Iggy Pop Quotations

What did Christ really do? He hung out with hard-drinking fishermen.

My parents wanted to light my artistic candle. But over time, the definition of 'the arts' began to stretch. And as I got older, they suddenly realized, Oh, my God, we're the parents of Iggy Pop.

Something I like to do a lot is just sit by water when there’s a current and just stare into the water. I don’t fish, I don’t hunt, I don’t scuba, I don’t spear, don’t boat, don’t play basketball or football – I excel at staring into space. I’m really good at that.

When punk began to be a genre, people were going to go out and try to mine it. Some of the better groups, like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols, were very artificial.

I stare at myself in the mirror and I think, 'Wow, I'm really great-looking.'... I think I'm the greatest, anyway.

'Punk rock' is a word used by dilettantes and heartless manipulators about music that takes up the energies, the bodies, the hearts, the souls, the time and the minds of young men who give everything they have to it.

Stages are getting higher and higher, and I'm getting older and older.

At university, I had been obsessed with reading about the lives of Rimbaud and Baudelaire, and I was steeped in the crazy poets, and I came to view my early subjects through that prism.

Miami is nothing like me, and that's why I need to be here - it's the opposite. I'm practical, where this place is moody, I'm stolid in my interior, where this place has a certain flair, and I'm materialistic in a sense that this place is fundamentally spiritual - there's a quicksilver quality about this place.

Second only to the sea, the Miami sky has been the greatest comfort in my life past 50. On a good day, when the wind blows from the south, the light here is diffuse and forgiving.

The most successful stuff is sold to you as indispensable social information. The message in the music is, 'We are terribly, terribly slick and suave, and if you listen to us, you can probably get a leg up in society, too.'

Living in England was wonderfully civil and easy-going.

If you give a good performance, something that gets some feeling across to people, that’s such a rare gift. It’s underestimated at this point in history, when the music biz is inevitably turning into a kind of politics.

Basically, I’m a musical vocalist, but I do voiceover stuff as a sideline, like plumbing or something.

Well, I don't use the toilet much to pee in. I almost always pee in the yard or the garden, because I like to pee on my estate.

It's more fun to look at an old picture of me than it is to look at a new one sometimes. Although, I still wear a dress pretty well.

I was a pretty nice kid. Kind of quiet, but quiet in terms I wasn't going out and setting fire to anything. I had a big mouth and I was creative type, you know.

I have a hot memory, but I know I've forgotten many things, too, just squashed things in favor of survival.

I like music that's more offensive. I like it to sound like nails on a blackboard, get me wild.

I'm a little bit damaged in about 15 different ways, and it's been nice that no particular damaged area has become a major issue. I'm a more than moderately healthy 65-year-old male who has gotten away with a lot of stuff.

I never believed that U2 wanted to save the whales. I don't believe that The Beastie Boys are ready to lay it down for Tibet.

I find it hard to focus looking forward. So I look backward.

The more walking-around money I have, the less I walk around.

I became Iggy because I had a sadistic boss at a record store. I'd been in a band called the Iguanas. And when this boss wanted to embarrass and demean me, he'd say, 'Iggy, get me a coffee, light.'

I like semi-torn-down places where I could get nestled in and get something done without anyone bothering me.

She looked at me penetratingly. So I suppose you can figure out what happened next.

Studios are like hospitals. A lot of people check in, and they don't check out.

In 1965, when great young white artists in the English-speaking world were successfully re-channeling hillbilly and black music - you know Bob Dylan, Ray Davies, Pete Townsend, Keith Richards - they didn't get any money at first. They were all broke.

Look, you're here to see me, and I can't go on until my dealer is here, and he's waiting to be paid, so give me some money so I can fix up, and then you'll get your show.

My general take on American music since 1969 is that it's just getting stiffer and people are getting more uptight - audience, performance, and palace guard.

The people who were learning from me tended to be more commercial performers who were gonna rip off the salient idea to do it in a way that will sell, but they weren't going for the music.

When the 'godfather of punk' thing started floatin' around, it was, I was really, really embarrassed. I thought I should have a great, big rig and a cape and everything, and it was very embarrassing. And then after a while, you learn that if people call you anything, this is a great gift.

A lot of young musicians get the money at the wrong time. They get it for something they don’t feel great about, and it’ll make you feel so bad it’ll destroy you and kill you.

