Press again...

...but I preferred creating a new thread, since it will not be "complete" before a long time. I'll put all the Stooges articles I'll translate here.

First : Rock&Folk, August 2005


Interview with Iggy, by Philippe Manoeuvre - part 1.

Everything started near Evry, at the Bondoufle stadium, the last 4th June. Still recent, the Festival didn’t fill up, but all the musicians of the new garage punk scene came… Naast, Brats, Second Sex, all came down from Joinville and Paris, braving the unknown RER station. All of them were waiting for Iggy since 2 p.m… They weren’t disappointed. After a colossal concert, a true show of force with the Parisian rockers invading the stage at the singer’s request, the gladiator receives us in his dressing room. Alone, bare-chested after the gig, Iggy muses. The conversation is friendly. The Stooges actuality is intense : the Detroit band is gonna play in most of the big August events. Marc Z releases a live in Tokyo 2004, a CD destined to become totally mythic (“Telluric KO”). At last Virgin found important to release a double CD that cross-checks the great moments of Iggy’s career, from the Stooges to “Skull Ring”. Warner Rhino remasters the two first Stooges records. And Socadisc announces a collector 6-CD box in import, and let’s not forget two DVDs… Iggy agrees to explain this flood. But it can only be at home, in Miami.
Five days later we’re here, arrived just after a little hurricane, Arlene. The Pop Mansion is just at the edge of the Haitian area, with those big fat voodoo mamas that cross in the background. Iggy shows us his bedroom. Black satin sheets, big screen. But don’t count on us to detail the posters, paintings, artefacts and trophies the Iguana has gathered year after year. The house is like its master : affable, sweet and mysterious. After the photos, for about three hours, in front of a glass of saint-émilion, Iggy remembers, Detroit, the Stooges and that old rusted thing : the rock’n’roll.

A for Album
I had my first best-of in 1996, but this one is a double, so I am doubly pleased. We’ve talked about this for a long time. Since then people died, people got fired, people went in and out of rehab and finally the project arrives… When an artist sees that, the only question that comes to his mind is: how long before the birds shit on me? It doesn’t evoke the grave but it comes close. Hats off to the majors! (laughs)

S for Singer, B for Beginning
It took a long time before I found out I’m a singer. They were various signs between Halloween 1967 and the spring of 1968. During this winter, I listen to Dylan and the Stones. I’m a drummer in a band, I already sing some. But listening to those guys, I take hope again. At the beginning of the Stooges, everything’s still very organized, I sing behind my drumkit… until I’m let to know I’m terribly bad. I slowly assimilated that and, during a frosty February, in the rehearsal place, I’m cracking up. I grab the mike and start yelling against our so-called manager who cut the heating off. I’m mad, certainly on drugs, I’m jumpin’ around, insulting, calling names. A great performance. The other’s engagement is multiplied. That’s it! It’s the very start for us.

The best time
The best moment of rock’n’roll, in all those years, is the 1966-1967 era, until the release of “Sgt Pepper”, which is for me the beginning of the end. From 1966 ‘til then, there was a matchless energy and all those odd records, braggart, childish, the craziest of all being the banana album by the Velvet Underground. Listening to that without having took acid, or slept on a mattress on the floor with a girl with a chick whose name you don’t even remember, it sounded cheap. A joke. It sounded like folk music played through bad amps. It was genius! There was also that marvellous band, Pearls Before Swine, those guys had a precursory song that foretold Morrissey : “I Don’t Feel Well”. There were lots of little strange things, brought out by the government to capitalize on the psychedelic movement, putting out “Pictures Of Matchstick Men”, “My Green Tambourine” and if you come to San Francisco, wear some flowers in you hair (he hums)… It was terrible and shitty, but it was frank, and there was something merry about it. For the first and only time in the American history, a whole generation of young people started to laugh a bout the TV and everything. I did, I laughed, laughed about the fuckin’ President. I never happened again, something makes me think it’ll never do.

