I don’t really know what the hell is going on here, but I think I like it! Maybe this is a few of Iggy’s Vines strung together? (Wait, Iggy’s on Vine?) Hard to tell WHAT this is…
Thank you Mr. Pop, for this very delightfully surreal (or is this dada?) Christmas message. MOAR cockatoo, next year!
The Smoking Gun has done everyone a great service by publishing the backstage riders that Iggy Pop and the Stooges send to their concert venues in advance of arrival. They’re completely irreverent and silly and down-to-earth and ramble on like a demented monologue by Monty Python’s Eric Idle himself.
The genius behind these shaggy comedic documents is Jos Grain, who has been Iggy’s road manager since 1986—his term is “Marvellous and Most Instructive Information Document…. Including Utterly Confusing Comments and Asides.” The Smoking Gun posted the 2006 rider for Iggy and the Stooges, which was also written by Sharp, who then expanded the document for the 2012 tour. (I’m linking readers to the page in the riders where the fun requests for bottled water and so forth start—there’s plenty of amusing and informative stuff before that about stage setup and amps and lighting and all that. If you want to read the full 2012 rider more easily on a single page, you can go to Grain’s own website, where he’s posted it as well.)
Jos Grain, setting up for an Iggy and the Stooges show in Melbourne, Australia, in 2013. Photo: Mike Watt
As a prime example of Grain’s sense of humor, in the 2006 rider, Iggy’s demands for the backstage area included “Somebody dressed as Bob Hope doing fantastic Bob Hope impersonations and telling all those hilarious Bob Hope jokes about golf and Hollywood and Bing Crosby. Oh God, I wish I’d been alive in those days, so that Bob Hope could have come and entertained me in some World War 2 hell-hole before I went off and got shot. What joy they must have experienced…” In the 2012 rider this is updated to include an alternate option: “OR Seven dwarves, dressed up as those dwarves out of that marvellous Walt Disney film about the woman who goes to sleep fro [sic] a hundred years after biting a poisoned dwarf, or maybe after pricking her finger on a rather sharp apple… or something. What was the name of that film? Oooh, it’s on the tip of my tongue. Was it Cinderella? Doesn’t matter, we just want the dwarves. Taller people are acceptable, of course. It’s attitude, more than altitude, that’s important here. Don’t forget the pointy hats! If neither of the above are available we will settle for a belly dancer. In fact, she can use my belly to dance on…”
In th 2012 rider, Grain gratuitously goes after Oscar-winning director and Arrested Development voiceover actor Ron Howard: “Apparently Iggy met that Ron Howard once. You know, the ugly, baldy one out of Happy Days. Directs films. Got one of those faces you’d never get tired of punching.”
There’s hardly a paragraph or sentence that isn’t adorned by an aside or silly joke of that sort.
Iggy Pop’s 2006 rider
Since I have no experience in venue management, I can’t tell if Grain/Iggy are masking what in fact still ends up being a fairly diva-ish list of demands or if what they request is totally par for the course for big national touring acts. I suspect it’s the latter, but even if Iggy is asking for a lot, with a rider this amusing you have to like him for it, so it makes fulfillment of his Grolsch beer, ‘86 St. Emilion red wine, deck of cards, recent copy of USA Today “that’s got a story about morbidly obese people in it” and all the rest seem far less arduous.
Here’s Iggy and the Stooges in Glastonbury in 2007:
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Some Weird Sin: Iggy Pop on Dutch TV, 1978
Iggy Pop performs ‘Bang, Bang’ on German TV, from 1981
Some artists, like Picasso and Dali, were discovered when they were young and their talents grew to maturity before the public eye. Sometimes, however it takes… well, dying before the art world sits up and takes notice of you, This was certainly the case with Brion Gysin, the Canadian/British painter and author who long stood in the shadows, figuratively speaking, of William S. Burroughs, his lifelong friend and collaborator. Burroughs once said that Brion Gysin was the only man he ever truly respected.
Gysin is an artist whose work must be seen in person to be truly appreciated. Of course this is said about every artist’s work, but it’s particularly true with Brion Gysin. What might appear to be random chicken scratch calligraphy when reproduced in a book, becomes ALIVE when seen in person. Seemingly careless hash marks become scenes of hundreds of people around a bonfire or a crowded Arab marketplace when you’re staring right at it.