I try to beat back the producers and engineers so they - there's not an excess of stuff used to squeeze my voice to make it artificial. There's a person in there, and people will listen; if they hear another person speak to them, they'll listen because it's lonely out here.

Well, the stuff that has become more commercial doesn't have any edge.

Musical types tend to combine the burden of the author with the burden of the actor.

I have no idea why a guy would bring a jar of peanut butter to a concert.

It's fair to say that I have a side that is prudent and a side that is not.

What some people would call antics, I would just call a good show.

My mom was a saint. She taught me to be terminally nice.

I was who I was in high school in accordance with the rules of conduct for a normal person, like obeying your mom and dad. Then I got out of high school and moved out of the house, and I just started, for lack of a better term, running free.

Miami's not anybody's poor cousin. It's an aspiration to live in this town, not something you have to do to promote yourself like some of the larger cities.

I can't do it all myself. I'm not that kind of artist, I'm the kind of artist who works off other people best. It was like playing with Tinker toys or dominoes, trying to get all the pieces to fit like a jigsaw puzzle so I'd have a whole portrait but it would still have many facets.

Well, I've never had any sort of macho revulsion of fags, but Bowie and I - never, never, never, never.

I mean, the embarrassment quotient has been going down for a long time, and the fond amusement has been rising.

I'm really not good with the pickups. I'm a klutz and don't have a line of gab. I'm only good if they know who I am.

I never say never about anything.

Miami's never been more than a spit from New York.

Nihilism is best done by professionals.

I feel a great comfort and relief knowing that there are others who lived and died and thought and fought so long ago; I feel less tyrannized by the present day.

The Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame was a great idea when it started, but I think they ought to close it, I think it's full.

Well, after Zombie Birdhouse came out, I toured behind it in the fall of 1982, into the spring, and in the summer in the Far East. At that time, I found my work self-referential; it was getting to be rock songs about a rock singer who lived a rock life on the rock road, and I was starting to wonder what I would be like to rent my own apartment, what it would be like to have a checkbook.

In the morning I'd write these essays, anything that I'd feel like writing, and in the afternoon, I'd spend time with my guitar. I had decided after listening to my last four or five albums that my biggest weakness musically was melody. the reason I had been singing in a monotone over the chord patterns in my songs was that I never practiced doing melodies.

I'm not the kind of person who could join AA or have rules for myself or on Thursday take this vitamin pill. So, basically, I learned the hard way. I learned by trial and error, and tried to get drugs out of my work. That took about a year. If I was going to work, it was best that I be straight. And I was surprised at what came out.

I thought that if I practiced doing melodies for a year or so at home, I would learn to think melodically, and when I went to work it would come out, and it did, on this album. What else was important to me...? I spend a lot of time in the grocery store, shopping.

I thought, "Wow, it sounds really stoned anyway." It sounded good to me. I found out that there was a lot in there. what all this comes down to is I was just trying to get in touch with myself. And I met some interesting people in New York who weren't in show business. I even got to know my dentist.

I stayed in L.A. long enough to get on my feet, and then I moved back to New York. The reason I moved here was that I don't feel warm outside of a city; it's too barren in the suburbs, and L.A. is a suburb. Here, it felt active.

And if somebody's going to produce me, they should be producing my sound for me. And that's something I have to come up with myself.

Well, it wasn't like I was going to run out and score heroin and score an ounce of coke - but incidentally, on the road, I would usually get tanked up and as stoned as I possibly could to go on stage. And offstage, it would be a demon that would come up about twice a week.

It's the same thing: I would think, "If I can't go out and pull some teenager tonight, maybe I'm no good on stage anymore." And you start to think that you even need it as a motivation. I did, anyway.

I wasn't so stupid that I didn't realize the implications of what they were saying. In my live work I was going for the quick thrill, rather than spending time concentrating on my voice. I figured I'd get on, make as many quick movement as possible, dance my ass off for five minutes, move into the insult portion of the evening, and then, at the end, create some kind of chaos until the 55 minutes were up.

I never had a checkbook. It used to be cash in hand, stuff in the pocket, or a manager would keep some accounts and give me money. I started to wonder what it must feel like to actually make a profit, pay taxes, and to have a phone listing, and a manager. And also, I was sick of sleeping around every night.

And for so long, I had thought if I was going to write a song, or get "into" something, I had to at least smoke a joint or something. And that didn't work anymore. Once I was fairly well cleaned out, even a little bit of a drug getting into my work threw me off kilter.

If I don't terrorize, I'm not Pop.

I'm a travel enthusiast.