And the worst
The worst era of my career, for me, is that time at the beginning of the 80’s where comes what’s called the new wave. At that time, it wasn’t easy to be Iggy Pop. I wanted to break out, event more than before, but everything seemed to shrink, rock was getting rigid, synthesizers overran everything… The power of a synth is like the one of a dildo. The beat was artificially stiffened… Everything became way too mechanical, and incredibly bad.

Evil motherfuckers
When Ron plays guitar, there’s something vicious happening. You feel something evil is on acid. And he doesn’t seem to like it… The message of the Stooges was play, constantly, never stop. I needed finding the flow to let it run. I quickly discovered that silence is the absolute weapon. We were good at obtaining the silence. We played, then we stopped everything, you could hear a pin drop and bang, we attacked again. Absolutely no-one knew how to react.

Magic music
Originally, I had noticed the power of the music, I knew it. Whether you talk about a good old Stones, a ceremonial trance, or an extended version of “Shout” by the Isley Brothers, the effect was the same. Music takes you to a higher place where you’re, above all, receptive. Suddenly you’re open to a lot of things. Suddenly you appreciate this fuckin’ James Brown song lasts thirteen minutes ‘cause your spirit dreams up. A girl enters the room, you think of your life, what’s happening, a lot of things surface… I was tryin’ to create this open state in my music and it’s my role as a rock singer. To connect with the infinite. I look at the modern singers, Bono, Stipe, Moby and I think, honestly, we’re not doing the same job. And I’m not attacking anybody (laughs), those singers have impressive facilities compared to mine… But nowadays, I wonder where ends the rock singer and where begins the politician. Now all this idea of fun is gone away. I went and saw, I find the actual rock music sympathetic, sweet, correct, but it’s not our vision of rock’n’roll. The Stooges tried to catapult you up to the stars, U2 pats you on the knee. The more political the rock went, the more correct it went. In the end, you don’t laugh anymore.

Fathers & sons
The Asheton’s father had died when they were very young. Ron was ten years old. Nobody was there to watch over, whereas me… My father had definitive ideas about everything. What should his son’s education be, what his son would do when he’ll get to work, how much his son would earn… I’ve lived very oppressed and watched over by my parents. In the same time, they taught me to discuss, to fight to uphold my opinions. They helped me to understand arts. My parents hadn’t any money but they drove me to the other side of the town to my rehearsal with my first band, the Iguanas. They helped me! In our trailer, you could set up a drumkit in the living-room or in my parents’ room. They left me their bedroom and got to sleep in a cupboard. I played three hours a day and the old trailer was shaking. They never complained.

Teenage rock club
My father hated blues, he aid the blues was “a vulgar music for illiterate people”, but he never forbade me to play some. My first engagement was in a club for teenagers, the pony Tail. No alcohol, they served Coke or Seven Up. With the Prime Movers, I played six 45-minutes-sets a night, six nights a week. I had my syndicate card, it was my first pay : 55 dollars. I hated faculty. Didn’t even finish the first three months. Suddenly I was a musician and college dropout.

Murder of the father, part two
The big schism with my father was about a Muddy Waters album. I come home with that record, I listen to it and try to play it on the family’s piano. My father’s reading his newspaper, my mother’s sewing and I’m working on “I Just Wanna Make Love To You”. And my father explodes. He says, “Stop! You don’t have to try to imitate that kind of thing. This is a cry of pain. But you can’t talk about art…” Blah, blah, blah. I got up and said : "Yes, but that’s what I’m gonna do, and nevermind!” I got to the door of the trailer. My father interposed, like I’m not gonna let you ruin your life, you’ll have to run over me. Expecting a punishment, I made a step to the door. He move aside. He had understood I was serious, or completely mad from his point of view. The next seven years, my parents helped me, fed me, got me out of jail…

Iguana in jail
The cops of the little town of Romeo (Michigan) had caught me as I was fucking with Nico on the back seat of a car. I’ve already told you how Nico taught me to eat her pussy… Well, someone has to teach you. So, those cops wanted to give me a lesson. They hoped I’ll get raped, so I was quickly transferred to the State Jail of Jackson State. Fortunately the Jackson prisoners liked me. Except I was pretty, very feminine with my long hair, but my father managed to get me out before the night. The guys had adopted me, but I wouldn’t like to spend the whole night with them.

