Iggy Pop, Part 1 | Broken Record (Hosted by Rick Rubin)

foreign [Music] Iggy Pop is one of the craziest rock and roll frontmen to ever grace the stage as a lead singer of the Stooges Iggy was known for bending and contorting his sometimes bloodied body while feverishly pacing the stage like a wild animal his 50-year career has been as tumultuous as his performance style after starting the Stooges in Michigan in 67 the band released three albums including Funhouse and raw power the band eventually disbanded in the mid 70s and Iggy went solo recording a series of albums some of which were instant Classics like the two recorded with David Bowie and others more experimental actually some of my personal favorites at 75 years old he's just released his newest album produced by Andrew watt every loser on today's episode Iggy shares incredible stories with Rick Rubin about his career the conversation was so great we decided to split it into two consecutive episodes today in part one we'll hear Iggy reminisce about recording fun house in Los Angeles and the first time he saw the ocean he also talks about the tight-knit rock scene in Detroit and how it was in some ways led by a local madman writer activist and Music Manager named John Sinclair and stay put at the end of this episode to hear a song off of Iggy's newest album this is broken record liner notes for the digital age I'm Justin Richmond here's Rick Rubin in conversation with Iggy Pop Rick recorded his side and Parts Unknown and Iggy recorded his side of the conversation at Shangri-La in Malibu hey what's happening to Maine how you feeling hey I'm all right good it's good to see you good air up here yeah really really nice yeah you're sitting in my usual spot that's where I usually hang out oh that's great it's a good spot I used to drive over here a lot when uh when La would get you know too close you know understood when did you live in LA well I lived here as uh around here uh 70 73 74 and then a little bit into 75 so about two and a half years but I would come out a lot uh in the 80s you sort of had to come here to do things you know a lot in 90s too and when you when you left La did you move to New York when I left La in the 70s I hitched on to David Bowie's station the station tour and started writing with him as that tour progressed across America until we got busted in Rochester and then uh from their went to Europe how did you guys hook up in the first place we hooked up originally when I was staying in New York in nineteen seventy one at the Loft Department of a guy named Danny Fields who was a key positive force for people like the Ramones myself he helped out Lou Reed in a lot of ways all sorts of all sorts of good people did Danny sign you to Elektra Danny was the guy who originally came to the uh Union ballroom at the University of Michigan to see the MC5 and we were opening and he saw us and he recommended we spoke and he recommended the to Jack Holtzman that well if you're going to sign the five maybe you should sign this other band too I thought they had something amazing so he was he was the guy yeah they didn't have a functioning a r a lot of a lot of labels didn't at the time so he was their publicist but he was the kind of guy that Jack Holtzman used as uh the in-house hipster yeah you know the guy who knew what was going on and uh what was cool and apparently he had good taste because at that time I can't imagine any other label signing those two bands well exactly and uh Danny had very very Avant taste he was a a very intelligent well-educated guy he'd uh graduated Princeton University and uh he was a kind of a low-key you know kind of guide where a little suede or leather jacket but uh not too flashy and uh slacks and that was about as that was about as far towards straightness as he would go but uh he didn't he wasn't flamboyant about anything and uh he sort of fit right in with the uh the back room crowd at Max's with her Andy Warhol and would hold court with uh a group of sort of young eccentrics in New York they were like uh people who should have been the Kennedys and they weren't they were like intelligent nice looking American Kids Gone hard left suddenly and uh if you became a Warhol star and were willing to work in his movies he got a little paper a little sort of piece of paper or similar to the draft cards at the time with Andy warl's signature that you could present at Max's Kansas City and get all you could eat but you had to pay for your own drink wow yeah that's how he paid his people yeah yeah it was a little oval room at the back of a steak and beer joint on Union Square and uh you would have uh the first time I went in there was because Danny was calling me on his phone I was staying in his Loft and I was watching Mr Smith Goes to Washington on his TV and I was just almost in tears at the sincerity of his willingness to take on the corruption and you know I was relating it to the music industry out has plenty angry at the time and he had to call me three times he said there's some people down here they really want to meet you it's David Bowie at his group and uh you could do yourself a favor damn it I finally yeah I finally said all right all right I you know okay we'll meet these strange people and I went down there about one in the morning and Lou Lou Reed was still in there David Tony defreeze his manager who is had a manager get up big cigar fur coat the big fro you know but also down there was um ultraviolet and uh Taylor Mead who was just a strange very flamboyant Street character there was a wonderful guy named Donald Lyons in that group who was a professor of Greek he could teach you yeah actual he spoke Greek and Latin and uh but was just a cool guy yeah right it's like someone it was