Iggy Pop hits 75 today!
Check out our extensive Iggy posting from back in 2013 – here
Iggy, back in 2016, in conversation with Thurston Moore
“America’s greatest living poet was ogling you all night” – (Iggy tells the backstory of the song “Gardenia” (from his Post Pop Depression album released earlier that year))
“Gardenia was a very tall, very black very strong young woman who liked junk and she lived in San Francisco and I met her by one of my scrape-by-the-hair-of-my-chinny-chin-chin tours, if it wasn’t Mabuhay Gardens it was one of those clubs in North Beach, and I hung out a little with her. She dressed shabbily but she was a physically impressive alien presence, not totally unlike Angelfood McSpade in the Robert Crumb comic. So she went to the gig with me at the..in North Beach and Allen Ginsberg came – and she wore a little tiny very cheap polyester babydoll dress and this was a very large woman, she was over six feet, big powerful limbs and devil eyes. Ginsberg went crazy . “Gardenia!’ , you know, and she wore a gardenia in her hair to the.. yeah.. to the gig and he was just ogling on her all night, and he was like, “Well, yeah, you are you’re ok, but Gardenia! – damn!”, you know – he was just fascinated with her…”
Here is an excellent BBC documentary on Iggy and The Stooges from back in 2004
More recently, Iggy via Jim Jarmusch – Gimme Danger (2016) – here – (also here and here)
Iggy on the BBC – In 2014 he delivers the BBC Music John Peel Lecture on the topic of “Free Music in a Capitalist Society” – (see also – here)
and from 2019 a full concert and an interview
Here’s more from 2019, around the time of the Free (his most recent) CD, Iggy talking on the radio
Iggy’s been awarded the 2022 Polar Prize He’ll be picking it up in Stockholm in May
Iggy and poetry – Iggy reads Walt Whitman – “Leaves Of Grass” is a 2016 collaboration from between Iggy and musicians Tarwater and Alva Noto
Iggy reading Dylan Thomas – “Rage Rage Against the Dying of the Light”
Iggy reading his friend Lou Reed’s poem – “We Are The People”
and Iggy reading his own poem “Mom and Dad” (in collaboration with harpist Lavinia Meijer)
Happy Birthday, Iggy – Long may you rule!