenly be swept away, and to let God's Holy Spirit hook us by the soul.  Nowhere is this more apparent than in worship.  The hymns of old were (and are) great at bolstering up theology and even at engaging 'mind-worship', but they can (and do) become the enemies of 'heart-and-soul-worship' which, ironically, is what a high view of the Bible requires in the first place.  Anyway, the point is that sometimes oor heids can get in the way of worship.  So too our eyes.  When we close our eyes in worship, it can help us be free from the terrible self-consciousness which makes us slaves of comparison with those around us.  Finally, note that Iggy says: 'now I'm ready'.  I think for the first couple years of my Christian life, I simply wasn't ready.  But at the right time, and through the right people, I LEARNED to worship in spirit and truth.  All the elemental impulses of worship were there, but I didn't direct any of them toward God.  Like Iggy, I directed my worship to rock 'n' roll, and to members of the opposite sex.  I submitted myself to unholy desires, and God taught be to submit myself to holy ones.  Iggy was ready... (for what, I will let you use your imagination) and so there came a time when I was ready for the real deal.  Is the church ready to worship God for all He's worth?

And now I'm ready To feel your hand  - another expression of (presumably unsavoury) intimacy from the Igster, but again, one whose impulse can surely be redeemed.  One of the problems with worship is that well, you know, you might just actually encounter God.  We're scared witless by this idea.  Again, we're both right and wrong about this.  Encountering God - feeling His mighty Hand on our lives - is a terrifying experience.  But it is also a wonderful and wholly necessary one.  Are we ready?  Despite what I said above, I don't know if anyone is really ever ready for God, although perhaps at some elemental level, we were born ready.  Maybe it's better to say - no-one ever FEELS ready for someone as awesome as God.  But we can all make that leap anyway - we can all jump in and see what God will do.  We can all, and must all, relinquish our control and dive into worship, tentative but expectant that we WILL feel/know/be transformed by... SOMETHING.  And we have to be willing to name that something God.


And lose my heart On the burning sands - ok, confession time.  If you've read this far (have a medal!) you can see I'm just riffing freely using the Stooges as a springboard for a whole lotta stuff.  But here, I don't really know what Iggy's on about.  I wonder if he just needed something to rhyme with 'hand'.  But there's a good case to be made that this is the greatest line in the whole song.  It's a powerfully sexual image - orgasmic allusions in the climactic finality of the word 'lose' allied with the more obvious animal passion of the 'burning' heat.  In any case it's the last line of the second verse, before the chorus kicks in one last time - so it's the climax of the song lyrically and structurally.  If we are again to attempt to redeem Iggy's sensousness and make it holy, perhaps we can say that it represents the final climax of the worship experience - the real connection with the object of worship Itself.  Losing is a key concept in the New Testament - losing our life to find it - God losing his sheep/coin/son/Son only to find it again.   Losing our heart on the burning sands of God's love is the focus and aim of all our worship desire.  To be consumed by the heat and the passion of God until our heart is lost and found in him.  Anyone who has worshipped God, truly worshipped, will know what I'm on about.  Is there a better way of putting this than Iggy's messed-up, punked-up, loved-up capitulation to the power of the object of worship?  Perhaps only in the Bible.  Check out how David encountered God in worship
⁷ “In my distress I called to the LORD;
   I called out to my God.
From his temple he heard my voice;
   my cry came to his ears.
⁸ The earth trembled and quaked,
   the foundations of the heavens shook;
   they trembled because he was angry.
⁹ Smoke rose from his nostrils;
   consuming fire came from his mouth,
   burning coals blazed out of it.
¹⁰ He parted the heavens and came down;
   dark clouds were under his feet.
¹¹ He mounted the cherubim and flew;
   he soared on the wings of the wind.
¹² He made darkness his canopy around him—
   the dark rain clouds of the sky.
¹³ Out of the brightness of his presence
   bolts of lightning blazed forth.
¹⁴ The LORD thundered from heaven;
   the voice of the Most High resounded.
Now in all humility, ask yourself:  is the above vision of the Lord, coming in power to a believer in worship, responding in power to the worship impulse of a broken human being - is this closer to the wimpy expression of worship in most contemporary churches, or is it closer to guts and glory of The Stooges? To reiterate my disclaimer: I'm not saying we sing 'Be your Dog' next Sunday at church. But I think that if we want our worship (and our churches) to be truly transformational, we've got to allow ourselves a little bit of David-vision and maybe, just maybe, a little bit of Stooges-passion

Why not think it over as Scott Asheton's fuzz guitar solo fades into the distance...