Iggy Pop

Carl Wilson

The man who introduced himself to the world singing, “It’s 1969 baby,” is now 69, baby, still standing. Here with us tonight, everyone please welcome Iggy Pop.

Iggy Pop

Hey, mother fucking Carl. Hey, Carl.

Carl Wilson

Have a seat. How are you feeling?

Iggy Pop

Hey Carl. I feel better than I did a minute ago.

Carl Wilson

Everybody, we’re going to talk for 45 minutes to an hour, depending on Iggy’s gift of gab. After that, we’re going to invite you, there’ll be microphones in the aisles. People can come up and ask questions. I should apologize in advance that I’m not able to translate. I’m not sure how well your capacity for taking questions en français is.

Iggy Pop

J'ai une connaissance de quelques mots, des phrases mais... (applause) Mon français is... it's merde!

Carl Wilson

We’ll all struggle through together somehow.

Iggy Pop

But you can talk to me.

Carl Wilson

Iggy, when I was preparing for this, one of the things I wondered was whether in a casual conversation, I should call you Jim or Iggy.

Iggy Pop

Call me Iggy.

Carl Wilson

I bring that up partly because I always wonder how much you feel like there’s a separation between the two sides. How much is Iggy a character or a persona to you and how much is it something completely integrated for you?

Iggy Pop

I was born Jim Osterberg in Michigan in 1947. When I was about 19 years old, the nickname, Iggy, got hung on me. I couldn’t get rid of it. When my first record came out, I had no business sense whatsoever. All I knew was we’d made a record. I would walk into town every Tuesday to see if it was in the window at the store. When it finally came out, it said Iggy. It was like, “I’m Iggy.”

That was a problem for a while. I remember the first time I was intimate with somebody, and they went, “Iggy, Iggy, Iggy.” I had to get used to it. It’s gotten to the point where I’ve been Iggy and Jim longer than I was just Jim. Now it’s like, call me Iggy.

Carl Wilson

Does it feel like it’s been a struggle sometimes to reconcile that? I think that Jim is a quieter person in a lot of ways than Iggy is.

Iggy Pop

It’s not so much all that psychological crap. It’s more like this in the ’60s and early ’70s, boy, if you said the name Iggy in a room full of butch Americans, there was disgust in the room. The room would implode. It was like "ewww." It was a "ewww" kind of name. Times changed. Now it’s just fine. Everybody has a weird name now.

Carl Wilson

You’ve done your own part to contribute.

Iggy Pop

You have to have a weird name now to be in show biz.

Carl Wilson

Looking back to that time in Ypsilanti in Michigan growing up, one of the things about it, you were living just outside of a wealthier community in the community of Ann Arbor and gradually over the course of your life mixing more as you get older, going to the high school with the rich kids from the street. Your dad was a high school teacher and you lived in the trailer park outside Ypsilanti. I wonder how you think experiencing those class differences and those wealth gaps, did that set some kind of sense of mission? Some kind of sense of the way you wanted to intervene in society as you grew up?

Iggy Pop

I was not born bourgeois. My grandparents were basically maids and sailors from Europe, and they came over to America early in the 20th century and got clobbered in the depression. My parents were both depression kids, and they experienced poverty and insecurity early in life. My father was an orphan on both sides. Never met his mother, never met his father. They were very conservative people. Never took a drink, never had an argument in my presence in all the years I knew them.

Gave me every advantage that relatively poor people could. One thing they did was made sure... We lived in a trailer camp. A nice trailer. They made sure that the trailer camp was in a very good school district. You know, you go to school, a good institution, and you meet wonderful teachers and you meet wonderful kids, and then you meet some pricks. You meet some pricks who are just there because they can be. Because their parents are more Anglo than somebody else's fucking parents.

Yeah, I took a little schtick with that, when I was in high school. It put a chip on my shoulder and made me want to succeed in the same world as the guy with the house in the bourgeois... the haute bourgeois neighborhood. But, I didn't want to be a fuckin' haute bourgeois. It's kind of like that, you know?

Carl Wilson

One of the ways that you describe the sort of sound that you came up with when The Stooges were forming was the juvenile blues. It seemed to me like that has a connection to that feeling, there.

Iggy Pop

Well, you know, I was a... From the age of about 15 on, I became an informal student of music, the way you do when you find anything you love. If you love amps, or fashion, or anything. I obsessed on all different forms of it. I tried a little art rock, I tried a little avant-garde. I was in a blues band for a while. I tried standard rock covers. But, I met these... I wanted to start a band where we'd have something of our own. I realized I didn't think I was going to get very far, longterm, as an imitative artist because I'm not a skillful enough singer.

You know, a lot of people who have a... With certain gifts, you can imitate and get through life really well. That wasn't going to be the case for me. I wanted to form something of my own, and the only people I found who would follow me were these wonderful delinquent brothers who were school drop-outs. They'd lost their father, no discipline. But, they liked music and they had a charisma, and they were called the Asheton Brothers.

What happened was, really, I took on their problems and their personality, and I became like a spokesman for, "There's nothing to do, man. This is no fun. That sucks." You know, the whole stoner... "Let's just, you know, let's smoke some dope." I thought, "Well, OK, if this is what we're working with, let's make art out of that." I think you can make... You can articulate anything.

I was on the debate team in high school, and I learned that. You can articulate any premise. So, that's kind of how that all started. I thought, you know, "Hey, delinquent blues. Yeah." You know.

Carl Wilson

At the same time, you know, there was in the Ann Arbor community... You also sort of had access to this bohemian experimental art scene that I feel like, a lot of people would underestimate the way that that influenced what The Stooges were doing. Especially in the very beginning, when you were called The Psychedelic Stooges. There was kind of a "no boundaries" kind of approach.

Iggy Pop

Ann Arbor, Michigan was a kind of a way station for working beatniks and avant-gardists, between New York and the west coast. I met Andy Warhol first in Ann Arbor. There was a female artist named Charlotte Moorman, and she never got her due during her life. She was a beautiful girl from Alabama who hung with the John Cage, Nam June Paik crowd. Very avant-garde music people. But, I was, I think, 17, and I saw a picture of her playing the cello topless, bound. It made a big impression on me. It made a big, big impression. It wasn't as if... It wasn't lascivious, but it was more like, in some way, she influenced me a lot, you know? There was another man named Robert Ashley, who made screaming sounds through amplifiers. There were a lot of, kind of, you know, loose cannons around, and that's a great thing, you know?