You know, I'm fifty-two now and I call myself a singer. Before I kick it I want to be able to carry a tune in a living room if called upon. Of course, mine come out all dark and twisted and weird.

I'd come home from school alone with those teenage blues and I'd put on Frank Sinatra's It was a very good year. Here was this mature man singing about the cycle of his life, and as a kid I felt the emotions of it already. It has since been a touchstone for me whenever I want to experiment musically.

I'm bored, I'm the chairman of the board.

I am the passenger, I stay under glass. I look through my window so bright, I see the stars come out tonight. I see the bright and hollow sky, over the city's ripped backsides and everything looks good tonight.

How am I going to listen to that horrible noise I make without a gram of coke and a couple of double Jack Daniels?

As society has changed, what had formerly been unacceptable has become colourful.

I think that all the years of exposure to amps and electricity has altered my body chemistry.

The key to The Doors is the culture behind the myth.

Nobody understands me, I'm really sensitive.

And it's a... it's a term 'Punk Rock' that's based on contempt; it's a term that's based on fashion , style , elitism, satanism , and, everything that's rotten about rock 'n' roll.

There are no pimps, no whores, no transvestites - gone. Now that's more the culture I'm comfortable in ... I don't like it in the house, you know what I mean, but I like it somewhere around.

When I get up in the morning, I stay nude for three or four hours. If I really feel like getting formal, I'll put on board shorts.

Miami is nothing like me, and thats why I need to be here - its the opposite. Im practical, where this place is moody, Im stolid in my interior, where this place has a certain flair, and Im materialistic in a sense that this place is fundamentally spiritual - theres a quicksilver quality about this place.

I wanted to learn a little bit about acting, not because I thought I'd find a star vehicle and set the world on fire, but I thought the discipline of it would be good for me. I met a good coach, and I joined her class - with a lot of hungry young actors who really didn't acre if I was a rock 'n' roll singer or not. I started to learn to get a focus, without having to jump up and down every few seconds.

I don't think I'm lucky; I think I have a tough constitution. That's a lot of it. And I've been wise enough to listen to other people. I was unconsciously cultivating as many straight friends as I could.

I'd have a few on and off, but the commitment was always more on the girls' part than on mine, to be perfectly honest. So, I met a girl in Tokyo, on my Japanese tour, with whom I've been living ever since, very happily. Her name is Suchi.

The nut of the thing is that if what you make is hard like a diamond, you can put it anywhere. You can put it up your and it will still be beautiful.

Sex may be a little more factual than love. You know whether it's good or bad. You know whether you liked it or not. You're not going to change your mind about it ten years later.

I spent most of the eighties, most of my life, riding around in somebody else's car, in possession of, or ingested of, something illegal, on my way from something illegal to something illegal with many illegal things happening all around me

Your skin starts itching once you buy that gimmick about something called love.

What do you do with a lifetime of work? Face it in the morning.

Curious is a good thing to be, it seems to pay some unexpected dividends.

Life is just a bag of pot.

What the world needs right now... a good, artistic, gothic, terrifying scare

I always went in with a very specific idea of the sound I wanted, and once I'd recorded I'd try and make it sell as much as I could, but I only went in thinking of a sound I wanted. So, it's no surprise to me that he got the hit and I didn't. But what I realized was that he did dress it up nicely, and my god, he does sing on key well.

Pussy power's pulling me down, down, down, down. When it's there and I can't have it, I get real real rabid.

I'm not a singer, a walking instrument like Aretha Franklin. When you get an Iggy Pop record, you don't get "Iggy Sings." I am also a style of music, an approach.

You know what I think you get scared of more - especially me, after touring for so long and being in bands for so long - you start to associate certain behavior with the music. It's like people associate having a cigarette with having a cup of coffee, or lunch.

Onstage I've been hit by a grapefruit, beercans, eggs, spit, money, cigarette butts, Mandies, Quaaludes, joints, bras, panties, and a fist.

If I had to depend on what I actually get from sales, I'd be tending bar between sets,

I'll love you when my eyes are open, I'll love you when my eyes are gone.

Really good music isn't just to be heard, you know? It's almost like a hallucination

The 2 things I like the most are girls and loud noises.

Punk rock is a word used by dilettantes and heartless manipulators about music that takes up the energies, the bodies, the hearts, the souls, the time and the minds of young men who give everything they have to it.

I've probably been spit on more that any person alive outside of, I would say, a member of the prison system.