like my dad without being judgmental you know yeah you know just somebody like you know wow an educated man who wears a suit and everything but it's just like easy going you know and uh gosh who else was down there baby Jane Holter was there that night and uh they all just sit around and chitter chat her a lot had you had been aware of Bowie's music at this point in time or not really I was only aware that he had he'd mentioned the Stooges or maybe it was me in a little piece in the Melody Maker magazine as one of his favorite groups or favorite songs and I can't remember it was right around that time that I heard what he was what he was doing which was the album I think it was hunky dory and it had Life on Mars and uh I remember listening to it and I I thought well this is not my cup of tea but whoa this guy can do things musically holy cow you know they're incredible the grasp of Melody and uh not only chord changes but he would actually do harmonic shifts and uh and transpositions of a well oh dear dear dear me and he had he had the range in his voice to carry what they call lift the chorus you know the old you know lift the chorus sing the song The refrain so that was out I think at the time and I was listening to that and that was my that was my first impression I don't know until builds not any it's not at all related to like you know tough bro rock music but uh there are skills this person has actual skills who were the tough bro rock music that spoke to you in those days at the time Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels incredible for his yeah yeah uh he's still alive right uh yes he is and he's still doing uh he's they still do the same songs and gigs and uh Johnny B who's amazing you know one of the finest drummers In America still will go out still play with him but Johnny also did like uh Stevie Nicks tours you know he gets he gets good work who else music like that I always liked the MC5 quite a bit there were some things I liked more than others like like with anybody else you know I liked I liked very much the Stones albums where they did mostly covers that was what I was listening to it first I liked very very very much the first album by the Paul Butterfield blues band we're born in Chicago at melodon easy they were doing a lot of little Walder and stuff and they had a mixed band some of the guys were were born into uh the white side some of the guys Born Into the to the black tradition and samly was on drums who was uh later was nice to me and then he played on Highway 61 Revisited the Dylan album that's sound did you like Hendrix Hendrix incredibly much Hendrix I saw him because we were in the midwest at the time in the old days when the groups would come over you had to get from the east coast to the west or vice versa and Ann Arbor and Detroit was one of the stops so I saw Jimi Hendrix in Ann Arbor Michigan in a converted bowling alley on a stage about 12 inches high and I was right in front of that stage and he had a single stack and Mitch Mitchell on drums and uh null on base and he wore the suit with the eyes wow and he played the hell out of it and the and the stage was right in front of the men's room and I remember before the break see Mitch Mitchell had to go in the bedroom and come back you know it's a little odd things that you remember like that right right there and in Detroit Michigan at the Grandy Ballroom where the Stooges played a lot and especially with the MC5 we opened for the who we opened for cream we opened for Sly and the Family Stone you could see uh Van Morrison you know everybody played there and again very close quarters kind of must have held a thousand people one window very hot and uh and low proscenium so you were really right there you could really see it really hear it for what it was it Led Zeppelin also Led Zeppelin didn't want to use there were these two tiny dressing rooms next to the stage they didn't want to use that so they used the manager's office and walked through the crowd to get on stage but in those days when Jimmy Page hit his guitar the sound you heard was coming out of his amp it was not miked through APA in those days at a average Ballroom the PA would be used only for the vocals and there'd usually be One mic placed under the snare drum on the battering side of the of the bass drum to kind of collect everything and that was about it you know so it was a it was a more organic sound and it was great if you were in the right spot you know would you move position to get it to sound as good as he could like yourself next yes oh hell yeah yeah that's it you bet I did yeah and you push yeah push my way absolutely because you would have to do that you know if you were on the guitar side you'd hear more of that and you wouldn't hear the bass so much much amazing yeah when the who played there Townsend had the Leslie speaker you know the large wooden box with the JBL 12-inch speaker and then the fan going around to me I don't want to do that to your guitar and he had that up on stage and in those days it was very hard uh the sly had a B3 so they had to bring the B3 there's no B3 in the Psychedelic Ballroom they had somebody had to get that V3 in there and get it out it was a big deal that's a huge piece of stuff you know so uh things were different I always preferred those songs it's a different world now and uh and a great sound engineer can do a lot of stuff to manipulate what's coming out of the amps live but uh the problem is it can become samey to my ears in other words to Myers still a drum kit sounds like a drum kit it's very very exciting it's a boom when you hit the whack or ding ding ding whatever it is and a bass sounds like a bass etc etc and uh I usually prefer minimum interference but it's it's