Carl Wilson

Yeah, and it seemed like it became a meld of this sort of R&B idea, that you'd been in the bands, you'd been in high school with this kind of jamming, building your own instruments, kind of Harry Partch approach. I was looking at a picture today of you vacuuming, and then underneath, the story was mentioning, "Oh, and also used to play the vacuum cleaner onstage."

Iggy Pop

Well, I did, and I got a beautiful sound out of the vacuum cleaner. If you use your... Take off the head, and use your thumb, you can make a sound like a whistling wind. The only proper job I ever had in my life was, I was a stock boy in a record store, so I had access to all the strange records that you don't normally... You're not going to hear those on the radio.

There was a man, a kind of a gay hobo named Harry Partch, who created his own... He created his own scales and his own instruments, and made his own music. He's getting his due now, posthumously. His stuff's being performed in the Lincoln Center. Some of it is beautiful stuff. But, I would try to imitate the things he made. He had something called a cloud chamber, I think it was. He'd figured out how to put different amounts of water into glass receptacles. When you hit it with a beater, it'll go [makes high-pitched music sound] or [makes low, then high-pitched music sound], etc.

I liked that, so I got a broom handle and a couple of stools and tried to do that with spring water jugs, and it all fell apart one day. I'm an American kid. I thought, "Hey, wait a minute, what about a blender?" I just went out and bought a [inaudible] blender for 16 bucks. You'd put a little water in it and mic it up, it's Niagara Falls.

I was mixing these sounds with some elemental riffs played by the Asheton Brothers and mixing that with what I thought was a kind of dance that really originated because the band was so... These were very inward guys, and I noticed that when I would dance around the room in rehearsal, [makes whooshing sound] up went the energy, like fire. I started trying that out with audiences, too, and it became a nice exchange.

We had the vacuum cleaner. We had, sometimes, cream pies, boat horns, various, the blender, various apparatus. The group looked and sounded different. That's fun for people sometimes, you know?

Carl Wilson

That sounds like a very Ann Arbor kind of scene, the band you're describing right here. When it started to connect to the Detroit scene, how did that alter the way that you felt about what the band was doing and how did all of that connection happen?

Iggy Pop

In Detroit you had a very hard rock, butch kind of a scene. It didn't really affect us at all. We were welcome there. Three quarters of the population hated us and a quarter was really, really, really interested, and that was fine, but it was later when we got our recording contract. We began to go a little more rock-ist, you know? I had the drummer playing a... He wasn't using a normal drum kit. He was using beaters on oil drums that we painted up with day glow obscenities and Hindu symbolism. Suddenly, "I want to play a real drum kit on our record [Ben]." You know? At the same time, I thought, "Well, we have to have proper songs." We didn't have songs at the time. If you go see us, there would be a theme. I'd improvise doing all sorts of things, maybe the vacuum cleaner, maybe a rhyme, maybe a dance. It went along with a stream of consciousness, but at that point we began to articulate songs and we got the Marshall stacks, you know, things like that.

Carl Wilson

Do you think there was a part of… The ferocity of the MC5 and you guys, the sort of sound coming out of Detroit compared to the much more gentile sound coming out of most of the rock centers of the time, what was particular to Detroit about all of that?

Iggy Pop

Well, I think all human beings are subject to the other human beings around you. I mean, there's almost a terrorism of environment that is usually unspoken in everybody's life, but there's a group of people for everyone about whom a party or consciousness is thinking, "What will they think? What will they do? What can I do?" There is all that, and you can flow with it or go against it, and in our case the aggressive approach was attractive, but the early Stooges at that point were heavy but it wasn't aggressive really... We were coming at you just by being different, but we weren't trying to beat you over the head with it. It had a light touch. Later that changed, you know? Later it changed. Boys make mistakes.

Carl Wilson

When you look back to Michigan and now, and the changes that it's been through and the crisis in Detroit the past few years, does it all feel like the same place? Do you keep a watch on that place?

Iggy Pop

That was coming starting in 1967 when we had the riot and it's racial hatred, simple as that.

Carl Wilson

Yeah.

Iggy Pop

Racial hatred, mutual disinterest. There's some great, great people in the inner city of that town and they just haven't gotten a break, you know? What could you... I'm not a political leader, so...

Carl Wilson

Yeah. I wonder if you follow, do you continue to follow Detroit music? You've been known in your time to say some fairly cutting things about electronic dance music but Detroit is a center of that…

Iggy Pop

I also play The Black Madonna. The stuff I said about the dance music wasn't meant to be dismissive of any kind of music, but it's more just like saying from my point of view, "Well, I might as well shuffle off into the sunset." That's all. I can't compete with the [inaudible] you know?

Carl Wilson

You felt your way around a drum machine more than once in your time.

Iggy Pop

That's okay, that's okay. I like everything. I like all. I've never met a form of music... Well, I'm not a big polka guy maybe. OK. I like all forms and everything interests me. I notice I'd rather listen to The Black Madonna than a lot of the very, very popular EDMs. I like it when it's interesting, whatever it is.

Carl Wilson

On that sort of line of beats, one of the things that I was thinking about was that you started as a drummer before you were a front man in vocals. I wonder if you still feel like a percussionist on some level as a vocalist. Are you a rhythm driven singer do you think? Is there a way that the voice is a drum?

Iggy Pop

Well, I think as an individual working with the band on stage, I want to try to find my way into that music and once I get in there I want to let that music make my life better at that moment. Make me something, take me somewhere that I can't be in real life. The easiest way for me to do that right off is from the down beat, to try to get into the beat a little bit. Then there are also just things that have to do with expansiveness, you know? Whatever the music, whether it's aggression, pathos, whatever is being expressed, that's there too. The idea is to get in there in the one is the easiest way to get in.

Carl Wilson

Yeah, I mean, I guess I was thinking of it a little bit in terms of the one is a source for that for sure. Thinking of James Brown as a band leader and the idea that rhythm is everywhere and every instrument is a drum, every voice is a drum, but there's that interaction of the one moving through the group in that way.

Iggy Pop

I think of it that way, but it's up to each individual. I usually work with people that are... Everybody is a free agent and we just all kind of fight it out. That's the way I work.

Carl Wilson

I was thinking about those early Stooges albums and particularly the first two, Stooges and Fun House, and they seem a little bit like little production miracles. I just want to play an excerpt just so that we can ground ourselves in sound a little bit. It's from Fun House, playing “T.V. Eye.”

