Iggy Pop

version

Well-known member
I'm just looking through stuff to take the charity shop and I've found some biography by a bloke called Joe Ambrose called Gimme Danger: The Story of Iggy Pop. Anyone read it or know whether it's worth keeping? blissblog?
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
no idea i'm afraid

i'm not sure there is a good book about iggy or the stooges

there must be surely?

"I Need More" which is by Iggy himself and is more like a collection of quotes and maxims is really great - i wish i had a copy, it goes for a LOT these days. i borrowed it off someone when we were doing our psychosexual exploration The Sex Revolts - a goldmine of psyche-gaping-wide-open Michigan Nietzcheanisms
 

version

Well-known member
The only thing I've read of his that isn't lyrics is that short thing on The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
In 1982, horrified by the meanness, tedium and depravity of my existence as I toured the American South playing rock and roll music and going crazy in public, I purchased an abridged copy of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Dero Saunders, Penguin). The grandeur of the subject appealed to me, as did the cameo illustration of Edward Gibbon, the author, on the front cover. He looked like a heavy dude. Being in a political business, I had long made a habit of reading biographies of wilful characters – Hitler, Churchill, MacArthur, Brando – with large profiles, and I also enjoyed books on war and political intrigue, as I could relate the action to my own situation in the music business, which is not about music at all, but is a kind of religion-rental.

I would read with pleasure around 4 am, with my drugs and whisky in cheap motels, savouring the clash of beliefs, personalities and values, played out on antiquity’s stage by crowds of the vulgar, led by huge archetypal characters. And that was the end of that. Or so I thought.

Eleven years later I stood in a dilapidated but elegant room in a rotting mansion in New Orleans, and listened as a piece of music strange to my ears pulled me back to ancient Rome and called forth those ghosts to merge in hilarious, bilious pretence with the Schwartzkopfs, Schwartzeneggers and Sheratons of modern American money and muscle-myth. Out of me poured information I had no idea I ever knew, let alone retained, in an extemporaneous soliloquy I called ‘Caesar’. When I listened back, it made me laugh my ass off because it was so true. America is Rome. Of course, why shouldn’t it be? All of Western life and institutions today are traceable to the Romans and their world. We are all Roman children for better or worse.

The best part of this experience came after the fact – my wife gave me a beautiful edition in three volumes of the magnificent original unabridged Decline and Fall, and since then the pleasure and profit have been all mine as I enjoy the wonderful language, organization and scope of this masterwork. Here are just some of the ways I benefit:

1) I feel a great comfort and relief knowing that there were others who lived and died and thought and fought so long ago; I feel less tyrannized by the present day.
2) I learn much about the way our society really works, because the system-origins – military, religious, political, colonial, agricultural, financial – are all there to be scrutinized in their infancy. I have gained perspective.
3) The language in which the book is written is rich and complete, as the language of today is not.
4) I find out how little I know.
5) I am inspired by the will and erudition which enabled Gibbon to complete a work of twenty-odd years. The guy stuck with things.

I urge anyone who wants life on earth to really come alive for them to enjoy the beautiful ancestral ancient world.
 
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version

Well-known member
"I Need More" which is by Iggy himself and is more like a collection of quotes and maxims is really great - i wish i had a copy, it goes for a LOT these days.

I've run into the same problem with What's Welsh for Zen. I'm not spending £50 on a book.
 

Leo

Well-known member
own it...what's your opening bid! from the early 80s, so missing the last 40 years of his life but the first 30 were the best bits anyway. was reprinted in 97, amazon has used copies for $30.

read it a long time ago and recall it's pretty good.
 

Leo

Well-known member
btw, just read an interview where he says "the Stooges’ licensing is through the roof…”. Nice to know some musicians still make money off their old stuff instead of the usual story of losing the rights and dying penniless.
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
Guy has his head screwed on pretty tight. There was a great interview with him on the wtf podcast years ago. Very smart dude.
 

version

Well-known member
I like that he's managed to transition into this sort of crooner now that his voice is going. He did a record with Alva Noto and someone else a few years back which was just him reading Walt Whitman over electronics and it worked quite well.

 
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blissblogger

Well-known member
i read somewhere he is worth $30 million

he's monetized his legend astutely and who can blame him really? deserves to live in comfort. i just wish he would keep his shirt on in photographs.

yeah it's the $30 + p+p that is putting off making a bid on I Need More. i wish there was a pdf of it out there lurking.
 

Leo

Well-known member
in a way, I guess "Iggy pop" is the stage persona because when he's interviewed, he's modest and down-to-earth. no huge ego, just wants to be a decent person. he's James osterberg.
 

version

Well-known member
I have more time for Tom Waits as an actor than a musician these days. I used to be quite into his music, but the shtick wore thin and I got bored after a while.
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
Read a biog years ago which said he claimed to have developed his character from listening to sailor's conversations in some late night diner he worked at near the docks. Imagine all the other freaks he saw drop in. Was interesting to think of him intentionally putting together a persona. Nighthawks at the Diner was in rotation in my house when I was a kid. Somehow it seems like the perfect habitat for him. Am pretty neutral on him. Never really think to listen to his music.
 
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version

Well-known member
Apparently the gamechanger was when his wife introduced him to Captain Beefheart's stuff. You can definitely hear it from Swordfishtrombones onward.
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
Just watching that c&c youtube I was thinking how much he looked like beef h. Especially when he stood up near the end.

And luka disliking Waits is the most predictable thing in the world lol
 

version

Well-known member
Weirdly Iggy was on TV the other night (... Jonathan Ross is a terrible interviewer.)

 
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Leo

Well-known member
Swordfishtrombones

one of those albums I'd probably love to death if it just plopped out of the sky from some unknown artist but I just can't take listening to waits, for all the obvious reasons. it's almost troubling that I'm incapable of enjoying what is objectively an interesting piece of work but there are so many other more important things to be concerned about, so ultimately I don't care.
 
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