Hell, what is The O Mind?
The O Mind is a concept from that era, which had started with the very zen idea of emptying one’s head. And how can you empty your head? Of course you can do it very fast and very hard with the right combination of vicious dope, why couldn’t you? It’s Ron Asheton who brought the concept of the O Mind, be out of my mind, your brain is empty, mentally receptive. The music of “FunHouse” is demented, but it’s made by people who smoke tons of pot, take acid and use macrobiotic. We were macrobio bastards who didn’t like Andean flute! Fuck “Mister Fantasy”! We were dirty macrobios looking for every gimmick to create a new attraction something different. If you eat only brown rice and bio vegetables long enough, you emaciate and get that fluorescent look… like human cartoons. We used it. And we were totally stoned, like the state of mind of Jesus wandering 40 days in the desert, eating grasshoppers and getting fabulous visions.

Who leads the Stooges?
Every government is a form of permanent fight. See Bush, he loves to give out the image of a very controlled President, but I’m sure his vice-president has a lot of remarks to make about everything. See the worst dictators. They’ve got in second position Göring or J Edgar Hoover… guys who got all the nets and know everything about everybody. Each member of the Stooges had his strictly defined role. The money has always been religiously divided. Everybody got the same amount. Dave, the bassist, had a car. Sometimes, but not always, he drove us. Then, we all got to work to rent a house. I’ve worked in a records shop, then as a waiter at the U cafeteria. The Asheton brothers worked in a psyche shop. Finally we got the money, we got the house, but I couldn’t get them to rehearse. I didn’t care, I knew the casting was right, I was unique and nobody would prevent me to break big fucking time.

Wild child
It is often said that I’ve had a flash of inspiration at a famous Doors gig in Detroit. That’s true, seeing Jim Morrison completely… released something. The Doors came to Detroit as far back as 1967. I went to see them, in this fucking Michigan University gym with that ridiculous, three-inches-high stage, and all those guys who looked like all-American footballers in the audience. Morrison was dressed in black leather, such a Hollywood beauty. But he was completely stoned. His voice failed. That night, he could only sing in falsetto! And he made ambiguous signs, ogled them like a fag, those footballers… The Doors were struggling, terrible sight… After three trials at “Soul Kitchen”, they finally gave up, Krieger did a pathetic blues solo, and Morrison hectoring… They finally got out after twenty minutes. I went home with the girl I was dating that night. She gave me a wank in the car and I told her “Listen, if we can’t surpass that … we’re pussies… Fuck!” I think I ejaculated on her.

The Stooges’ Pygmalion
MC5, Amboy Dukes, I knew those guys wouldn’t go very far. The Asheton brothers had charisma. I became their slave, their mentor, their Pygmalion. And I became like them. Stoned, wild, lazy. I watched the crap they did. On that field, I could let them far behind! In the beginning, Ron wanted to play the bass. I admire Ron’s hands. His fingers are twice as long as mine. I thought with these fingers, he had to try the guitar. Scott was handsome, like a teenage James Dean. He had been following me for years in Ann Arbor, begging me to teach him the drums. I found out he could. Dave had a unique style with the bass. We never quarrelled over a musical problem. Never.

The killer riff
To be great, we needed a riff. It had to be special, and first quality. One day, kowabunga! Ron plays me the embryo of “1969”… It was here, man, it had arrived… I knew I could judge music efficiently. Ron had a winner. He drove me mad a month long about writing a text that matched his riff. Two weeks later, he brings “No Fun”. Masturbation, double orgasm. Ron ejaculated twice.

What do you think of reformations, MC5-style?
I think it’s certainly not easy to be a rock-critic nowadays, my poor friends! Rock’n’roll is a youth thing. A thing you gotta do immediately, hop. Then, you discover there are other things, each age has his. Wayne is touring with former MC5 under the name MC5. It’s really their right, but is it so clever? I’m not sure.

My real job
You gotta hang out with your guitarist. You must know what these hooligans think, find out what excites them to write them good things. This is my work, dude, writing. It happens here, on my kitchen table. As soon as it’s written, I hit the road to bring you my writings as songs, but I’m really a writer.

Angusyd van Hyman wrote:

Iguana in jail
If you eat only brown rice and bio vegetables long enough, you emaciate and get that fluorescent look… like human cartoons. We used it. And we were totally stoned, like the state of mind of Jesus wandering 40 days in the desert, eating grasshoppers and getting fabulous visions.

.

Priceless!!!!

just had to say thanks for this Angusyd! lots of fascinating little details in there! not much really new, but any little glimpse into the early years, just love it. and I didn't know that Ron originated the 'o mind' thing...

From some early 2007 interview:

Over a 75-minute conversation, the trio covered a long list of topics, including why they never received much commercial success and the genesis of some of their greatest songs. It's too much to detail in one blog post, but here are a few highlights:

• To promote one of their albums, Elektra records sent Iggy to go visit the "very horny editor" (Iggy's words) of a teenybopper magazine at her apartment. "They wanted to see if we hit it off." Iggy said. Long pause. "I was on the cover."

• The band's garage-soul favorite "No Fun" was inspired by three songs. The "no no no" line from the Rolling Stones "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," the Beach Boys' frequent use of the word "fun," and the structure of Johnny Cash's "I Walk the Line." Not sure if I get it, but it worked.

• The Stooges loved all the critical trashing their albums received when they were released. "Bad reviews are better," said Ron Asheton. "It's like, come see the circus freaks!" Iggy added his own bit of peculiar wisdom: "What passes for intelligent generally isn't."

• Iggy's first attempts at writing and recording music were pretty hippy-dippy. "I was a flower child, wearing beads and a Hindu-style moustache," he recalled. "And I sat in my bedroom writing a rock opera about little mouse in a bucolic world." We're glad he outgrew that phase.


Would love to see a photo of Iggy with that moustache!

Quote :

Would love to see a photo of Iggy with that moustache!

i was just gunna ask if neone had a pic of that!! haha, flower child, he soon gave that up, thank god!

I'VE DONE IT !
I finished at last to translate that Iggy interview...

Stoned out
When I listen to my old records, which is rare but sometimes happens, I’m not down. Sometimes, often, I regret I was so freaked out at the time we recorded. When you get high, on whatever, the first time is sublime, fantastic, fabulous. The second time is not as great, then it goes totally worse, it goes worse and worse, but tell me why it’s my 322 000th shot of that fucking shit and I do it again and again ‘cause some part of my brain still remembers that fantastic first time ? It’s the way drugs work, man. The hardest drug to quit was not heroin, but the sedatives, here’s the fucking danger. Each drug generates its specific troubles. Marijuana deprives you of your will. Nobody tells you, and it sounds weird, but it’s true. In a way, I’m like a mad scientist. I thought it was some kind of race, I had to accelerate all the time.
I’ve never wanted to be the Ramones. Sure, they did great things, but I didn’t see it the same way. It wasn’t the same mentality, I’ve never felt like playing the same set 92 times. I founded it all on James Brown, Miles Davis, the Doors, the fucking Stones… they were good.

