“I Wanna Be Your Dog,” Alejandro Escovedo
Alejandro Escovedo: I think I’ve performed that song more than my songs! [Laughs.] It was the first song I learned how to play on guitar. That was my “Louie Louie,” my “Gloria.” That whole first record, The Stooges [1969], I learned it. My friends, we’d smoke pot, and they would solo over me playing those chords, so they could learn lead guitar.
Austin Chronicle: What about the lyrics? Oddly enough, it’s a kind of love song.
AE: “I’m so messed up, I want you here/ I’m in my room, I want you near/ Now I’ve got you face-to-face/ As I lay right down in my favorite place.” That’s pure love song. It’s a sexual manifesto. That’s what the Stooges were about.
AC: Normally, in a rock & roll or a blues song, being a dog holds a different connotation than it does on this song.
AE: Yeah, like Elvis’ “Hound Dog”: “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog/ Lyin’ all the time.” This dog is more active. In my eyes, it’s like Bowie on the cover of Diamond Dogs – that decadence, the kind of creature that becomes a dog, a sexual animal comfortable with a man/woman that becomes something else.
This article appears in July 17 • 2015.
