There’s a delightful documentary from around this time (made by Dutch film-maker, Blam Van Splunteren) – Iggy showing the film crew around, giving them a guided tour, around what was then a decidedly different neighborhood!
Gay Pop? – Joe Ambrose in his 2007 biography, Gimme Danger, The Story of Iggy Pop, writes – “Many people who knew him or worked with him, based on what they saw, find his recent hetero assertions hard to swallow [sic]. One band member refers to downright peculiar backstage behaviour involving Pop and Allen Ginsberg [sic] after a show”
– All this innuendo – Isn’t the author being more than a little prissy here?
Candid and always articulate (even when wasted!) – Iggy interviews are an interesting sub-genre. We’ll list a few of them here, starting with a frustrated Iggy in 1977 on Peter Gzowski’s 90 Minutes Live (he was interviewed but he wasn’t allowed to play), followed by the remarkable interview (broken tooth and all) in 1980, on Tomorrow, the Tom Snyder Show. Ten years later, here he is interviewed by Thierry Ardisson in a Parisian night-club. Here’s an illuminating interview on French tv (from 1998) – here, here and here.
– and a close-up from Vox Pop
Chrome Dreams, in 2006, put out a CD of “Classic Interviews” (among them, this one, this one, this one and this one).
Classic Iggy? – well, Allen always liked this one:
Here’s Iggy in October 1977 performing live at the Manchester Apollo, eight years later
Here’s Iggy performing in Paris, Olympia, 1991 (with his ass bare!) – here, here and here.
Perhaps the most useful and informative survey (at least of the first part of his life) is this German tv documentary, Lust For Life
[2014 update – Hot damn! they’ve taken it down, but you can still get a taste of it – here]
A lot has gone down since 1986 when that was made. Iggy’s still with us real and raw, currently touring with a re-formed Stooges (see here), inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame a few years back, a curious phenomena, ubiquitous (is that the right word?), a (seemingly indestructible) “living legend”.
Legend? – that’s something you can have fun with – and take to the bank!
We’ll conclude with another image of Allen’s:
