Iggy Pop in Conversation with Will Self at Rough Trade East Record Store, London

Iggy Pop in conversation with Will Self - photo by Retro Man Blog

Rough Trade East Records in London continued their fine tradition of quality in-store appearances when they hosted Iggy Pop in conversation with the author and journalist Will Self. Iggy was in town to promote his latest album “Free” and although he didn’t play any gigs this time round, BBC6 Music filmed a special live set and interview in their studios, which is well worth checking out on YouTube here. He also found the time to make an entertaining appearance on the Jonathan Ross TV talk show. Iggy will be back in London to play a now sold-out show at the Barbican Centre on November 21st where he will be performing “Free” as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival. Anyway, back to the talk at Rough Trade East, the P.A. system crackles and there’s a palpable buzz of excitement as the cinematic opening track to “Free” washes over the audience with Iggy’s rich baritone crooning the song’s only lyrics, “I Wanna Be Free”. Then he suddenly appears on stage with Will Self to rapturous applause, Iggy looks in great shape, tanned and dressed in black, looking nowhere near his 72 years. Self starts by asking Iggy what he thought of London when he first visited back in the early Seventies. Iggy said he loved going for walks, in particular around Kensington Gardens and the Royal Albert Hall, recognising places he had seen in movies and he recalls the buildings and memorials being all dark and dirty. He liked stores on Chelsea’s King’s Road such as Let It Rock at World’s End or Granny Takes a Trip, where he could get things like snakeskin platform boots. He remembered the band liked to eat at the charmingly named The Great American Disaster, one of the U.K.’s first American style burger joints, but admitted he always preferred Wimpy’s himself, which stirs a murmur of nostalgia from the crowd. He also enjoyed going to Speaker’s Corner to check out the soapbox preachers or, as he puts it a bit more succinctly, “to watch all the loonies”. 

Iggy Pop in conversation with Will Self - photo by Retro Man Blog

The talk gets round to the new album “Free” and Self says it’s very emotive and admires the fact that Iggy often follows a period of hard, driving Rock & Roll by stepping back and exploring other, more experimental projects. Iggy explains that even though The Stooges first album may have become a prototype for Punk Rock, initially they were always experimental. After all, they used to put on strange performance-art shows using instruments made from stuff found in junkyards. At one point, this included a drum-kit comprising a 55-gallon oil tank, which they hit with wooden beaters and Iggy would use a vacuum cleaner to create weird noises. He somewhat disappointedly confesses that by the time The Stooges got round to recording their first LP, the others in the band wanted to be a bit more ‘normal’. However, he is proud that the first Stooges record included “We Will Fall”, a 10-minute Hindu chant with John Cale playing viola, a track which most reviewers seemed to conveniently gloss over. Self gets a bit deep and pretentious here, talking about white and black voids and even comparing “I Wanna Be Your Dog” to Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony and Iggy has to ask him politely what he’s talking about. However, Self is spot on when he says guitarist Ron Asheton had an “accidental virtuosity” and he always found that The Stooges music did have a Mantra like feel to it. Iggy thought that was something to do with Ron tuning into the sounds coming from his guitar and amp, using the different tones of the feedback to make noise of their own free will while he was semi-controlling it. It was more like a Ravi Shankar vibe as opposed to someone like Ted Nugent, who just wants to control their instrument.

Iggy Pop in conversation with Will Self - photo by Retro Man Blog

Iggy was confident when he first made records with The Stooges that there would be people who would like it, he just didn’t realise how hard it would be to reach a significant number of them. He goes on to say that The Stooges were not only appreciated by misfits and stoners but that metacritical people always seemed to like them too, “oh how very interesting!” he says in a posh Professorial English accent, a dig at Will Self maybe? Self then talks about vinyl making a comeback and wonders if the current technology of streaming and the internet has affected him at all. Iggy says, not at all, the worse years were the 80’s, when he would walk into a record store and there was Bruce Springsteen posters and advertising everywhere. He would have to find his way to the back of the store to the racks, usually located by the Men’s room and search under the subculture section and he might not even have his own filing card. Now through the internet, people can discover and check out his music much more easily. He then somewhat surprisingly announces that despite it being an “ugly little format”, the advent of the CD was The Stooges salvation. Iggy said he always found that the original mixes of the Stooges albums on vinyl were pretty quiet and weedy as the Record Company people would squash and compress the sound. However, the people who were remastering albums for CD were younger, knew a bit more about music and realised that this sound should be more in your face. “Suddenly in America in the early 90’s I’m surrounded by these Nu-Metal guys with beer bellies and pumped up muscles at the same time, which annoys me. They are all covered in tattoos and have just learned to curse. One band is heavier than the other but they all listen to my band, which is this weedy little thing. So, I said I’m going to make the loudest record in America basically, so loud that even the Rollins band will quiver in fear! I can say that ‘cos Henry Rollins is a nice boy. When I first met Henry, it was like a scene from the movie Robocop when Robocop has to meet the giant machine that dwarves him. So, I remixed “Raw Power” as loud as possible”. In this clip, Iggy recalls that first meeting with Henry Rollins.