different now it's better to use some smaller amps and you know I get that but something is lost with size yeah it's hard to say what's better though you know it's just I wouldn't say better I just say you know yeah it's just different I just recently recorded an album with Neil Young in that room and she had oh you did that I heard the first one is good yeah yeah we did that there and yeah it was all live and all of the amps were in the room and they were playing blisteringly loud and yeah yeah we we miked it but on every mic you can hear every instrument you know because it's just a barrage of sound in the space that's I like that yeah I like that a lot that's I did a couple albums that way especially the second one with the students is called Funhouse and you know that's my favorite of the Stooges that's what I like the best too and we had little we had little baffles in the room you know the the mini baffle like about as big as that screen you're on right now but nothing nothing too much to separate the the engineer on that was young Englishman named Byron Ross myring and I thought I'd never seen such a Dashing Young Englishman you know he he if he didn't wear an ascot he should have and uh he he looked like ready for yachting you know and apparently it was his second album and the first one he'd done over here was Barbra Streisand wow and he went right yeah right from that to us and he didn't bat an eye there was a producer hired to do it named Don gallucci who had played the organ on the kingsman on Louis Louis and Don was worried about well we they tried separating us the first day and and we were we wanted to cry it didn't work so a pirate said don't worry they will set this up and fight it it was fine he wasn't bothered where was it recorded at that killer Studio it's the Elektra Studios that's right there on La Cienega Boulevard two doors from the down the hill from Santa Monica on the east side of the street it was a it's still a studio I think but it was the elector yes I believe so wow a Japanese architect that was designed you know Spirit of noguchi very minimal architecture with a nice little bonsai garden and just a nice place One recording room you know mid-size it's all you needed really it was done right there we stayed at the Tropicana yeah and we would all walk to the corner together with the guitars or the drumsticks and everything each day and wait at the light by the liquor store there like La Cienega lanes and then cross and walk down the hill about 40 steps to the to the studio and we each each day we would do one song over and over and over until we thought we that was the cake that where everything went right that's how we did it how were those songs written most of that album I wrote in my bedroom in Michigan for them to play for the band to play I understood the strengths of the Aston Brothers they had a special timing and especially the drummer the drummer was Elvis Redux it was Elvis Presley in like every town probably had an Elvis and he was our Elvis He was a good looking large kid and you just looked at him and you knew this guy had something and he had been a teenager he dropped out of school and I was a local drummer and he kept bugging me to teach him to play drums so finally when I wanted to start a group I did and he was very good very good and and Ron had these beautiful a lot of guitar players that are good have these beautiful hands they have the fingers he had lovely fingers and he was playing bass at the time and he's sort of in a a walking style and uh it was it was a very good basis and uh at one point I tried to do guitar and I didn't have the talent I said Ron you're the guitarist no I'm gonna front and that's how we sort of got the group together it was the three of us and then their friend Dave came in later to play Basin and he did a really good job uh with very simple skills he was was stayed out of the way of what else was going on and held it to home well so uh basically I would write up something and then go down into our rehearsal room in The Farmhouse and pull teeth to get everybody together for rehearsal there's that's beyond life in those days and we rehearse it up and then we go out on a weekend and play the new song in our sets until we had a whole repertoire and uh the big number that Ron really aced which I think is my favorite number on the thing is tvi too and that was his friend yeah yeah that's the best one because he can actually play a guitar I couldn't but Ron had a very slow Event Horizon in his life he would play like on the first record he had the one big one I want to be your dog riff wow what a riff you know for this one he had I just kept knocking on his door in the band House of chilly all right all right I'll write a song with you and he started playing tvi the way it sounds about three minutes into the song where it's really he's going really very furious and I thought about I said okay that's great but look if it's gonna develop work as a song play it like start it out like hooker like John Lee Hooker started out single string with a droning string and that's he he liked hooker too so we started that way then I gave him the variation where instead of where it's just that suffices as a chorus you know for for the way we played something just a little a little wrinkle yeah you know and then uh developed the part where it it kind of melds into the uh the just the Drone when did the lyrics come there in Michigan in The Farmhouse it wasn't as hard as the first album I remember that they just kind of came down on the street was originally down on the beach and yeah I've always liked Beach culture yeah and I would singing about down on the beach and the where the stars shine and how the the open feeling at night and