(music: The Stooges – “T.V. Eye” / applause)

The incredible thing about that to me, I mean, there are lots of incredible things about it, but as a recording, those first two albums you got that live sound, that you got the sound of that band squeezed somehow onto vinyl in a way that a lot of bands spend years frustrated that they can't find a way to do it. But then with Raw Power, with the third album, you got this mix that nobody has ever been happy with and you tried remixing it to find that power in the sound in a way, and you've said that still it's like it was better in these ways but not as good in these ways. It seemed like that sort of elusiveness kind of caught up with you a little bit on that record. I'm just wondering what you've learned about production and about the studio, about what makes it possible to capture that kind of force of a band.

Iggy Pop

Well, let's talk about the minutiae of mixing. [exaggerated yawn] Alright. It kind of went like this. I'm going to start in the middle with the piece you just played. The “aah,” that's how I screamed alright. I didn't need a producer for that, that's just how I screamed, “ahh, yeah.” The guitar: what's interesting about that, Ron Asheton the guitarist had a riff and it was played with open chords. It was thick the way it later gets and it was the same riff and I said, “Oi, oi, oi Ron if you start out play it like John Lee Hooker.” John Lee Hooker for anybody who knows has had a seminal blues boogie player who made great recordings alone by using a lot of space, more like Hubert Sumlin in Howlin’ Wolf. Led Zeppelin listened a lot to those guys.

Ron's leaving space when he plays the motif but the other interesting thing was that Ron was a bass player before he was a guitar player. When he started playing guitar he was used to a heavy string so that's a set of Fender heavies on that guitar. Because of that... for nerds out there, that's really important. If you use a heavy guitar string, you get a lot of freedom in recording it that you can't get with the light ones. Most guitar players can't help but want to show off and the lighter the string, they could do all the noodling you know.

That particular recording we did play live in the studio, in a room smaller than this stage and we used some separation. In other words, each amp would have a polite little screen in front of it but it wasn't like later in the metal years where everybody's in their own room and the control is total. There's a little bleeding, a little leakage. The engineer was Barbara Streisand's engineer and he was, I was in awe of this guy. He looked like he just stepped off his sailing yacht. He looks like he just won the America's Cup you know. He had the white, he might as well have had an ascot. His name was Brian Ross-Myring and nothing we did flapped him. I was on LSD every day of that record. I'd be very active for about the first three hours and after that I'd go sit in a corner. It didn't bother him, everything was cool you know.

Basically we used a meld between it's almost totally live, that music, almost everything you hear is live in the studio. I would redo little bits of the vocal and the other idea was during the leads, to just have the lead play to the bass and drums like jamming. As little overdubbing as possible. The first album, the one before that we were still finding our feet and it really wasn't as aggressive, it was lighter. We had a struggle, we recorded it with John Cale producing and John's a great personality and a great producer too. He wanted us, "You guys really need to turn down your amps." You know and these are just, we're kids from the Midwest, we've never even been to New York. We had to turn down our amps man so we didn't... finally we turned them to nine.

Both of those records however, if you go back to the original vinyl pressings, what we didn't know was that you need, with a sound like that you need to whack the shit out of it in mastering. We didn't know that, we didn't even know what mastering was. None of that music was even, we didn't even have a cassette player, we didn't own one. To learn a song we'd play it over and over and over and over. To write a song I'd play it over and over in my head until I memorized it. There's something to that by the way, something to that.

So it was really only later that those songs, boy when the CD came out, by that time, hey, everybody got it. Hey that Stooges groove and some young guy took those things and woah kablooey, and I was thankful. Raw Power was different because it was a different guitarist. And Ron went over to bass and James the guitarist on that plays, he likes to take up the middle. It was difficult. I just ended up, I was sort of like when it's 3rd in goal and there's two yards to go and they just give it to the back that can jump the highest. [puts on higher voice] I'd just put my voice up an octave and I would "Search and Destroy baby," you know, and that's how I got through that record. Ron was playing the bass in the high octave and I became unsound during the recording of the record. Drug use on and off but mostly I just went nuts wanting it to sound, I wanted it to sound somewhere between The Stooges and The Beach Boys. I wanted more musicality in it, I tried everything. I tried listening to it nude, I thought maybe that'll help you know. Yeah, didn't help.

Eventually we gave it to David Bowie and did a very sensible thing. He isolated, well what are the salient bits? The guitar part and the vocal, and it was there and it was clear but again, when it came out on vinyl somebody should have mastered it hard and they didn't. There may have been some problems with the recording of the bass. It's not true that it was recorded on three tracks or anything. It was a standard, it was done on a 16-track and for something like “Death Trip” which just goes over and over and over and I go, “Yes my death trip baby, baby,” that's I think, we only used nine of the tracks but on most of them we used 12, 13 tracks.

That's a great rock record, I remixed it in whenever it was. I think it was the ’90s because they were going to let somebody else do it if it wasn't me. They'd found a lost copy and at that time America was full of nasty, heavy, nu metal dudes. I just thought, “you know what, if I hype the volume and hype the whole thing, they're going to hear it and they're going to go ‘Woah.’” I did that mix and I think that was okay you know. Just to prove, just silly playground shit really, "Yeah, OK you think I'm not heavy? Well I'll show you how fucking heavy I am." You know, the original mix is still...that's the mix because that was the experience. The record…

Carl Wilson

It's nice in the ’90s… dudes have a version for them though too.

Iggy Pop

The record was made under you know, it took four guys from the Detroit suburbs and [makes moving sound] world cultural epicenter London, England, there we were in Fulham. We had a wonderful experience, you know.

Carl Wilson

Yeah and then kind of exiled from the world cultural center... record slipped under the door, left to languish.

Iggy Pop

Yeah well you know, I think things happen in their time. I've always believed that if I really, really liked something sincerely that I was able to put together, and if it stood up to my own criticisms, that people would like it. That's not a strategy in life but it's a truth. It's a truth. In my case it seemed to take lots of people, like those records and all, about the right amount... they don't need to be... Raw Power came out in 1973. The number one record was “Tie A Yellow Ribbon 'Round The Ole Oak Tree." [sings] "Will you still love me?” You know. “Da-da-da-da-do-da-do-da.” So what are you going to do, you know? Alright, you have to wait. Well, wait a while, you know.

