We lived in a trailer court about five miles across town from where Ronny and Scotty Asheton-our bassist and drummer-lived. I’d get up in the morning, and my mom would leave me $2.50 on the kitchen table. When we first started rehearsing, it was in the winter and I was living with my mother and father because I had no money. We were young and just getting into smoking, you know, we loved it. I actually provoked the fellows into practicing by, mainly, scoring a quantity of grass or hash. So that’s the Dirty Shames-a one-note samba band.Īnyway, we formed a band and did nothing but talk bullshit for months and months. When they didn’t know a note they didn’t play. They used to play along with records, at least whatever notes they knew on the record. None of us were real musicians-I had been a good drummer, but that’s not being a singer, right? The rest of them had been in this band they called the Dirty Shames. I wanted to be a lead singer, you know, and write songs, you know, and la-di-da. By the time I was 20 I had this band of my own, the Stooges. Maybe I should tell you something about myself. Originally excerpted in the December, 1982 issue of High Times, we’re republishing the following on the occasion of Iggy’s birthday April 21. In I Need More: Weird Tales From the Rock ‘N’ Roll Crucible (written with Anne Wehrer), Iggy recalls those halcyon days of yore and jabbing the old wounds gets the blood flowing one more time. A typical concert would include some songs, a number of vicious fights with the audience and Iggy’s assorted acts of self-mutilation. There’s no age, and the public can kiss my sweet ass, bare.Back in the late ’60s, Iggy Pop and his band the Stooges were pioneers of pathology rock. How old is too old to be shirtless in public? I don’t mind a little shit in my day, but I need some sugar on that. Also, the worst would be the inability to enjoy life. There is the possibility of being overreliant on others. That’s the creepiest question of this whole interview! But yes, I fear extreme old age. And I hope to be of use to the people that depend on me. I just want to continue working and reacting to the world around me and enjoying bearing witness to this beautiful Earth. I don’t expect to use the album form anytime soon, but I hope I can do some singing or talking or writing that appeals to me. What do you hope to accomplish in your seventies? And if I’m lucky, I’ll go to the beach that day. I’ll probably have dinner with my wife somewhere with low lighting where we can sit close to each other. Some Scottish comedian was talking about Brexit and he said, “Asking a celebrity about Brexit is like asking Iggy Pop about a particle accelerator.” I’m not your guy. I’m not well-informed enough to answer that question, but I am curious about the idea that use and abuse might decline if they were legal. “I remember smoking crack before it was called crack. I remember smoking crack before it was called crack. I couldn’t remember who I was for about 12 hours. And at a festival called Goose Lake in Michigan, I was snorting something they said was coke but I learned later was ketamine. Going back, I had a binge on MDMA in the 1970s. Even the thought of smoking weed gives me the creeps. I’ve had a wonderful relationship with my body late in life. It had everything: threats of violence, drama and ambition. It says I wanted to go for it, because Jack was going for it. What was your favorite book as a child, and what does it say about you? But everything changed in the 21st century. I remember spending the winter of 1990 freezing because there wasn’t much heat. I became barely solvent in the late 1980s and owned my first place, in the East Village. What’s it like to become rich late in life? Until the Stooges re-formed in 2003 and started headlining festivals, you never made much money. It was mostly because she was moaning about how she didn’t have a car to get to work. In the 1990s, I bought a small but sporty car for a poor and beautiful immigrant who I barely knew. What’s the most indulgent purchase you ever made? At certain points in my life I said, “You know what? I need to grow up and do X or be Y or whatever.” Most of the time, it was a mistake, though fortunately not all the time. What advice do you wish you could tell your younger self?ĭon’t grow up. It just gives you a good energy, good flexibility and good circulation. I learned it from a Korean tai chi master named Don Ahn, who had a place in Soho. The root of it is a series of exercises called qigong, which form the basis of tai chi. Of course, that place is now worth many millions of dollars. In Miami, I found a place near the water and it was much cheaper, in beauty, space and convenience, than what I could have gotten in New York, where I had a bedroom view of a dogshit window-well on Avenue B.
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