then I thought well look I'm in this rock culture now uh maybe something more people can relate to and uh at some point we took a trip to New York and I was pretty high one night and I was hanging out on 8th Street when it was very active between uh like University places sixth and everybody was down on the street and there were so many young faces Milling around and everybody was seemed interesting so I took it from there you know and it was sort of it was sort of meant to be also a little bit about Aesthetics I was just fascinated by everything in the big city you know whether it was a it might be an attractive girl or it might be just a really interesting guy but faceless it started from faces you know so that one was that was like that tvi I remember that came from we did a gig at a junior high school in Ann Arbor Forsyth Junior High and uh we were playing we weren't playing that number we didn't have it yet but there was one of the students at the junior high she was laying on her back on the in the what they call the multi-purpose room where you play you know it's a gymnasium it's a lunchroom it's a dance hall and when she's just laying there sort of taking it in on her back with her arms folded behind her and I thought she's just taken this like like watching TV and I thought about that and then I always liked the CBS logo yeah at the time the eye the big eye so I thought TV I well that's interesting you know so that was that was where that came from so cool I always loved the song never had any idea what it meant yeah so it's it's cool and who it takes on its own pretty simple just yet she's checking you out but it still takes on its own mythical you know I've been hearing the song pretty much my whole life so it it takes on a mythical meaning Beyond but knowing that it actually is rooted in reality is really interesting I tried to keep it away from the strict you know I didn't go into the carnal details or implications I thought it was more fun to be just I just like that TV eye yeah you know yeah just the sound of that you know it's funny I think about it a lot lately where uh Orwell in 1984 had this idea that the televisions in England would all have an eye that could spy on you and now of course you know that could be done through your phone yeah they're looking at one right now okay right Cameron's looking at me looking at you that's how we're communicating right now yep yep when's the first time you ever uh saw the ocean here um it was when we came to Mike Funhouse and uh we all went out we stayed in the Tropicana so all you had to do was go straight out Santa Monica Boulevard which at the time was a real Boulevard with a grassy median in the middle and you'd see horses sometimes there oh yeah yeah yeah and we just drove out and we went to the beach me and the sax player Steve McKay maybe I think one of the Roadies and uh we went to the beach right by the Santa Monica pier and I saw it and uh the moon was up even though it was light and I remember I was not upset but I was kind of bummed because I felt that the moonwalk had ruined the moon you know I I liked the moon the way it was I didn't like the idea of God now there's some guy up there you know playing golf and uh yeah I remembered that so it was 1970 that's pretty great that's a great take I've never heard that take about the Moon that the men and going to the Moon ruined it yeah yeah there are 1970 and the other big impression on me that I used it on lyric later on raw power was I never felt the ocean breeze on a good day it has a pitter patter to it it's not like a light wind that blows constantly it hits your face and it hits your body like you know it has this really on again off-again Rhythm to it and uh oh man did I like that you know so I used that in uh and give me Danger on the raw power obviously kiss me like the ocean breeze I loved the ocean breeze it made a big impression now so I was 23 you know some people's are raised right by the ocean but once I saw it I've always gone way out of my way to be near the ocean as much as I possibly can it's interesting that down on the street started as down on the beach and it sounds like at the time you wrote it you hadn't yet seen the ocean well the beach at that time was uh we have uh many many many lakes in the midwest so the particular beach I was talking about was a place called Silver Lake and it was a little Lake where the kids we would all go on the weekends or in the summer uh you know it was like a bigger than a pond you know maybe maybe a mile across maybe not you know like that and you had this uh little kind of a dirt slope that was that was a beach and a changing area you know like a county park that was that was the beach and uh I had been when I did my first full professional gig I was a drummer straight out of high school and I was playing in my high school cover band All Summer in a Beach area of Michigan on Lake Michigan called Harbor Springs and it had sand dunes and everything so we we had that culture but it's not the same as the ocean yeah how would you describe your relationship to music it gives me my connection to emotion and and I'm I feel I I if I don't have that connection to emotion I don't feel for some reason interested or that whatever I might be doing is worth doing it it doesn't mean I have to go around having emotion every second of the day that thought that doesn't work that way but it started out as uh I'm sure you've felt this you know maybe you're I was on the school bus Listening To Be My Baby By The Ronettes and you're you have this wave of I don't know what that is you know it's like this uh adolescent yearning that sort of thing but on the other hand you also listen to Louie Louie by the kingsman you know you want to uh have