Carl Wilson

Meanwhile, over the whole sort of arc of that time, you were developing this live performance style that, year by year, that the intensity of that built. We were talking earlier about the connection to New York performance art that you witnessed as a kid, and then there was it seems the energy of just the dancing with the band, and those things were coming together, and suddenly, you were diving out into the crowd. You were walking over people's hands. You were occasionally doing bad things to your flesh with whatever implements came to hand.

I just wondered how strategic, and how much of this decision to go in that direction that all was, and how much it was a spontaneous reaction to the moment?

Iggy Pop

Well, I would suppose that if you don't have any hits, and the music you're playing probably has very little commonality with the language that a wider group can understand, if you want to continue your employment next month, then maybe you need a guy in the band who's going to go out there and get noticed, so sure. There's some of that, but I was aware of our [inaudible], theater cruelty. I was aware of the living theater. I was aware of Balinese dance, Native American dance, black church, stone age ritualism. I went to college for a semester, and my favorite subject was Social Anthropology 101. I thought, "This is just like rock & roll." You know, stone age behavior, and all that. "Wow, cool."

It's not something you think about, but it's a compulsion. I knew what I had to do for the group to survive, and... Well, it was fortunate that there were photographers around. There was very little aural documentation. There is a clip from a Cincinnati pop festival with The Stooges playing two things from Fun House. It sounds incredible. It sounded incredible on a good night, not a bad night, "Oh my god," you know. It wasn't always possible to discipline that group.

Carl Wilson

Did the experience of doing that kind of performance, and having that physical relationship with the crowd, what did that come to mean for you?

Iggy Pop

A lot of work. It's a lot of work, honestly. It became a weight at a certain point, but one that I would pick it up again. I work in a different way now. I have some songs that people know, and we can all ride the same surf together, and other ones that they're the same grooves from a long ago, but suddenly, they sound timely because somehow, something in the culture caught up with us, so I don't have to do that quite the same way. But sometimes, I'd be in during the course of 90 minutes or something, I want to fuck around, just for the fuck of it. It's cool. Yeah. That's the way I feel.

Carl Wilson

It must've seemed strange, decades later, to see that the things that you had been doing in 1973 became kind of obligatory rituals for punk rock bands around the world, and how everybody was staged. I think it must have been a very delayed fad.

Iggy Pop

I wouldn't want to take too much credit for that sort of thing. That's a kind overstatement, but it's been interesting. A couple of gestures, and some music seems to have found life through others, and that's a beautiful thing.

Carl Wilson

One of the things that when I've been talking to people about talking to you, the joke that everyone makes is the question of whether you'll be wearing a shirt or not. One of the things that... Which you're sort of somewhere in between tonight. It's a kind of happy medium. One of the things it makes me think about is there's not a lot of guys, not a lot of men who have made such a point of displaying their bodies for audiences.

Iggy Pop

The Pharaoh in Egypt. He always never wore a shirt. That's where I got it. When I dropped out of college to start the band, I kept my library card. I've always had a student mentality, so I would go to the library, and take books. Cult books about culture and religion, and think about how I could apply those, and I kept seeing these pictures of the Pharaoh. He never wore a shirt. That just looks about right, you know? I don't know why.

I feel lost in a shirt. I just get lost. I can wear them. I like to wear them like... I live in Miami, and sometimes you like to go out to a nice restaurant on a balmy night with your wife, and put on your Brioni shirt, and be somebody else, and drink a fine French wine, you know, etc.

When I want to put pedal to the metal, I feel lost in a shirt. I've done it sometimes. I wear them from time to time. They usually get ripped up anyway, or messed up.

Carl Wilson

I guess the thing to me is that it's really a display of the body in a way that's in pop culture, so much more associated with women. It's unusual to be…

Iggy Pop

Hey, you know, Romans didn't wear shirts either.

Carl Wilson

I just wonder what it's like for you to experience your body as the instrument in that way. That's not stereotypically a masculine gesture in western pop culture, and how…

Iggy Pop

Are you saying it's a feminine gesture?

Carl Wilson

It's being looked at in a way that men don't usually think about being looked at.

Iggy Pop

Well, I like being feminine.

Carl Wilson

Has it affected the way you see yourself, though?

Iggy Pop

The way what?

Carl Wilson

The way you see yourself over the years, to think of yourself as... You've created an icon of your body in this way that's a strange thing to live with.

Iggy Pop

No, I don't... It hasn't affected... I did just do a... Look, I'll be 70 in the spring. When I was in my 20s, I first made it to New York. It was suggested that I pose nude for a couple of photographers. I did two. I did one with Bill King, who was a top Vogue photographer. You can see I'm a little uncomfortable, a little defiant. It's just a fashion guy, and it was later made into an art piece by Richard Bernstein, but the other one I did was for Gerard Malanga, who was also known as Gerard Whips. He was part of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable Warhol gang that Warhol dragged around to Velvet Underground gigs as a kind of an act of entourage. Gerard had this look a lot of the Warhol people had. He looked like he could have been a Kennedy, and something went wrong. It's like these lapsed mid-Atlantic Ivy League guys and he had a, he shot me in a cold, it was a cold, hard color, and I liked it that nude, it was good, I was 23 I think. There's an artist named Jeremy Deller, in the UK, and he was after me for the last three or four years to pose nude for a life drawing class. That's, life drawing is where artists draw you with easel and materials. That made sense to me, I put it off for a while, but because of what photography has become, it's become so ubiquitous and malleable, I thought, "Well there would be some truth in that. If I could go stand naked."

I mean I've been a kind of entertainer for a long time, I should be able to go stand naked in a room with 20 people who are also going to contribute to the experience and see what they make of it. That would be give me a pretty good look at it, and I'll tell you, I look much better with the boots and pants on. It's not necessarily, it's not, it'll, that stuff will be out in November, but that helped me stay human. I don't really have the, I can't, I don't... Yeah. It'll be in shit, and then once you get into that shit anyway, I mean pretty soon it's like, "The new iconic sponge that can help every housewife," or whatever it is. Then everything is a fucking icon. "Iconic Gillette shaver," or whatever. Yeah.

Carl Wilson

Yeah, I mean there's that line between, as part of the art creating a new image in the world of some kind and then everything becoming just part of a marketplace of images.

Iggy Pop

I just kind of tried to get in there, I'm a guy, I like music, and from time to time I like to hang around with bands until it gets too... I've just always tried to get in the music as a kind of refuge, and the rest of the stuff that comes out, I'm as surprised as anybody when I see what it looks like. Somebody said the other day, "Well, he was supposed to be a degenerate in the ’70s, but he looked like he could have been on the water polo team." (laughs) I don't know, you know.