They mention that the new album incorporates eclectic ethnic influences and some of the collaborators come from R&B and Hip-Hop backgrounds. Iggy talks about the influence of black musicians on him from way back as a teenager in the 60’s, hearing Latin, Caribbean and African Rhythms in the Top 40 from artists such as Booker T and Joe Tex, although he was just a little white kid living in a trailer park. He was brought up in an area that benefited from the exodus of African-Americans and unemployed poor white people moving north in search of work. From his time at the University of Michigan, he got to know people who were in Blues bands and who had impressive collections of Chicago and Mississippi Blues records. Iggy goes on to explain that one new track “Dirty Sanchez” for example, has a groovy touch with a New Orleans beat played by French musicians and he laughs, saying it sounds like “a sophisticated Tijuana Brass”. Self says that the ballad “Sonali” speaks to him of the problems facing the Southern part of America – the climate emergency, rising sea levels and migration and Iggy, now that he’s living in Miami is in the heart of all that. Iggy explains that the song is about a first generation Sri Lankan who speaks like an American and wants to live that American life. She wants to be accepted but as the signs on the ironically named, freeway say, you have to “stay in your lane” and Iggy admits, “that line in the song killed me, you have to stay in your lane according to your speech, background, job etc.” Self asks Iggy if he was involved in the production of “Free” and he replies that he was involved in choosing the general idea and emotive qualities but he stayed away from asking questions like “shouldn’t the bass be louder on that?” Self then compares “Free” to the Director David Lynch’s later works, which is outside the mainstream with Lynch using his own resources, acting as an artistic impresario. Iggy says these sorts of projects are never going to be the money spinning ones, but if you can pay for it and do it, then it will all be worth it.

In reference to the poem “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”, which features on “Free”, Self asks if Iggy is raging against the dying light. Iggy replies with a rueful grin, “I’m sneaking up on it!” and admits that when he gets asked to do things now he thinks “he’s chosen me ‘cos he thinks I might die soon, that’s my new qualification. People want to get autographs before I die, I know that”. Self enquires, “At this stage of life, are you just Jim all the time now, have you left Iggy behind?” Iggy tells us that Bowie once wrote a song with the line “Oh, Iggy Pop, when you gonna stop?” and quickly adds, don’t worry it was never released! He says when he was younger he made a couple of good decisions – the first was when he was 18 and decided to drop out of college to play the drums, not to make records or anything like that; he just wanted to be a musician. Then the second decision was sticking with the Iggy name. He explains, “The older guys hanging out in the local record store would start to call me Iguana to mock my High School covers band, The Iguanas. I plotted and got another band together and was thinking what should my stage name be? I thought about Jimmy James but in a review of one of my shows, the writer called me Iggy and I knew that was my break so I kept quiet. Initially, I had a big problem with it personally and insisted that people who knew me called me Jim but I was always Iggy when I worked. I didn’t like it if the wrong person called me Jim in the wrong way. I would say “Call me Iggy” if they were like, going, “I’m not falling for that Iggy shit”. Self then asks Iggy if the myth ever started to eat him up and he replied that it was easy and sometimes convenient, to hide behind a persona. “I started to grow into it little by little but was only really comfortable with when I reached my 50’s, I thought, wow, look what I’ve done; I like this track and I like this album. I resurrected The Stooges and got the guys a bit of money – OK yeah, I like this”. Self says he has met many famous people over the years and he rather touchingly admits that Iggy is “one of the few to be unaffected in a spiritual way by such a degree of fame, you have no side, you are what you are”. Did Iggy attribute this to his upbringing he wondered? Iggy talks warmly about his family, about the hardships that they and the war generation had to go through and suddenly there’s the burden of having to deal with this brat. “Everyone I met after I left school thought I was a rich kid, but my parents had no money, they had a tough upbringing and we lived in a little trailer but they were well educated. They would do everything for me, pick me up from school activities, and try to shelter me from Elvis Presley. They let me set up a drum-kit and rented a piano, and I would try to play along to Muddy Waters records. My Dad never got my interest in the Blues, he used to say, “Son, I can understand why that man is crying, but you don’t have to”.

Iggy Pop in conversation with Will Self - photo by Retro Man Blog

The album “Free” is out now and Iggy also has a new book of collected lyrics published by Viking called “'Til Wrong Feels Right” which can be ordered from Rough Trade here. In the book Iggy offers an insight into his creative world with this collection of lyrics brought to life by full-colour photos, never-before-seen notes and memorabilia, short pieces and commentary from other music legends, including Danny Fields' Johnny Marr and Chris Stein from Blondie. Subscribe to Rough Trade’s newsletter for details of future in-store events or check out their web-site here.