The Williamson problem
The problem with James Williamson… I won’t say never, why does everyone always says it ? There are lots of possibilities and reactions, it all began in a plane, when I was thinking of my new album. I was writing on a sheet of paper the people I wanted to play with and my hand wrote it before I thought of it: STOOGES. Okay… but which Stooges? And who are the Stooges? Should we have James on bass and Ron on guitar then make them switch their instruments? How do we do this? Finally I decided: first, if you’ve got a real, live band backing you again, everyone must know where we’ve got so far and that’s the reason why I can’t have two lead guitarists. This would not do. Secondly, on a one-to-ten scale, as in every old band, there’s bitterness between the former Stooges. With the Asheton brothers, I’ve never topped five. Between me and James, it goes up to eight. Yeah. It makes me extremely suspicious. James came to one of our shows, he said “Hello guys” and it won’t go further. Two years ago he declared “How could you imagine a Stooges reunion without me?” Well here’s the news, James : the Stooges are not reuniting. It’s only me who’s playing with them again. James was an innovator, a dark, avant-garde talent, but everything was already there at the time he came in. There’s also something I got when I grew older : there are things I’d never do anymore for a better guitar riff. Humanity has its limits. James has his career in the computer industry and what results of the sales of “Raw Power” is rather good for his banking account. His work on “Raw Power” is totally unique. It’s regrettable that, once alone, he never did anything good in rock… cause it’s the truth, it happened that way.

Our groupies
I won’t lie. Basically, the Stooges’ groupies were the same as Led Zeppelin’s. When the Zeppelin was in town, Los Angeles 1974, they sucked the Zeppelin but when the band went back to Seattle, we’d get them, and I remember some surreal dialogues, like that girl who told me (Valley Girl voice) : “Oh, Jimmy, you know, Robert’s not circumcised, got that horrible foreskin, erk, well I sucked him anyway”… oddly enough, the most famous groupies were often well-bred girls. Anyway, we fucked anything that moved.

My major influence
If there’s someone who’s had a major influence on my career, it’s the writer William Burroughs. In my best songs, his concepts appear : Johnny Yen, the Wild Boys, Kill City there’s definitely some Burroughs in there. I hadn’t even read Burroughs when I wrote “Raw Power” but I came to the same conclusions he did by myself (laughs).
It was really strange, this learning of junkies’ madness with switchblade words. Yeah, I’m not bad at those things.

Facing my work
Some days ago, I took all my CD. My fucking discs. I watched them, all in a pile, then all displayed in front of me, all of them. I looked at my face here and there and I come by myself to this strong conclusion : Stop. Enough. Who needs another CD of Iggy Pop? We’ve exceeded twenty, eighteen studios, five lives… I managed to profane e very style (maniac laugh).I played country, folk, and jazz, spoken words, movies soundtracks, cartoons soundtracks, solo blues, acoustic blues, electric blues, rock, I love it. I’m glad I haven’t played only Stooges-style (hitting the table). My problem is that I like sick, deranged stuff… Well, I’ll never be popular in this society.

Gimme Some Skin
What I especially like on this compilation is that I managed to put “Gimme Some Skin” in the middle of the first CD. Each year, I get a report of the company who runs royalties about my songs. This song has brought in that much money, and that one has brought in that much… “Gimme Some Skin” is the only song of mine that never brought anything, never, absolutely nothing. It’s fast, tight as a little pussy, and the vocals are vicious…

I remember…
I remember being on a night out on many a dark road, rather late, many a strange place in a weird state and playing a music that was no less in small stinky places and I felt like it lasted for ages… The other day, I watched a video of a gig, in 1981. I could barely recognise the guy on stage. Waow, I did this, and that! In my defence, I’ll say this: I’ve always done what I found cool. I didn’t have big elaborated plans to make you swallow anything. No, I just wanted to sing cool stuff, that was all. Nowadays, everything is different. Who could do it again?