a wild time a little bit or something you get excited you know the different things and and I've always been susceptible to it right up through uh when I started listening to things my parents brought up classical uh one of these 10 great Classics you know one of these albums and they had some Ravel on it they had Bolero the reveler and I loved it I was only 12 13 when I heard that and uh liked it maybe a little more than the records Elvis was making at the time because he wasn't doing his greatest stuff you know it was more like uh Return to Sender or something he sounded great with the music I'd like to but it wasn't you know wasn't the greatest although Return to Sender was funny because I always thought he was singing return to Cinder and I saw my God he's singing about regeneration of course yeah and I did it yeah you know I was I don't know you hear funny things when uh when nobody tells you what's going on you know but that's pretty much it it was that and then at some point I wanted to do things and uh if I could sing like Dionne Warwick I would have tried to find Bert Bachrach and and done music like that which is so wonderful you know but I didn't have that and uh I remembered listening to Gloria by them and I thought hmm I could do that sort of thing you know so starting from what can you do and then later uh for fun house it was the James Brown was a huge influence and the bands he had at that time the drums and bass the syncopations I thought well could be influenced I could do something that had my own particular flavor of that you know it doesn't have to sound like that I'm not going to try to do that but uh but that was the idea behind it it's interesting it's I read something recently where it it described the Stooges as the first rock band that didn't have any of the influence of Soul or r b and I thought wow these people don't really listen to music just in terms of the groove of it it's so exactly incredibly groovy and there's there's so much music that's not you know that's just cold but that's not I Chad Scotty I was taught him Stacks volt speeds yeah you know that sort of thing and uh a lot of the music I don't like is when the artist goes into what I would call aping you know aping something that's good well we could do it almost like that but maybe for a different crowd that you know I I don't want to hear that but when you try to take the qualities the qualities and do that in your own way that's sort of the stuff I like more I have a funny question about the relationship between music and time and I'll tell you why I'm asking about it is and I I'm wondering in my case if it has to do with when I was born and when what I listened to when I think of the Beatles And I think of the Beatles was a very long time ago and then I think of the Stooges and I think of the Stooges as much more modern I don't think of it from the Beatles era yet the Stooges existed when the Beatles were the Beatles to Stooges came into some degree of popularity only very recently and I think that has a lot to do with it because it's the social cues that you cannot ignore that come from the outside that type what something is The Beatles write off bang that stuff once they got out of Hamburg and got the suits and started singing about love bang that was popular and so I think because of that they have to carry a certain baggage students don't have that problem it was so obscure and so small and we'd go places sometimes if we if we went out of the Detroit area and maybe went across to Ohio we'd have 20 people you know that was it you know so little by little the group became more popular later and I think for that reason and also our listeners are younger although there are a lot of old people who like it you know but I think that might have something to do with it although I've been really happy that the group gets included more and more in discussion and portrayal of what's called classic rock because it is classic rock in a way yeah you know in a way but it you know so I would say it might have something to do with that and the the music also was clean like a Corvette like Ferrari like no Gucci like jean-prove like clean cut lines done very very simply maybe helps it age pretty well the music's hits hard and it kind of it has its power but it's not this it's not Grabber music it's not music that reaches right out it takes your you're not shaking your lesson on this you know not those not those first two yeah and part of a lot of that was the personality of the brothers they were just drawn back individuals both of them and um did not put themselves forward very easily did not say a lot very easily I just had something a slow groove it might have been because uh they lost their father at a key time and I think it was traumatic for them they were uh in their young teens and I remember Scott saying toward the end of his life well we just didn't have the guidance there was a comic named Jonathan Ross who has a popular show in the UK and we played his show and then we sat for a talk and he sort of asked the brothers and I said now if you hadn't been in the Stooges what would you have done with your life and immediately didn't miss a Beat Jet Pilot race car driver like yeah bag right so funny I was I wanted to cheer I said boy yeah and honestly the the father had been a marine fighter pilot yeah and I think he had trouble adjusting to life after that experience after the war was over he was a macho man you know and and he was he was teaching one to be a Jet Pilot and the other one to be a race car driver so yeah yeah yeah but there was an abrupt stop to that and all of a sudden you know I think it it uh affected them in a in a deep way would you say uh you were very different than the other members