Iggy Pop

By: Jon Rose | October 13, 2009 | Music

JR: Did you know The Stooges debut album was released not only in the same year as Woodstock but literally the same week?
IP: (Laughing) I barely knew it at the time myself, but I do remember that they didn’t invite us. But it wasn’t like I expected them to. It was so different then in general but in particular for us. We were so powerless when we recorded that first album. After we finished it in April, we all went back to our small little town — less than 50,000 people — Ann Arbor in the Midwest. Every few weeks I would ask my manager or the label, “When’s the record coming out? When’s the record coming out?” We lived on the outskirts of town, 3 miles from the record store where I used to work. I knew that on a certain day of the week, the new releases would go up in the window. So on that day, once a week, I would walk the 3 miles to see if our record was out, and that’s how I found out!  That’s about how organized we were.

JR: That’s pretty cool, pretty organic.
IP: It was organic. The store was a wonderful Victorian living room in a home from, like, the old part of Long Beach or San Francisco. They would take four or five cardboard record albums and prop them up on little stands in the window. And there it was one day. We found out about it that way.

JR: Being that Woodstock dominated that year, where did you guys see yourselves in the musical spectrum at the time?
IP: Well, we tried not to talk about it too much to each other because of the idea that speech is thought half murdered. We certainly all had different ideas of what it was we were doing. I had always thought personally when we were getting going, we were on to something. Then when we had a chance to get a record deal I thought, “Well we will now need to have an idea to adhere to. They’re going to have to be real songs.” Before that we just had a collection of riffs and hand signals. I might do or sing anything on any given night, but we channeled that into the simple songs on our first record. It was kind of an underground kids’ band, I thought. And I thought what we were doing was potentially of interest to about 50 people. Other than that, there was a little bit of post-teen innocence, youth, lust and a lot of idealism, naiveté and a really good, fresh, clean vibe to the music. It sounded good! You know? It didn’t really take to much effort for me to say, “Hey, this sounds good.” (Laughs.) Other than that, you get pretty caught up in trying to survive week to week on one hand and trying to improve and progress.

JR: What would you consider your greatest musical achievement?
IP: Possibly side two of Fun House, musically. Otherwise my greatest achievement would not be musical. It would be administrative, in having managed to get things to the point where, after many years, the people in the group could actually experience some success and have the self-respect of being able to say that we’d done — how should I put this? — we fulfilled our responsibilities to our talent by going out and actually bringing the music to people. And being able to play it correctly and that it was widely available. It was sort of what success should be. I think the idea for me and for the other fellas was something we never questioned, that this was something we were doing with our lives, to be musicians. We wanted to be musicians, and on that level we’re still musicians. (Laughs.) So hey, that’s good!

JR: That’s a great answer, Iggy. And the flip side to that question: What do you consider to be your greatest professional failure?
IP: Probably underestimating the possibilities, at key times when I was young, of what we had our finger on, which probably led to the unstable behavior that plagued the group in general and me in particular.

JR: Do you think that comes with insecurity and being young?
IP: I think that’s one thing that feeds into it, but it was also an epidemic that swept across the nation. At that time, all of a sudden certain forces and organizations had figured out a way to organize drug products down to the street level through social clubs, biker gangs, low-level Mafia and minority groups. They used these people to make a hell of a lot of money pushing drugs to the youth. It was different than smoking a joint in the late ’60s. All of a sudden there was speed and nasty acid, heroin and coke, and it was just very readily available. On the one hand, to be an American youth in the ’60s was an extraordinarily secure position. There was always a place to park, there was no significant unemployment, gas cost under 25 cents a gallon (laughs) — there was just a lot of space and confidence left over in America, and at the same time, many of us didn’t want to be who we were. We wanted radical change, but that was more philosophically, sociologically. But I think in our case, insecurities helped lead to it.

JR: I feel like so much of our confidence and self-worth comes from getting outside validation.
IP: Sure it does. And you know something, it always will. It’s just that I think later in life that becomes less of a personal thing and more just something you have to deal with. You learn that, “Hmmmn, it doesn’t really mean that much to me.” It’s not valid but it’s still there.

JR: Are there any artists out there that you would like to collaborate with that you haven’t?
IP: I’ve collaborated with a lot of people this year, man (laughing). It’s been a big year for that. Maybe I should try something with No Age. I don’t think they need me, but they come to mind. They’re pretty cool.

JR: I have a little spiritually-based question that I just personally want to ask. Do you feel like this is our only time here on Earth?
IP: No. But I feel like this is the only one we are reliably aware of. I’m not sure if the echoes are a matter of recombined spiritual essence that is recycled a la reincarnation or whether it’s just a function of the human need to communicate with those who’ve left you and those who haven’t been [born] yet — that need becoming so strong that our mental energy creates something. I know that music and musical recordings are basically a spurious, imitation mini-immortality. It occurred to me when I heard the playback on “Search and Destroy.” I thought, “OK, you’ve hit a little immortality here.” Even though I knew nobody was going to like it that year, I just knew it had something. On the other hand, every once and a while I do see a picture of the day when the Earth lies silent and creatures are crawling over the dust, scampering over all the CDs and DVDs (laughs) and computer parts and everything else that has been left behind without any idea what these things are or any way to play them.

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