Drugs or chicks, what was drove the Stooges?
What drove the Stooges? Drugs. Absolutely. Drugs. Druuuuuugs! That was our stuff. You could feel OK with drugs, or you could feel OK with drugs and a girl. But you couldn’t feel OK only with the girl, you see? You could get the drugs without the girl but you couldn’t get the girl without the drugs, no! I can’t remember of a time I fucked a chick without having smoked weed. You smoke some reefer, you get laid, that’s all. Later I switched to another drug and it worked a pretty long time… Each member of the band used drugs in his own way, Dave would slip into a coma, James used drugs in a sick, perverted way, like some kind of new man’s ritual. Ron still thinks he didn’t take any, poor guy, if he only knew… And I used drugs to trip, to fly. Then you had to come down. Everything worked fine, then I flew higher and higher and the landings turned into crashes. The level of illegality of the whole business increased. Then there was Rock Action… Drugs made him pathetic, a loser, staggering, mumbling in that thick voice, like Brando playing a groggy boxer in the end of “Sur Les Quais”, all that routine I could’ve been a champion of the world, what a joke, but that band’s still here today because of Rock Action wanting it. He was determined to get his redemption.

Hunter S Thompson & samurai suicide
Yeah, Hunter S Thompson committed suicide earlier this year, his death shocked us all, naturally. I know he body was failing and that he couldn’t bear the wheeling chair and the general pity anymore. He took his own life with a revolver, like a samurai, literally. Hunter died as a warrior. Respect for this. But, hell, 67 is too early. I wished he had waited till 77. Yes, would have been infinitely better…

The movie business & me
I think my worst appearance in a movie is the day I landed up in John Waters’ “Cry Baby”. That Mr Waters is a madman. To show Johnny Depp his appreciation, he offered him a book … with pictures of burns victims. Hem. To one side, I was happy to get an important role at last, to the other, they were making me uglier and uglier. “John, do I really need those yellow teeth?”, and he’d go : “Yes!” And my haircut in that movie : a Detroit special, short on the top, long on the back. I’d wash my hair in the evening, I looked like a fuckin’ spaniel. But it’s the prize you pay to work with a genius and John Waters is one.

The age of retirement?
I 58 years old and I’ve never been so happy on stage. Every night we get the audience to get on stage and it’s an exciting moment, you can feel the explosion of liberating joy, and that explosion, that’s rock’n’roll. That’s what we are able to conjure. I stopped smoking five years ago. Since then, my voice is getting stronger. It should be declining, in fact it rises. In two years, guys, I’ll be at the top. I feel like telling you : I, Iggy Pop, I’m in my prime.

The last action hero
The last time I hit someone? Rather something! I’m not good at fighting. I wouldn’t move back, but I rather pass my anger on objects than on persons. Definitively… No, if I’ve got to answer the question, it was during a festival in Germany. I dive into the crowd, and some guy took the opportunity to pull at my boot. I let him some bruises, nothing personal, just : “Fuck, gimme my boot back, you fool!”

thanks anguyd! great article, never realised it was scott who pushed for the reunion - great to hear how the reacted to drugs lol

wonder what the movie will show of the fun house or stooges manor, if itll be accurate as that lol

Amazing interview Anguyd thanks!

A supergreat thing you translated this Angusyd! many many thanks.
a lot of funny juiced up news.
About gimme some skin (my utter nr 1 song!).. huh?.. they didn't get some cash from that one??

brilliant stuff angusyd! thanks a lot!!

Ron also said in many interviews that Scott was the one who was always trying to phone Iggy up for a reunion

Angusyd van Hyman wrote:

Gimme Some Skin
What I especially like on this compilation is that I managed to put “Gimme Some Skin” in the middle of the first CD. Each year, I get a report of the company who runs royalties about my songs. This song has brought in that much money, and that one has brought in that much… “Gimme Some Skin” is the only song of mine that never brought anything, never, absolutely nothing. It’s fast, tight as a little pussy, and the vocals are vicious…

Never knew that, I think thats brilliant!