of the band or would you say you were very different from everybody [Laughter] well I'd say the latter I didn't realize it at the time I thought it was just different from them yeah but of all the people with whom I wanted to communicate they were the most difficult to communicate with I it was it was a real Challenge and uh I did manage and we we did some great stuff together but yeah that's a good point I I never thought about it that way and I read an interview years ago with one of our one of our Roadies he was now a very mature man and works at Chrysler and uh he just said well the rest of the band they were just you know they're they're just for regular guys from from down river but you know he's not regular so that was his point of view I listened to him and I thought oh maybe so maybe I'm a little different that's possible I think I think the difference is and it's not any uh it's not a good or bad it just seems like you have a more let's call it an artistic temperament and good and bad comes along with that and they had a more workman-like Jet Pilot you know mentality and and those are just two very different ways even though they had they had a lot of artistic talent yes you know but that's different they could do stuff really well if you gave them the right setting wow yeah they could execute but yes you had a different Vision than they had and that's yes I did and again yeah better or worse it's just there are all kinds of people with different strengths and weaknesses and if they were like you the Stooges wouldn't be like the Stooges so the fact that it is what it is is it was perfect well you know years later when Iran did some interviews when we weren't together before we reunited and then even after where he said yeah you know we could have been the American stones and what I would say to that was no the American stones are Aerosmith and that's because the way things are done in America if you're going to be the American Stones you need a singer who can sing rings around Mick Jagger you need a guitar player who can play more cleanly and incisively than Keith Richards you need a band that can do a range of Music That's palatable to a large group in a nation of 300 million that's that's the nature of our of the USA and you know that wasn't what we were ever going to be good at but but that that's how they felt you know or what Ron felt about it not Scott Scott was a little more savvy than them but uh but that's what I would say yeah there was I had a particular once once I got into it with them and you know you look you start out where you are so there we were in Detroit our contemporaries were Bob Seger Ted Nugent Detroit Wheels were more earlier than all of us but still there was an influence there was uh the MC5 of course Scott Richard case various local bands and then later when they were exposed to our scene Alice Cooper moved from Phoenix into Detroit so those that was your competition and also your your colleagues so we kind of worked from that and tried to find our own Niche it worked for us and I was thinking about it 24 7. as you do when you're young but were you friends with all those guys yeah friendly absolutely yeah oh yeah yeah Bob Seger was the guy who really boy that he he put the nail in in of any chance of my Straight life when he came to uh my high school and he had a band called The decibels at the time they were what people called a greaser band and they grease their hair back wear matching suits and they played mostly in her instrumentals beautifully and I heard him in my High School auditorium and the way it sounded coming out of those amps uh psycheology y'all just did something to me electrified me you know and they're playing like Ventures that sort of music and uh wow you know and then later we'd play the same places he did and I'd listen to his singles as he was trying to develop a style and and I knew women we got along nice and yeah of course I got along great with uh Alice Cooper and all the guys Glenn Buxton and all that whole bunch and the MC5 were like we could go over to their house and eat a peanut butter sandwich their girlfriends would sew my leather pants you know it was very very collegial like that Ted was a little different but at one point I remember talking to him about he was curious about maybe having me do vocals for him and it wasn't going to be the right fit for me but it was a really nice scene where you felt that you could get things done and go out and play and enjoy life and enjoy your music within the Southern Michigan area there was also an interesting guy named Terry Knight and he was a DJ on cklw in Detroit and he had a band called Terry Knight in the pack and he would imitate the look and the sound of the top English bands at the time and it was a crack band and that band was later what became Grand Funk Railroad and Terry when he didn't make it said okay I've got the singer anymore I'm the manager and I've been yeah and that was that was them and they were a crack three-piece boy wicked wicked what a great they were great players really really great you know and question mark wow it was a huge yeah huge influence yeah I was still a drummer and I went to play Saginaw where he's from Saginaw his people picked the cherries a lot of people from uh Mexican descent came up and were picking cherries there in Saginaw Valley and these girls came to our gig and they said well that was pretty good but have you heard of question mark and I was like no wow and then if I heard him it's just boy it blew me out you know he so that particular number but he also had other cool numbers he had down by the railroad tracks and a lot of good numbers why do you think there was so much good music going on in Detroit at that time like