The man was a master. And he left an awful lot of work behind. Although there were various Gysin gallery exhibits in New York while he was still alive—I recall being astonished by some large works on paper in a great 1985 show at the Tower Gallery—there was never a museum-level retrospective of Gysin’s work in the United States until 2010 at the New Museum in Manhattan:
One of the things Gysin is best know for is inventing the Dreamachine—a kinetic light sculpture that utilizes flicker effect to induce visions—a drugless turn-on.
FLicKer is a 2008 Canadian documentary about Gysin’s Dreamachine, directed by Nik Sheehan. Kenneth Anger, Marianne Faithfull, Gysin biographer John Geiger, Iggy Pop, Genesis P-Orridge, Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo, DJ Spooky and yours truly are interviewed.
H/T R.U. Sirius
Here’s an amusing letter written by Iggy Pop to journalist Joshua Berger following an interview they did together for Plazm magazine in 1995. Iggy was in Warsaw at that time on a tour of Europe.
I have no idea how the hell he fit all that text on Delta stationery. But he did, thankfully. There are so many choice quotes from this letter…
TIL Iggy Pop hates Led Zeppelin.
WARSAW
PHLASH: nation of midgets
the arts in America today are above all else. Successful artists live like gods. They are REMOTE and useless. the painting and sculpture generally on offer ranges from coy & cute to incomprehensible & huge. Everybody’s sick of it, but it’s exactly what it’s patrons deserve. These people are corrupt and frigid. America today is a nation of midgets led by dwarves. The midgets are small and normal. The dwarves are small and warped. The sickness comes from the top down.
The ‘music’ is mostly 60’s and 70’s rehash, esp. LED ZEPPELIN, who i never could stand in the first place. Also ‘folk-rock’ is back as ‘alternative’. gimme a break. the ‘bands’ dress this mess up in various ‘HIP’ clothes and ‘political’ postures to encode a ‘lock’ on social belonging which you can open by purchasing a combination of products, especially their own, none of them have fuck-all to say.
I hate the inane worship of gross ‘supermodels’ and i positively loathe Calvin Klein ads and that whole school of photography. it is not beautiful. Our gods are assholes.
There are continual ‘shock and rage’ movements in the performing/conceptual arts, but are they bringing anybody a good time? they bring filth death & loathing of self as fashion. I understand them, though. People are lost and frustrated, AND UNSKILLED.
Our country is stupid and degenerate. Nobody is here. People are starving. No one talks to you. No one comments. You are cut off. No one is straight. TV morons. A revolution is coming, and in reaction, a strongman will emerge. Everything sucks. Don’t bother me.
i hate it all. heavy metal. hollywood movies. SCHPOLOOGY! YeHEHCHH! - Iggy Pop
Tell us how you really feel, Jim! Shit, this was written in 1995. Imagine how pissed off Iggy must be in 2013!
Via Letters of Note
With mannequins in a comic book shop in Boston, 1980
On February 21 of this year the well-regarded German newspaper Die Zeit ran an exclusive interview with Esther Friedman, who was Iggy Pop’s girlfriend for seven years, from roughly 1976 to 1982. They met while Iggy was living in West Berlin with David Bowie, where the two rock stars were hoping to dry out after a period of heavy drug use. Iggy and Bowie lived at Hauptstrasse 155 in Schöneberg. At that time, Friedman was a prolific photographer, and she took many revealing photographs of Iggy Pop in various locales. The cover photo for Iggy’s 1982 album Zombie Birdhouse was taken by Friedman during a 1981 vacation to Haiti.
At Hansa Studios near the Berlin Wall, Iggy recorded The Idiot and Lust for Life, both produced by Bowie, while Bowie cut his three legendary “Berlin period” albums Low, Heroes, and Lodger during the same period.
In the interview, Friedman spoke openly about her life with Iggy. He comes across as rather different from his public image—shy instead of outgoing. Friedman discusses the origins of one of Iggy’s greatest songs, “The Passenger,” as well as the sharp differences between Iggy’s frenetic stage persona and his offstage self, whom Friedman called “Jim,” as in James Osterberg, Iggy’s real name. Obviously, the interview is in German—but here are some excerpts from Friedman’s interview with Die Zeit, or actually ZEITmagazin, which is sort of the German equivalent of the New York Times Magazine (translation by Martin Schneider):
ZEITmagazin: Did you call Iggy Pop “Jim” from the very start?
Esther Friedman: Yes, his proper name is James Osterberg, but I always called him Jim, never Iggy. He named himself Iggy when he was 18. His first band was the Iguanas, so that’s where that came from. David [Bowie] always used to call him Jimmy in Berlin, his parents called him Jim. Iggy is his stage name. And there are actually two characters, there’s Iggy, and there’s James.
