Iggy Pop Quotes

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


2. Nobody understands me, I'm really sensitive. Everyone thinks I should be so happy, fucking all these chicks, and all the drugs and being a star. But I hurt. And I'm lonely.

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

4. 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.

5. 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.

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

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

8. 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.


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

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

11. I feel like God peed on all my enemies. For a long time I was very bitter that the people who controlled the means of anybody ever hearing my songs were never gonna play them. They only favored music that I specifically and particularly hated, and I wanted them dead. Suddenly, there was another avenue. I started hearing my stuff coming out of bars and then it started to happen little by little - a movie song here or a TV ad there.

12. 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.

13. Everybody's a little more worldly now, and there's more exposure to things. When I made Fun House, back in 1970, nobody wanted to interview me. It was wonderful. I was like one of those little white things you find living under rocks, that every once in a while people pull up by mistake and go: "aagh!" But now everybody has a video camera, and that may have changed the nature of "the message from below," as it were.

14. This town is diverse as shit. I like it here a lot. (on Miami)

15. Yeah, she's heard the war stories ... I tell it all to her. I think one has to, because one wants to know somebody, and one wants to feel that somebody knows one. I mean, the embarrassment quotient has been going down for a long time, and the fond amusement has been rising. (On discussing his past escapades with his girlfriend.)

16. As society has changed, what had formerly been unacceptable has become colorful, even the broken-glass thing. Although, you know, there's an archetypal element to that anyway. ... It's about the blood ... The Christians used that riff with Christ. What did Christ really do? He hung out with hard-drinking fishermen. And when they asked him: "Why are you hanging out with prostitutes and fishermen?" he said: "Because they need me." What a line, you know? But what your martial society really wants is blood. We need some blood. We need some suffering. Like, the individual must suffer for the good of the whole. I toy around with that. Early on, I wasn't looking at Jesus Christ, saying to myself: "What an angle." I wasn't trying to be Christ-y. But, after all, on one level, this is showbiz. (On his stage performances, including acts where he would crawl and roll on broken glass)

17. You say I look goofy? OK, great. You say it's comedy? Great. Whatever anyone thought, I didn't care. Could be goony, could be sexy, could be stupid, could be cool. I didn't know, but as long as it was something, you know? (On his performances)

18. Bowie's a real man, and I'm a real woman - just like Catherine Deneuve.

19. This is the key thing that has always been misunderstood about me. All this fucking crap they said I did ... I only did it because I believed I was playing the actual music that was appropriate and good to reflect that time and place. ... Frankly, I've always felt I was completely innocent.

20. I used to catch myself - maybe we'd be having dinner with the future king of Spain, and I'd be grumpy, like, "What are we doing here, hanging out with these swells?" And then, right away, I'd realize, "Dude, you're jealous." It got very hard on a certain level. He was a person of affairs, in the worldly sense, with a lot of choices laid out on his smorgasbord. I had no choices whatsoever. I was a pariah. But a very fortunate one, in that he saw something worthwhile in me, and he made me two terrific records. He gave me the break I needed to continue living life. He is my benefactor. (On his relations with David Bowie)

21. I've never had any sort of macho revulsion of fags, but Bowie and I - never, never, never, never. Everybody would think that, but I never saw him be that way anyway. I'll tell you this. That guy got more p-u-s-s-y. I couldn't believe it. Talk about a bitch magnet. Damn! Actresses, heiresses, waitresses, skateresses. And me? I was just left holding my dick most of the time. I had this short haircut, and I looked like a duck. But I got lucky sometimes. I got a good song out of a girl I was knocking off at the time, and it became "China Girl." (On rumours that he and Bowie were lovers.)

22. 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. So I'll just sit and wait for somebody to say: "Aren't you ... ?" and then go from there.

23. Have you ever noticed that a small creature, like a mouse or a mole, when faced with danger, they just stop? I've had big, long periods in my life when I was a lot like that. I just froze. It was not fun, but it was what I thought I had to do. And that's how I lived, pretty much, at one time. I have a hot memory, but I know I've forgotten many things, too, just squashed things in favor of survival. The only thing missing from my life right now is what I've got, and it's peace. I have more than I ever had ... and not as much as I would like.

24. You write about things of importance to you. And it's gotta be for real. Do I think about my dick? Oh, yeah, all the time. If I think about it all the time, I got a right to sing about it. If I wasn't thinking about it all the time but thought: "It's time to write a rock song, I'd better mention my dick," then I wouldn't even be able to say "dick" right. Besides, it's an ecological line. It's not: "My dick is all bad, motherfucker, wickety wackety woo." It's nature-oriented. (Pauses, looking serious, then laughs) It is!

25. I'm not ashamed to dress "like a woman" because I don't think it's shameful to be a woman.

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

27. They say that death kills you, But death doesn't kill you. Boredom and indifference kill you.



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


29. Nihilism is best done by professionals.

30. That band could kill any band at the time and frankly can just kill any bands that built on this work since…just eat any of those poodles (on his band The Stooges.)

31. 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.

32. 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". (on modern music)



33. 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.(1977)

34. I don't know Johnny Rotten, but I'm sure he puts as much blood and sweat into what he does as Sigmund Freud did.

35. The industrialism in Detroit...what I heard walking around...boom boom bah - 10 cars...boom boom bah - 20 cars...I get a lot of my influence from the electric shaver…
(When asked by Dinah Shore what influenced his music)

36. 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.

37. What I do on stage has utterly no purpose.

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