everyone you mentioned you talk about your group of contemporaries these are the local artists at the time and every one of them whether you like them all or not doesn't matter every one of them is great there was a positive energy because it was the Heyday of the Detroit Muscle Car culture they were making beautiful cars that were exciting and fun and looked great and sounded great and were great to drive and in a wide range there was a lot of work for everybody there was some urbanism but also a lot of open space and there was a very very large migration from the Mid-South Tennessee and Kentucky to the Detroit area during the second world war to bolster the auto plants for the war effort and it never really ended it just kept on right up through the 60s I I grew up my trailer came up where I grew up was on the side of that road it was a two-lane blacktop US-23 also known as the Hillbilly Highway and went from Tennessee right up to Detroit and there was a natural Hands-On power with that there were similar things going on out here with the Oaky culture transported to Southern California especially Orange County you know you so you had people who you didn't have to have you didn't really have to graduate high school to get a good job somewhere and have a good time and then your kids might start playing guitar in the garage and and would have a an optimism that would allow the to go do things that's what I would say and that that existed there in Michigan in in Chicago or New York those were bigger cities so the groups had to be more realistic about everything you had to be very professional and uh it was harder to get everything together for your rehearsal it's that sort of thing but uh not quite so in the midwest yeah but you can't list 10 great artists that came out of New York at that time musical artists it doesn't exist no no you can't because it was too just too tight everything was too tight and until until the synthetic music came along disco worked for New York people because they had a more Latin and Afro-American energy to it but it was harder I mean The Young Rascals that's that was a very great bar band you know killer Barbie and uh that and then they get professional writers and work with them and make a great record but it it's different the big cities Great in another way yeah I think it worked for doo-wop like doo-wop from New Yorkers of course because you could just get together on the street corner and then there was all the music that came out of the playgrounds later of the Bronx and you know Brooklyn and all that because you could steal some electricity and suddenly there were boom boxes and uh things change did you know uh John Sinclair I knew Johnson clearance tell me everything about him okay John Sinclair was a guy he learned his music really in the joint he'd done it he'd done something I don't know what he did he spent a year or two in the joint and he there he learned about all the Great Atlantic Records and all the great jazz records and he was a kind of a kind of a Henry VIII character uh he had he was a very large man like a large knock-kneed man with a large girth knock knees and wild hairdo and was very interested in promoting free love free everything free food free music we don't need songs we don't need money we don't need this and this and that and he he started several communes in the Detroit area one was called translove energies another was the uh God I can't remember what he called the MC5 he had a musical commune to which centered around the MC5 and then finally culminated in something called the white panther party and they were going to be you know he he also had a cyber he liked to be tough and so they their MC5 Roadies were all big and tough and uh I remember Fred Smith told the story once that early in their uh gestation to prove your place in the band to make sure everybody was a worthy band member they all had to fight each other you know yeah make sure okay there are no wimps in this bed right so so they were they were really interesting on that like that and John would egg them on in a certain direction and he was also doing poetry and he liked to get up with the band about halfway through their live sets when he and play outdoor sacks and he didn't play any melodies or yeah he'd get up really like to show but his big the big thing that blew my mind about John was that at one point they no longer could stay in Detroit because the police were coming around trying to bust them for marijuana at that time trying to bust him for LST parties so they moved to Ann Arbor which is a little college town and this is 1969 and they rented an old fraternity house type of house right one of these big old Victorian houses that are on every college campus with like 12 bedrooms run down and somebody wants to rent it and they lived there and they called it the white panther headquarters and they printed a postcard you know a regular cardboard postcard like people used at the time to send notes in the mail and one side of the postcard was purple with a white springing Panther and on the reverse side it said white panther party our program rock and roll dope [ __ ] in the streets and you know that boy you know holy [ __ ] I mean when they we had a police department yeah you know that attracted their attention right away you know so he would push the envelope he was a provocateur John and had a sense of humor about everything and liked to like to smoke dope and uh and make love with his uh he had a wonderful partner a girl from Germany who was a very dogmatically artistic person named Lenny Sinclair and is as huge as he was she was Tiny and slim but Lenny was a good photographer and also took Super 8 footage and really good photos of everything happening at the