Carl Wilson

Well let's talk a little bit more about music then. You flattered us with a scream earlier, and that's kind of the iconic Iggy sound, right, like the howl of desperation in the night, is the iconic Iggy Pop. You've…

Iggy Pop

When I was young.

Carl Wilson

Yeah, you've developed your voice in all kinds of directions since then. Now one of my favorite of your sort of crooning mode songs.

(music: Iggy Pop – "Cry For Love" / applause)

Iggy Pop

Hey, you missed my bit. I could sing it. [sings] "Status seekers, I never cared. Once I found out that…" I can't remember the words, but it went like that.

Carl Wilson

Yeah, and it's 1986.

Iggy Pop

[sings] "They never dared to seize the world and turn it upside down, and every stinking bum should wear a crown. Yeah, yeah, yeah.” That's Steve Jones playing guitar, that was a funny one. It was, I was in, that was recorded... Half of that was the original guitars and the vocals were written and recorded in a tiny little bedsit flat on Sycamore Avenue in the kind of poorer part of Hollywood in the mid ’80s. Steve Jones was just out of rehab and AA, and trying to pull himself back together, and I was sort of two steps ahead of him, trying to straighten up in life, because I had to. We wrote that song together, and then I played it for David Bowie at the, on the other coast at the Carlyle Hotel, and he went, "Oh, we could produce an album on that." He put in the strings later and the 808, and we had something. It was originally Steve Jones who was supposed to track the whole album with us, but he couldn't get in and out of America. I hate borders, I hate it.

Yeah, that was just a very, it was a sincere heartfelt song. One of the problems with it was, it was kind of my art statement and I wanted it out as a single. I was choosing a new record company and all the cheap-assed ones would listen to the record and say, "That's not a single. Your single's ‘I'm a real wild one, wild one,’" but I wouldn't listen. I said, "That is crap." I finally found a record company would let me do what I wanted, but later the other song, this went nowhere commercially, but I'm still proud of the song. The other song years later bubbled up anyway, it sort of functioned as a hit. That's the extreme part of being an arty guy, is sometimes you just don't want to let people make your life easy for you, because you're pigheaded, and I am.

Carl Wilson

I remember when I first heard that, and there were things that I had missed because I'd just discovered you in The Stooges only a few years before that. I was startled to hear this sort of crooning Iggy Pop, and that this sort of, this whole other voice.

Iggy Pop

My voice got bigger and lower as life progressed. I eventually got to the point where I can go out now and do a good approximation of my very young voice, and it's not quite the same feel. I can imitate me better than anybody else, but for, when it comes to current events and feelings, I generally, I'm at home in my baritone, that's where I live right now.

Carl Wilson

I feel like one of the, and we need to talk about this because we're in Montréal, that one of the eventual fruits of that kind of second voice, has been the couple of albums in recent years that you've done in French, or at least partially in French, doing…

Iggy Pop

Yeah, well. Yeah.

Carl Wilson

I wondered how that came about. You have Serge Gainsbourg covers and Édith Piaf covers on there. It was a, that's another surprising twist in the tale.

Iggy Pop

A while ago, I got an offer from some people making a documentary about the author, Michel Houellebecq, and I was aware of him. It so happened that I had read my first Michel Houellebecq novel, The Possibility of an Island, in English translation. Wow, it hit me like a thunderbolt, it was my favorite novel, and it spoke to me. They had a budget outside the record industry, which is wonderful, it was the film industry. These people tend to be more creative in their attitude toward music, when it's indie. Looking at the character of Houellebecq and his works, I felt a pathos, a melancholy, and I thought of the song “Autumn Leaves.”

I started making plans to record “Autumn Leaves,” what I thought was a great American standard. Yeah, I found out, and I got the word back from the French people behind this, "We will never be able to afford the rights to allow you to cover “Autumn Leaves,” but we, the original's called “Les Feuilles Mortes,” and we can get it for you cheap." That's how it started, and when I heard the “Feuilles Mortes” lyric, “Autumn Leaves” is a wonderful adaptation, but the “Feuilles Mortes” is a superior lyric. This is a deep story. It's a sad story. It's a true story. Through the experience of doing some television shows and duets in French, in my bad French during the life of Préliminaires which was the album I made about Michel, I started to realize, “My God, there are a lot of American standards that are just adaptations of chansons.” I'd always loved Bel Canto Sinatra's period. I'd always wanted to sing some of that stuff but I knew damn well the Americans were not going to let Iggy Pop sing fucking Bel Canto Sinatra songs. [puts on voice] "This is the worst goddamn crooning we've ever heard." But I thought maybe I could... what about a record, half very, very fine French chanson or pop songs and half American Bel Canto. I did Joe Dassin, "Et Si Tu N'Existais Pas..." [sings]. It's a beautiful song and then I could sing, [sings] "Each, what is it, each place I go, only the lonely go, some little small café," sad song. I split the difference with “Michelle” by The Beatles, it's got both languages.

I really made the album not for music people, just for everyday people. There's a guy who owns a wine shop in Lyon he tells me, "Yeah every six months I buy 25 copies of Préliminaires and I put it there on the counter and it sells out. People say, “What is that?” It makes me happy. Moms like it. I like that, I think that's great.

Carl Wilson

Did you feel like you learned something from singing in a strange language?

Iggy Pop

Yeah, does anybody know the song “Les Passantes”? [audience replies yes] Yeah, I sang “Les Passantes” on that and that lyric is just, there's some lyrics in French that will crush you if you don't look away after a while. There's some very strong writing. That's what I learned.

Carl Wilson

What's your process as a lyricist and songwriter? Are you always writing or is it that you wait until you have collaborators around, or what's your usual way?

Iggy Pop

When I started, I needed the music bed. Still most of the time I do and then what I tried to do, I try to think like a guy writing a jingle, think in terms of advertising or just make the words little encapsulated bits, not so much running on and on and on. Other people can do that but I didn't think I could. It was just to try to get the right phrase and make sure the point got across and that people knew what I was talking about. Later that changed, sometimes lately I'll write a song. If it's any good it's usually because I'm miserable in some way. It happens when you get older. I'll just write out my misery and it just kind of comes out, why I want to just go away to Paraguay or whatever it is, you know.

Carl Wilson

Yeah I mean this is something that is striking about the new album to some degree that there's a lot of that theme, it really made me think, I'll play a little bit of “American Valhalla” from the new album Post Pop Depression which is one of the songs it really hits on.

