Iggy Pop

In the morning I\'d write these essays, anything that I\'d feel like writing, and in the afternoon, I\'d spend time with my guitar. I had decided after listening to my last four or five albums that my biggest weakness musically was melody. the reason I had been singing in a monotone over the chord patterns in my songs was that I never practiced doing melodies.

A lot of young musicians get the money at the wrong time. They get it for something they don't feel great about, and it'll make you feel so bad it'll destroy you and kill you.

Well, after Zombie Birdhouse came out, I toured behind it in the fall of 1982, into the spring, and in the summer in the Far East. At that time, I found my work self-referential; it was getting to be rock songs about a rock singer who lived a rock life on the rock road, and I was starting to wonder what I would be like to rent my own apartment, what it would be like to have a checkbook.

I wanted to learn a little bit about acting, not because I thought I\'d find a star vehicle and set the world on fire, but I thought the discipline of it would be good for me. I met a good coach, and I joined her class - with a lot of hungry young actors who really didn\'t acre if I was a rock \'n\' roll singer or not. I started to learn to get a focus, without having to jump up and down every few seconds.

Basically, I'm a musical vocalist, but I do voiceover stuff as a sideline, like plumbing or something.

I\'m not the kind of person that likes to be dependent.

As society has changed, what had formerly been unacceptable has become colorful.

Pussy power\'s pulling me down, down, down, down. When it\'s there and I can\'t have it, I get real real rabid.

I\'ll love you when my eyes are open, I\'ll love you when my eyes are gone.

I wasn\'t so stupid that I didn\'t realize the implications of what they were saying. In my live work I was going for the quick thrill, rather than spending time concentrating on my voice. I figured I\'d get on, make as many quick movement as possible, dance my ass off for five minutes, move into the insult portion of the evening, and then, at the end, create some kind of chaos until the 55 minutes were up.

DMT was a gaseous wax that you could smoke that gave you a 20-minute psychedelic high. You\'d inhale it. And then when you\'d exhale-poof, you\'d be high. I saw Buddha, man. I know that sounds like no big deal. But I saw a gigantic holographic Buddha - correct in every way! Buddhas can be very intricate - these drawings that you see in books. Thousands of details were included in this Buddha. Where did they come from? I didn\'t make them up. I can\'t even draw, you know? I could barely spell cat, you know? And there it was. And I thought, Wow - the power of the mind, you know?

I think that prosecuting some college kid because she shared a file is a lot like sending somebody to Australia 200 years ago for poaching his lordship\'s rabbit. That\'s how it must seem to poor people who just want to watch a crappy movie for free after they've been working themselves to death all day at Tesco or whatever, you know.

What do you do with a lifetime of work? Face it in the morning.

I thought that if I practiced doing melodies for a year or so at home, I would learn to think melodically, and when I went to work it would come out, and it did, on this album. What else was important to me...? I spend a lot of time in the grocery store, shopping.

Life is just a bag of pot.

There was a time when I wanted to get out of the Western world. I went down to Grenada and looked at a place, and I realised that if I lived in a Grenadian manner I\'d be nothing but a blah. I\'m going to need constant bodyguarding, guns and money to join the community there. Otherwise you just got a bunch of fat, old white people dying together, overeating, drinking. Not very attractive.

I don\'t get my bliss by listening over and over to people in the street thinking, \"Boy, is it that good?\" Even though every time I hear it that\'s what I think. But I get it in human situations. There is this little voice that is going, \"The reason you\'re able to enjoy your life now is that you made it in rock\'n\'roll and people are giving you free visas all over the place. Dude, you are being spoiled\".

I kinda feel like everything comes full circle in life, even though that\'s a cliche.

The problem being: for years I was struggling - first to prove that I had any talent, then to create some skills and finally to fulfil it reasonably. But then once I got there it was, \"OK. I did that, but I want to be happy.\" And that\'s a whole different deal. It\'s kind of like a dance. Being active seems to help. I\'m 70, so sometimes a little voice is going, \"Just take it easy\".

If you give a good performance, something that gets some feeling across to people, that's such a rare gift. It's underestimated at this point in history, when the music biz is inevitably turning into a kind of politics.

How am I going to listen to that horrible noise I make without a gram of coke and a couple of double Jack Daniels?

Really good music isn\'t just to be heard, you know? It\'s almost like a hallucination

I\'m glad I am crazy, it keeps me trying. I despise trendies, I know they\'re lying.

Something I like to do a lot is just sit by water when there's a current and just stare into the water. I don't fish, I don't hunt, I don't scuba, I don't spear, don't boat, don't play basketball or football - I excel at staring into space. I'm really good at that.

What did Christ really do? He hung out with hard-drinking fishermen.

She looked at me penetratingly. So I suppose you can figure out what happened next.

Look, you're here to see me, and I can't go on until my dealer is here, and he's waiting to be paid, so give me some money so I can fix up, and then you'll get your show.

My mom was a saint. She taught me to be terminally nice.

I'm a travel enthusiast.

I like semi-torn-down places where I could get nestled in and get something done without anyone bothering me.