time and and her stuff is the real best document of Michigan rock at that time and she still she's still living there in Detroit John at one point I think he was in Amsterdam for quite some time and I'm not sure where he is now he was doing poetry he's just a very uh he's one of the most righteous people I've ever met without making a big deal about it but he's kind of shocked me at certain times and there were there was a one time when the MC5 were gonna go to Chicago to play during the big showdown at the uh convention I think it was was it the Republican or Democratic Convention in Chicago that resulted in the police beatings and they they went to play in the park and he wanted the Stooges to come and do it and I said no I'm not that's not us that's not me I'm not doing that and he said while you're with us or you're not you know sort of thing and I said well I'm not going to say I'm not but I'm not going so so there was a little difference there but um he's a good man but there seems to be certain unbending things there and uh he was a force in Michigan Rock there was him and then on the other hand there was just a an eccentric school teacher named Russ Gibb who just liked kids and liked music and he was the one who put together the Psychedelic ballroom and did things like you know the kind of guy mortgages his house to run the club that kind of thing and made a lot of things happen for people and then there was a third Force who's still a big manager to this day of Michigan people that was a guy named punch Andrews who had a Punch House Kid Rock for a while maybe still does I don't know and he did he still does Bob Seeger I believe and punch just was a very sensible guy who had a string of clubs called the hideouts in nicer neighborhoods where the kids could had money you know and uh those are nice places to play we played there and uh we were we were proud to be able to get up to where you could play one of Hunter's clubs was John Sinclair older than you guys or same age yeah a little older like two years three years I'm not sure I would say maybe more I'm just guessing maybe five six years maybe just that edge that next you know when you're when you're very young or I would say in music in general five years or so generation so maybe like felt like that I felt like five and did he I'm not sure did he put the MC5 together or were they already a group no they were listen they were good that's interesting they were good cover band they were really effing good cover band and I saw them at the Ann Arbor Armory covering stones and pretty things and uh Motown songs and they were just already very very good and and Wayne Kramer tells me I don't remember have no recollection of this but apparently they asked me to drum for them at one point and I didn't I said no I'm going to try to do it's my own thing but I don't remember that but yeah no they were good covering they weren't writing and it was a much different thing but they were already tight and good in the a similar way to the members in Grand Funk Railroad Mark Farner and those guys great drummer and Grand Funk is very very good also were a good cover type band originally I mean how did they switch into being the MC5 we know I think that had a lot to do with John wow I think it was John in coming in in the way I don't know that you hear stories anyway about Andrew Oldham who I met years ago started telling the Rolling Stones you need to write songs you know and listen The Beatles are the good guys you're gonna be the bad guys you know so yeah you know so I I think there was a little bit of that you know and then the the songwriting they're appointed a departure of writing a song it was a little more dogmatic and it had to generally be something that was acceptable to the whole group you know that's tough to pull off in songwriting you know and they they did it a couple times to kick out the jams is you know and that's there's a Dogma to that okay this is what I'm doing this is what it means let me do it get out of the way and everything and the guys you know the guys are all having fun that sort of thing you know you know and the dressing room getting hazy and etc etc that was their particular way and then they carried it eventually they had some songs like a human being lawnmower was sort of a social critique type of a rock song you know so they they went more over there I would say American ruse was one of their songs you know hey hey take a look around you know I finally caught on to the American ruse you know you want to have fun they won't let you that sort of thing we're going to pause on Rick's conversation with Iggy right here and pick back up next week where Iggy will talk about the artist who inspired his front man style working with David Bowie and the first time he ever bled on stage thanks again to Iggy Pop you can hear all of our favorite Iggy and Stooges songs at brokenrecordpodcast.com [Music] you can follow us on Twitter at broken record broken record is produced with help from Leah Rose Jason Gambrell vent holiday and Eric Sandler our editor is Sophie crane broken record is a production of Pushkin Industries and if you like the show please remember to share rate and review us on your podcast app a theme musics by Kenny beats I'm Justin Richmond [Music]

Channel: Broken Record Podcast

Views: 65,489

Keywords: Broken Record, Podcast, Interview, Music, Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Iggy Pop, Iggy Pop Rick Rubin, Iggy Pop Interview, Rick Rubin Interview, Rock Music, Music Podcast, Interview Podcast, The Stooges, The Stooges Iggy Pop, Iggy Pop Every Loser, Iggy Pop Fun House, The Stooges Fun House

Id: v91xteFvDNg

Length: 60min 0sec (3600 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 24 2023