(music: Iggy Pop – “American Valhalla” / applause)

Iggy Pop

“I have no plans, I have no debts but mine is not the carefree set. I'm looking for American valhalla. If it passes by give me a holler.”

Carl Wilson

As that song, you know, is partly looking to an afterlife from the standpoint of a rock & roll warrior but also there's these lines you know, I'm not the man with everything. I've nothing but my name and this real sense of loneliness that makes one think, is there some essential loneliness to being Iggy Pop to reach this point?

Iggy Pop

Yeah but also I have great aspects to my life and a lot of rewards and happiness too, but I'll tell you, when I hit about 53 or 54, I'd been duking it out with New York City for 20 years. I left and I went to Miami Beach to start my afterlife. That's how I felt and I'm still in my afterlife right now. This is the only afterlife I know is real. I don't know if there's another one, you know. I didn't even know if I'd get away with being able to move to Miami Beach, which at the time was not in any way, shape or form a cultural center.

It's still known for being a pretty dumb place in a lot of ways although hey, we've got art, we've got museums, we've got money. Look, you know buddy, I found a lot of comfort there but when I got there I wrote an essay about it. I said, “Well here I am. I have no plans. I have no debts. Mine is not the carefree set.” I saw other people there who were, I didn't feel carefree. I just felt like, “Hey, I'm out.” Alright, you know, and I used to like to go to the beach and when you look out at the sea and it's the end of all the crap. There's no judgment system, there's no visible rule, no skyscrapers, no slums, no traffic lights, no stuff. That calmed me down.

I had that old essay kicking around when this album came up. No, I'm not the man with everything. I've done well for myself and for others, I'm not the king cheese. Josh Homme had that piece of music and he was musing about the idea of Valhalla and the various battle-related afterlives. I wrote him, I said, well if you want to raise that subject... since you know our country's been on a constant low-grade war for 12 years, and we see the guys and women that come back and there's a lot of mess with that, the question has to be raised, “Is there an American Valhalla?” What is the reward for these people besides maybe a bed in a VA hospital or some Oxycodone or a weekend in Vegas? What do you get for being some sort of hero especially in a free society when there are maybe 10 people over there who think of you as a hero and then there are 20 people over there who think your heroic situation never should have been allowed? It's a complex world, our world, more than the tyrannical parts of the world. I wanted to sing about these things, and ultimately the character I was thinking about is, there was a little of me in there, but it's just the idea of somebody who gets, there are different points in life. You might be 18 and a runaway. Or you might be 50 and suddenly homeless. Or you might be 70 and ready to ride off into the sunset, but there are times in life that, all of a sudden you hit this spot, "I don't have any plans. I don't owe anything." But you don't feel, "Whee!" You don't feel that, and you're looking. You're looking for, I suppose, some sort of paradise that I would say does not exist? That's what I would say. So those are some of the things that went into that song. You know?

Carl Wilson

It's one of the many things, it's a wonderful album and one of the things that, the sense of perspective in it is really powerful. I wonder if, when you went into it, you've said a few times this might be the last full length. Did you go into it with that thought in mind?

Iggy Pop

I just kind of noticed it's a lot of bloody work. Making a, if one is going to bother to make an album that can stand comparison to the golden age of albums in the ’60s and ’70s, bearing in mind that the forms, it wasn't a viable form until sometime late in Sinatra's career. I think it was Capitol Records that came up with it as a marketing gimmick, let's sell Sinatra as one of the family. An off take on the photo album. If you're going to make something that is going to stand that gaff, part of the premise, I think, is that you're saying, you're offering this to a limitless public as something that could be part of their lives. Of course in doing that you risk rejection, humiliation, and you also have to, you ford the rivers of industry, commerce, marketing people, advertising, and a lot of work and you go out and you sell yourself. And you are sold.

I've been doing that for this one, but I don't know if it's a good idea for me to do that anymore. That's my point. I'd rather, it might be wiser for me to cool it, that's how I feel, and sing some other things. You know?

Carl Wilson

Find new forms to work in, more gentler forms to work in perhaps?

Iggy Pop

Well, or just less present, you know. I get invitations, I've recorded a bit since this from people who called and said, "We've got da, da, da, would you come over and..." So there's not so much, you know. But you never know. I don't know how the form is going to last either. I mean, I've noted that when Rihanna makes an album now the big focus tends to be on the streaming of a single number, so that's a step more in the direction of the early ’60s, even then it was more about the single, and an album would be just like, "Well, we put the single on it and then 10 crappy songs. And people will buy it." You know? That used to be very common.

Then suddenly everybody felt they had to up their game, and that's a nice thing. I'm not sure that'll be something I can pull off in another five years. I've been putting myself out there a lot since I hit 60, and I think it'd be a good idea if I shut the fuck up for a while. Just kind of back off for a few years, you know.

Carl Wilson

Well I think most of us hope you never shut up altogether, I have a million more questions I'd like to ask you, but I also want to give everybody here a chance, so I just want to thank you so much.

Iggy Pop

Hey, thanks a lot Carl. (applause)

Carl Wilson

So the people are just setting up mics there, and if people could just line up and I'll just like, call you off. If people have things they want to ask, and look how fast you are to your feet, go ahead.

Audience Member

Hey Iggy, I love you baby.

Iggy Pop

Hey baby.

Audience Member

Rock & roll and punk rock is associated with the hedonistic lifestyle, are you still clean and sober, and how do you work sobriety into your creative process?

Iggy Pop

I am partial to red wine, and it's very rare that I drink any without din-din. So, that's about how wild I get, baby. That's it. I don't take any “drugs.” Red wine, a little champagne sometimes, and strong coffee. Those are my things. The way I worked it in was gradual. Honestly, when I took a lot of drugs, it weakened my will. It does that to a lot of people and it took me years, kind of coming back, little by little. The best thing I would say is to anybody, don't expect some quick miracle, it doesn't work like that. I had about a seven year period where I kept falling back, falling back. It took me about 10 years to go from total mess to reasonable citizen. Alright.

Audience Member

Thanks.

Carl Wilson

Over here on this side?

Audience Member

Mr. Oswald…

Iggy Pop

Mr. Oswald?

Audience Member

Oswald, I don't know.

Iggy Pop

Osterberg, Osterberg, baby!

Audience Member

Oster… I'm not English speaking, so. Osterberg, no, anyway…

Iggy Pop

No, I'm sorry, c'est dommage baby.

Audience Member

Well it could be Mr. Pop, but my, well first of all I just want to say that I love you so much, I want to be you.

Iggy Pop

Oh, yeah!

Audience Member

That's seriously, it's serious. Look I even can't wear my…

Iggy Pop

You got a good start, I think.

Audience Member

Well. I can't wear it today. My question is, it's a very hard question. It's, I'm thinking of doing a PhD on this, I'm a filmmaker. When you lived in Hauptstrasse, in Berlin, it's two question, A and B, did you own a gun? And now that you live in Miami, do you own a gun? Right? That's it.

Iggy Pop

No! No, you don't want to do that. I can't own a gun, no, no, no, no, no. No. No, no, no.

Audience Member

Thank you, and thank you de chanter en francais, "Les Passantes" c'est ma chanson préférée. Des mots en francais juste pour nous s'il vous plait?

Iggy Pop

C'est un plaisir pour moi.

Audience Member

Merci.

Iggy Pop

Ciao.

Carl Wilson

Over here?

Audience Member

Alright, hi Mr. Pop, how are you?

Iggy Pop

Hi, hi. Hey, I'm alright.

Audience Member

Thank you for coming.

Iggy Pop

Oh, thanks for having me in this like…

Audience Member

I have a question that's even heavier than the last one. It's, do you believe in true love?

Iggy Pop

Yeah, but I think it's everywhere, you know? Sure. I think it's everywhere. That's what I think, you know. Yeah.

Audience Member

Thank you so much.

Iggy Pop

Thank you.

Audience Member

So, first, thanks also for being here, thanks for all the awesome music, thanks for music that can compete with the background noise of the subway, because you're a lot better and more interesting. Thanks for working so hard, so people, my generation can get to know you and enjoy you and your music. What do you think of how your fans have changed, and how, at something like this, there's a lot of people my generation, but you still have your old fans from when you started, some of them. What changes have you seen in your fandom and how do you feel about that?

Iggy Pop

I have a lot of deep feelings about it, and thanks for showing up for this and being nice. I really appreciate it. I really do. I really do. I was pretty terrified to do this, so that's very nice. The thing I noticed, starting out, there were just key, there were sort of intellectuals, deviants, and high school stoners. Those were the three constituencies. It kind of went through phases, and there were times when there wasn't as much enthusiasm as just curiosity. There seemed to be some sort of, I can't remember how many years ago, but all of a sudden a lot of people, that are apparently a lot younger than I am, enjoying the music. That was like, wow. That was a gift from up there, down there, wherever. I thought that was as far as it would go, but later, the last few years, people my own age have been showing up and enjoying the music. So it's kind of in like, a pandemic? You know? I can't tell you how good, it's the biggest treasure in my life.

Audience Member

Thank you.

Carl Wilson

Thanks, over here.

Audience Member

You're Iggy Pop, wow. Iggy it's nice to meet you, my name's Jesse. Thank you for being here.

Iggy Pop

Hey Jesse.

Audience Member

Nice. I was going to say something like thanks for being a burning, bright light for all these years in the middle of this darkness, but I was just wondering, what are you listening to these days? What gets your attention these days, musically?

Iggy Pop

There's a band called, it's a duo, called Sleaford Mods. Yeah. They happen to be my favorite. They always get my little booty up and shaking, and I don't know. I just like the whole 'tude. But I listen widely. I like Girlpool a lot. I like U.S. Girls. I just discovered Derek Miller. Fucking hell that dude can wail, he's more traditional, but I listen really, really widely, is the best thing I could say. Just all sorts of things. It really doesn't matter to me what the, there's an electronic musician called Gold Panda. I like Perfume Genius very much. A whole lot.

Audience Member

Right on.

Iggy Pop

Just different things.

Audience Member

Cool.

Iggy Pop

Yeah.

Carl Wilson

For those who don't know, Iggy, these days has a BBC radio show where he plays DJ. So you can find out his tastes by listening to that.

Iggy Pop

Yeah, I'm the PD, so if you want to, it's out there and you could listen and…

Audience Member

Yeah for sure.

Iggy Pop

There's some pretty, I don't know. I just listen to stuff and I go, "Oh, I like that!" Then I put it on.

Audience Member

Right on. Thank you very much man.

Audience Member

Hi Iggy, I'm Andy. Nice to meet you, thanks for coming tonight.

Iggy Pop

Hey Andy.

Audience Member

I saw you in 1978 here in Montréal, I was like 15 years old and it blew me away, totally.

Iggy Pop

Woah.

Audience Member

Yeah. At the University of Quebec…

Iggy Pop

Was this like that little theater over there…

Audience Member

Yeah, that's right.

Iggy Pop

Yeah, yeah, yeah, where everybody was pretty low.

Audience Member

It was insane. It was totally insane.

Iggy Pop

I remember that place.

Audience Member

That was crazy, I was like 15 years old and I'd never seen anything like that. Been a fan ever since. I just wanted to know, what would your own personal favorite song be, of yours?

Iggy Pop

You know, I can't do one.

Audience Member

Yeah.

Iggy Pop

I'll tell you what, I had a personal favorite. There was one, I wanted to hug the little song, because when I finally started getting statements of my copyrights, this song every three months, would make one penny. It's called “Give Me Some Skin.”

Audience Member

OK. I'm not even sure about that.

Iggy Pop

The lyric was, "Typhoid Mary, she's got soul, suck all night on an old asshole." So it's not a commercial number, right? No melody, anything like that. But every three months I'd get one penny. I thought, "Oh, poor little song." You know? You have such a good spirit, you know? So when I got the chance to curate a Greatest Hits albums, I would put it on there so it, come on, you can make some money too! You know? Everybody will feel like you're a real song!

Audience Member

Excellent. Thanks again.

Iggy Pop

Alright. Cool.

Carl Wilson

Next over here.

Audience Member

Hi Iggy. My name's Steven, I first saw you back in 1987 opening for The Pretenders at the Montréal Forum…

Iggy Pop

Oh wow.

Audience Member

I was the first person on stage at All Tomorrow's Parties in New York on the Blu-ray [disc] that came out.

Iggy Pop

Alright.

Audience Member

I just, my question to you is, for someone who's had such a storied fascinating career, why, apart from the out of print I Need More is there no Iggy Pop autobiography out there?