ZEITmagazin: What is the difference between the two?
Esther Friedman: The difference is rather large. Iggy is 99 percent unbearable. And James, Jim, is 99 percent bearable.-snip-
Esther Friedman: Berlin left Jim alone. In Berlin Jim could just be Jim when he wanted to, he could live, sit in the local bar next door and drink a beer. He loved it. David had studied the literature and art that came from Berlin or took place in Berlin. Christopher Isherwood’s book Goodbye to Berlin from 1939, the works of the “Die Brücke” group—all of that fascinated David, and he took Jim with him. They often went to the Brücke Museum. “The Passenger” ...
ZEITmagazin: ...Iggy Pop’s greatest hit…
Esther Friedman: ...well, it’s a hymn to Berlin’s S-Bahn [Stadtschnellbahn, light rail system]. Jim went on the S-Bahn almost every day. Those trips inspired him to write the song, especially the section that goes out to the Wannsee. Jim and David also frequently traveled together to East Berlin, in a Mercedes-Benz 600 that David’s chauffeur took care of.
-snip-
ZEITmagazin: Is it true that Iggy Pop was in a telephone booth and some punk locked him in from the outside?
Esther Friedman: Yes, that happened at three o’clock in the morning. Telephone booths actually used to have locks. Jim had just come from the Dschungel Club in Nürnberger Strasse and called me: “Listen, I’m locked in a telephone booth here! You have to help me!” I said, “Think up a better story. How come you’re calling me at three in the morning and waking me up?” Then I hung up.
ZEITmagazin: Why?
Esther Friedman: Maybe I can explain it this way: When he called at three in the morning, it was not Jim on the line, but Iggy.
ZEITmagazin: The boisterous punk rocker.
Esther Friedman: The poor guy, he sat in that phone booth until six in the morning. A taxi driver discovered him and was able to open the door with a master key. To this day we don’t know who locked him in there.
Esther Friedman and Iggy Pop were together for seven years.
Esther Friedman in Berlin-Schöneberg, photographed by Iggy Pop
Iggy Pop during the “Lust for Life” tour in the US, 1978
In Berlin, 1977
After the jump, more photographs of Iggy Pop…
If you ever wondered what Iggy Pop’s face would look like sucking on a sour lemon, here’s your chance with these Schweppes Lemon Dry advertisments.
They’re the Schweppiest, aren’t they?
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Klaus Nomi advertising Jägermeister
Via Copyranter
Iggy Pop takes a stroll around New York’s Lower East-Side, in May1993.
As Iggy explains it: he likes living in New York because he is a ‘high-strung, suggestible person,’ and the city gives him a structure in which he can operate. Los Angeles, on the other hand, made him crazy because there was no center.
Iggy highlights some his favorite things to Dutch film-maker Bram Van Splunteren, as he gives a guided tour of the neighborhood. The graffiti, the people, the vibrancy, the food, the street signs, the artists and his personal belief that no one will tell you to shut-up for making any noise—which means Iggy can make as much noise as he likes.
It’s a fun trip, and closes with Iggy talking about Rap, Ice-T, why cops made him fearful and angry, and why he listens to Bob Dylan.
Portrait of Iggy Pop by Karen Bones.
The Château d’Hérouville where David Bowie, Marc Bolan, Elton John, The Grateful Dead, The Sweet and Fleetwood Mac recorded is up for sale.
Located near the town of Auvers-sur-Oise, in France, the property is described as a coaching station, built in the 18th century, which includes 30-rooms, and 1,700m ² of living space.
The selling price is 1, 295, 000 Euros.
In 1962, composer Michel Magne purchased the property and developed it into a recording studio. Magne is best known for his Oscar win for Gigot.
The Château was particularly popular with British artists, starting with Elton John, who recorded three albums at the studios, Honky Chateau, Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only The Piano Player and Goodbye Yellowbrick Road. Elton suggested the studio to Marc Bolan where he recorded his 1972 album The Slider; and Bolan recommended it to David Bowie who record Pin-Ups in July 1973, and then Low in 1977.
But the Château wasn’t just known for its considerable musical pedigree. Producer Tony Visconti claimed star-crossed lovers Frederic Chopin and George Sand haunted the building—Chopin had trysted with Sand while living at the mansion. Bowie also noted the studios supernatural feel.
If this slice of pop history tickles your fancy, then check the details here.
