Read the full interviews here and here.Iggy Pop, the American punk pioneer who has become an icon for generations of musicians and fans, turned 74 this year but his verve and vitality seem as indestructible as they were in the 1960s. “People come to me, though, and talk about my ‘self-destructive image’ and I say, ‘What self-destructive image? I’ve been out there, giving you this really good rock ‘n’ roll, with a good beat, this unpackaged show, that comes to your town, for 18 years.’ A lot of people would bite off their own right arm to have the chance to do what I’ve been doing.” “Fools rush in wherever there’s a warm hole.” I always went in with a very specific idea of the sound I wanted, and once I’d recorded I’d try and make it sell as much as I could, but I only went in thinking of a sound I wanted.” “Never once, except when I did the song ‘Bang Bang’ with Tommy Boyce on my last Arista album, and never since then until this album, have I ever gone in the studio trying to get a commercial hit. “It’s good to have somebody taking care of you.” If I was going to work, it was best that I be straight. I learned by trial and error, and tried to get drugs out of my work. “I’m not the kind of person who could join AA or have rules for myself or on Thursday take this vitamin pill. “I spend a lot of time in the grocery store, shopping.” If you want to know what he’s contributed to me, it’s been professional, teaching me the necessity of hard work, organization, and, more than anything, to have a wide, wide interest in people who are doing things a lot differently than you are.” “People ask me what contributed to each other, and if you want to know what I’ve contributed to him, you have to ask him. “It might be because I’m older, but if a girl has particularly good sexual wares, it doesn’t exactly get her to first base if I don’t like her.” But now I’m at a point where I can just put the top down on my convertible and feel the breeze in my face and feel pretty free.” That song was my little declaration of independence. When I did ‘I Got a Right,’ I had come to the conclusion that the freedoms that we were taught about in civics class didn’t actually exist, and so I was going to have to declare my own. “Freedom was very, very important to me when I was young. And I hit the floor really hard and lost the tips of my teeth. I thought I would just land on them and it was going to be a wonderful experience. There were these two big buxom girls lying on the floor watching me. The first time I ever leapt off a stage I was opening for Frank Zappa. “Generally I don’t look before I leap in life, and it gets me into a lot of shit, but on the other hand I think it helps to put a little juice in the work. I know all the most foolish things I ever did, ones that really upset a lot of people and caused me all this grief at the time-those are all my favorite things.” But, on the other hand, if you live through it, you look back on it and you’re glad you did it. You could say it’s really foolish to do what feels good at the time. Bringing a little entertainment value to situations. Then there’s the happy fool-like musicians-the jester kind of fool. But to me a real fool is somebody who throws away his life on other people’s road maps. “There are all these different meanings of ‘fool.’ A lot of times, people I really hate-like people who think they’re on top of business world, for example-you’ll see them sneer at somebody and call them a fool, and the people they call fools are generally the people I really like. And I’ve been wise enough to listen to other people.” “I don’t think I’m lucky I think I have a tough constitution. Grab a mic, take your shirt off-y ou just might learn a thing or two. This week, we revisit some admittedly out of context highlights from two interviews with the punk icon Iggy Pop: first in November 1986, then in April 1990.
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