Iggy Pop

Musician

45 Quotes

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.

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

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.

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.

'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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

I'm a travel enthusiast.

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.

Nobody understands me, I'm really sensitive.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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