More info and pictures, after the jump…
Between Marc and Richard’s recent posts on old skool local New York TV, I’ve been combing the mulch pile of my memories from back in the day and what popped to mind was Howard Stern interviewing Iggy Pop on his old Channel 9 (“superstation” WWOR) show.
It is… amusing, of course, but what’s particularly interesting is how Iggy just cringes at the mention of Angela Bowie, who in turn shows up with (interestingly enough) David Bowie’s longtime producer Tony Visconti and his wife May Pang, one-time mistress of John Lennon. Iggy plays “I Wanna Be Your Dog” but at the prospect of being “face to face” with Angie, he makes like a banana and splits!
Here ya’ go:
Also from that very same episode, the regular feature, “Homeless Howiewood Squares,” featuring Underdog Lady, “KKK Guy” (who had a name, but no one really cared) and longtime Match Game host Gene Rayburn, who must’ve been really hard up for work by then… Note how fascinated even the contestants are at hearing KKK Guy’s nearly incomprehensible theories about racial superiority.
If you’re not familiar with Howard’s work, it’s easy to just write him off as a “shock jock.” Hell, you’d be right to do so (obviously this is trying to be offensive and succeeding in a big way. Regular segments like “Guess the Jew” and “Lesbian Dating Game” weren’t subtle either.). BUT, there has always been an almost surreal element to Howard Stern’s shtick and, more importantly, a very “New York” context that caused such bizarre television to follow a sort of odd calculus of humor.
An Iggy pop clock made by artist and designer Ron Winnick. I like the creative touch as Iggy’s arms move around he smears peanut butter on himself. That’s absolutely brilliant.
Below, this incredible live footage of The Stooges comes from the Cincinnati Summer Pop Festival of 1970 (AKA Midsummer Rock Festival) and features the infamous peanut butter smearing incident.
Note the announcer’s reaction: “That’s… peanut butter!” Years later Stiv Bators of The Dead Boys took credit for bringing the tub of peanut butter from his home in Dayton and putting it into the Iggster’s hands.
This Jim Osterberg fellow looks like a nice, clean-cut, fine upstanding young man.
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Amazing photos of Iggy & the Stooges playing at a Michigan high school, 1970
Iggy Pop performing “Dog Food,” “Real Cool Time” and “Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell” at The Longhorn Saloon in Minneapolis, Minnesota on November 20, 1979. From a program called Wild Tyme (where that vintage tattoo convention clip I posted earlier today also came from).
Some great interview footage with Iggy explaining why he HATES rock music (he’d rather buy drugs than records) and the self-financed New Values tour he was engaged in at the time. There’s also a record signing for fans.
This is primo Iggy. Only 68 views on YouTube? What’s that about?
Below, the actual handbill from the gig, a part of the Minnesota Historical Society’s collection:
The more things change, the more they stay the same
The picture above is from a book called The Moment After the Show, a coffee table volume from photographer Matthias Willi and journalist Olivier Joliat, specializing solely in the sweaty, post-coital afterglow of musicians.
The photography feels almost invasive—and not just because we’re a centimeter from James Osterberg’s junk. The little details like unzipped flies, running make-up, and visible sweat-spots are so akin to pulling the curtain back. Looking at them offstage at a moment when they’re supposed to be human again, feels almost invasive.
Promo video for Nico’s “Evening of Light” (actually the alternate version, as heard on the Frozen Borderline set) directed by François De Menil in 1969, but probably finished much later. There was a tantalizingly brief clip of this in the Nico: Icon documentary and ever since the invention of YouTube, I’ve been hoping to find the complete piece online.
The story is told in Richard Witts’ (fantastic) Nico biography, Nico: The Life and Lies of an Icon, that De Menil, heir to the Schlumberger Limited oil-equipment fortune via his mother’s family, who knew Nico via Warhol associate Fred Hughes, had become besotted by the Teutonic ice queen and proposed making a film with her.
At this time Nico was having a brief affair with a then 21-year-old Iggy Pop, who she met through John Cale, then producing the first Stooges album in New York. (Iggy once revealed to a French interviewer that Nico taught him how to “eat pussy.”) Nico told De Menil that he had to follow them to Ann Arbor, Michigan if he wanted to do it. De Menil obliged, shooting the film behind the house where the band lived.
The way Witts tells the tale is that De Menil seemed to want to get revenge on Iggy because he was Nico’s boyfriend, making the Stooges singer wear white mime make-up and frolic around in a field to embarrass him, but to my mind, this film is absolutely stunning.
Turn it up loud for the full effect!