Iggy Pop

I don't want to do that. There's two reasons. One reason is that, like anybody else, or maybe more than anybody else, my life belongs to the other people in it. I don't feel right about speaking for them. I just don't feel right about that. Then I don't feel right about being all coy and like, "I'm going to get a million dollars for writing an autobiography and not tell you anything you don't want to know." I can't reconcile that, you know? The other part is that, it's sort of like slamming the lid on your emotional coffin. Somehow, to me. I have a kind of an interest in maybe trying to do some fiction drawing on my experience. But I don't know. Writing fiction is hard on a person. A lot of them end up... I don't know. But that's why. I did the one, way back when, and it served. I was desperate to do something. The industry was about to extinguish my identity, so it served as a reference work for a long time for people who really wanted to know, “Who is this guy?” Maybe one's enough. That's how I feel.

Audience Member

Thank you.

Iggy Pop

Sure.

Carl Wilson

So I just want everybody to know, we're going to do about 5 minutes more, so those who are at the backs of the lines, might be playing bad odds at this point. But we're going to keep going.

Audience Member

Hey, how's it going?

Iggy Pop

Hey, not too bad.

Audience Member

I have a music oriented question. I was wondering, what have you taken from your experience with Josh Homme and do you think that his style is kind of a turning point for rock music, kind of his…

Iggy Pop

I think he's a key, there's nobody out there in rock music, band music, current music of that culture that can do what Josh can do. There's nobody that can sing, write, play and band lead, like that guy. I'm forever in his debt for giving me a chance to brush up on what the fuck is going on now in music. You know? Otherwise you turn into a total geezer, so. That's what I think.

Audience Member

Thank you.

Iggy Pop

Sure.

Carl Wilson

Yup.

Audience Member

Hello, welcome to Montréal.

Iggy Pop

Hey, thanks.

Audience Member

More like, if you could share a nice, sweet, fun memory when you were living with David Bowie, or just your friendship with him in general, to us. I guess everybody in this room was pretty saddened when he passed away at the beginning of the year.

Iggy Pop

I would just say, that in general, I would just say this. I was talking to somebody, more at length about the way that he worked on the records with my names on them. I would just say, it's not as widely known maybe, as it could be, how much this guy really had fun, making music. That guy, he had a lot of fun making his music. He got a big kick out of it. That's what I would say. You don't hear the fun described maybe enough.

Audience Member

Thank you.

Iggy Pop

Sure.

Audience Member

Hi Iggy. My question is about Dave Alexander, The Stooges original bassist…

Iggy Pop

Yeah.

Audience Member

Ron Asheton always said in interviews that he was a big influence on you, but he doesn't get talked about that much, so I was wondering if you could talk about what he brought to your life, his influence? Also, I was wondering if you could sign something for me, after.

Iggy Pop

Yeah, I wanted to say, to everybody... I was told this afternoon that Erykah Badu gave everybody a hug on stage, who couldn't get what they wanted from a question, so I am open for on stage hugs, selfies and crud like that. Yeah. I've sworn off stage diving this year, so I'm sorry. Look, Dave was Ron and Scott's neighbor down the street, and he was more troubled than any of us. He was the one guy in the band who was more spoiled. He had a car, his parents would actually give him money, and just shut up, you know? He was always conflicted, as to some days he wanted to be in the band, some days he didn't. That eventually led to a kind of showdown, which is why he left.

The work he did do, he's a Gemini. He was a wit. He was a very funny, witty, highly calibrated sensitive guy. You hear the wit in his playing. You'll hear him on, towards the end of “No Fun,” he's playing the bass. He never liked to practice much, because he was Dave. Right? You can hear him start to struggle with the notes, then you can hear him just thinking, "You know? I'd like to put my finger, on these frets over here, and I don't know if those are the right notes or not." He'd just go [makes bass sound]. You could tell the guy's having fun doing this, and it comes off. You know? He plays with great lightness and wit on Fun House as well. He and Ron liked to stay up all night and watch television and smoke weed and crack jokes. That's what they did. He sold a motorcycle his dad had given him in eleventh grade, and cut school and he and Ron said, "We're going to go to Liverpool and meet The Beatles." And they did. They stayed in bed and breakfasts. They didn't meet The Beatles but they did see The Who. So there you go. Yeah.

I had my 21st birthday, at about two in the morning at Dave's house. We'd had a gig, it hadn't gone well. His mother made me a hamburger with one candle in it. I was coming down from acid. He was a nice guy, then eventually, he had a girlfriend, eventually, he maybe got a little too stoned one night and there was a point where we did a large gig and he couldn't play at all, not one note. I had to draw a line at that point. You know, you can conceptualize and conceptualize, but I couldn't get to the point... Whereas Ron would just say, "So, what's the problem? He was just drunk, that's all." You know, but, I didn't see it that way. That was coming anyway. Finally, he made a lot of money picking stocks, later. He became unhappy. He had an alcohol related death, I think. He was a real, real nice artist. So there you go.

Audience Member

Thanks.

Iggy Pop

Alright.

Carl Wilson

Speaking of drawing a line, this is going to be our last question, then, apparently, Iggy's going to greet and meet some of you afterwards.

Audience Member

Thanks for coming Iggy.

Iggy Pop

Hey, thanks for having me.

Audience Member

Your last album is definitely my favorite.

Iggy Pop

Hey, that's great of you to say. Thanks a lot.

Audience Member

In '76 I was in Hérouville, at Chateau Studios, around this time, 40 years exactly.

Iggy Pop

Where were you in '76?

Audience Member

Chateau Studios in Hérouville, France.

Iggy Pop

In where?

Audience Member

Hérouville, I think you were…

Iggy Pop

Louisville?

Audience Member

No, Hérouville.

Iggy Pop

Oh, in Hérouville, oh, no shit! Oh, wow.

Audience Member

Yes, I was in the chateau drinking champagne with Tony, while David was recording Low.

Iggy Pop

Yeah, wow.

Audience Member

I think you collaborated on that album.

Iggy Pop

Not really. I just sang back up on one cut.

Audience Member

Did you?

Iggy Pop

But I was around. You know. Yeah.

Audience Member

OK. I just wanted to know what the vibe was there at that time?

Iggy Pop

Highly creative. Highly creative with a lot of self-imposed pressure on everyone's part to excel in a way that was not the normal, the rockist norm of the time. That was the vibe.

Audience Member

Alright. I will definitely take that selfie.

Iggy Pop

Alright cool.

Audience Member

Thanks man.

Carl Wilson

Alright everybody, let's all thank Iggy once again for... (applause)