Speaker 1: Pushkin. Today, we have part two of Rick Rubin's conversation
Speaker 1: with proto punk icon Iggy Pop. If he didn't catch
Speaker 1: part one last week, where Iggy talked about his early
Speaker 1: days with the Stooges and the inspiration behind some of
Speaker 1: their most seminal songs, be sure to go check that out.
Speaker 1: On today's episode, you'll hear Iggy speak in depth about
Speaker 1: the years he spent working and touring with David Bowie.
Speaker 1: He also explains how James Brown inspired his legendary performance style,
Speaker 1: and then recalls the ridiculous antics that led to him
Speaker 1: bleeding on stage for the very first time. This is
Speaker 1: broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmond.
Speaker 1: Here's Rick Rubin with Iggy Pop. Why do you think
Speaker 1: the Stooges got popular over time? You know, there are
Speaker 1: probably a lot of good, other good reasons that have
Speaker 1: to do with the work, But one thing might be this.
Speaker 1: It occurs to me when something isn't pushed at you,
Speaker 1: the lister is allowed to find it for themselves, and
Speaker 1: something you've found for yourself and you like or your
Speaker 1: friend told you about it, maybe that has a lot
Speaker 1: more of a power, staining power than something that this
Speaker 1: is a five star review, you know, or this is
Speaker 1: what's happening now, or this is what you can hear
Speaker 1: on the radio whether you like it or not. Is
Speaker 1: it good enough? It better because you're not going to
Speaker 1: hear anything else, all that sort of thing. It gets
Speaker 1: a quick result, but maybe it also kind of spoils something,
Speaker 1: So that might be one reason. And the other reason
Speaker 1: I would just say is that the stuff has a
Speaker 1: good groove. It's the groove, I would say, and not
Speaker 1: too pushy. Probably those reasons, and maybe also that it's
Speaker 1: a little bit um, it's a little bit more fringe,
Speaker 1: and maybe for some reason in the new world there's
Speaker 1: a larger space for fringe for what used to be fringe.
Speaker 1: Everybody's the same size on the internet. But when when
Speaker 1: I used to go to record stores, to especially the chains,
Speaker 1: to buy something, some people would be a card you
Speaker 1: walk in, there's a cardboard cut out of the artist
Speaker 1: eight feet high, and some other artists you have to
Speaker 1: go to the back of store and look through the
Speaker 1: stacks to find their stuff. So there's there. We used
Speaker 1: to be more obvious differences, I would say, and we
Speaker 1: still have that. We still have some artists that do
Speaker 1: a lot of numbers, you know, and others that don't.
Speaker 1: But for some reason it seemed to be ahead of
Speaker 1: its time. That's the old saw, I guess. But something
Speaker 1: about them, I don't know exactly, could be maybe the
Speaker 1: world just caught up, yeah something yeah, yeah, society kind
Speaker 1: of came halfway. And so we know so many artists
Speaker 1: have been inspired by your on stage performance. Artists I've
Speaker 1: worked with, many artists have been inspired by you. Who
Speaker 1: were the artists that inspired you to do what you
Speaker 1: do in terms of the visual aspect of performance. James Brown, Yeah,
Speaker 1: number one first and foremost, and then I'm trying to think.
Speaker 1: I mean both Jim Morrison and Mick Jagger when I started,
Speaker 1: those were two people that it would be wise to
Speaker 1: study check out what they do, you know, although at
Speaker 1: the time Mick Jagger didn't do anything really particularly strange
Speaker 1: at first. There wasn't a pushy performance when I first
Speaker 1: saw them. That was nineteen sixty five, I was they
Speaker 1: played Cobal Hall. I was still in high school and
Speaker 1: it was Brian Jones was still in the band, and
Speaker 1: they just lined up in a row and played and
Speaker 1: there was they all looked amazing. Frankly, and all looked
Speaker 1: really good. At Mick Jagger had had a very large
Speaker 1: head and the movement comes from the head really, But
Speaker 1: that was that. It was just a great visual. Then
Speaker 1: when I saw them again in sixty nine, then that
Speaker 1: was the tour with the he wore the Leo sign,
Speaker 1: the black outfit and the American cardboard hat and all that,
Speaker 1: and that was full performance, which is I could see
Speaker 1: a little bit of Tina Turner. I could see a
Speaker 1: little bit of well quite a bit of Tina Turner,
Speaker 1: and then some stuff of his own. Jim Morrison, that
Speaker 1: was a whole other Ballgabe. This guy had benefited, i
Speaker 1: think from he had a good quality college education in
Speaker 1: the UCLA Film School, so he was he was a
Speaker 1: film major there. And so he's singing, he's singing and
Speaker 1: things about you know, with where the lyric is taken
Speaker 1: from French novelists two hundred years ago. He was from
Speaker 1: Saline at the end of the night and this sort
Speaker 1: of thing, and he was doing he was doing some
Speaker 1: movements that I'm sure he got straight off the side
Speaker 1: of a Grecian urn, you know, like had tried to
Speaker 1: trying to explore the the idea of theatrical badness, although
Speaker 1: I antonied our toe with that kind of thing. So
Speaker 1: that was interesting. But with both these guys at the time,
Speaker 1: you're you're young, you're starting out. These were the two
Speaker 1: poles of what was interesting in white rock and what
Speaker 1: they both did well. They centered, well, that's the main
Speaker 1: thing to her a vocalist. You know, I ran into
Speaker 1: you at nine inch nails show in the Forum and
Speaker 1: we were sitting at the mess mixing desk and I've
Speaker 1: never seen him work, and he just came right out
Speaker 1: at Mike and he centered. And when when somebody centers,
Speaker 1: well they don't even have to move, you know, that
Speaker 1: whole energy comes into them, back to the band, out
Speaker 1: through them and it acts like some sort of battery
Speaker 1: or something. So that was that's what I got out
Speaker 1: of them. And with James Brown, it's sure, it's amazing
Speaker 1: to watch what he's Julia get everything, but what's really
Speaker 1: behind it, what makes it click. From the moment he's
Speaker 1: getting ready, even before he steps out there, until he's
Speaker 1: gone from your sight, the concentration never ebbs. He never
Speaker 1: goes down to ninety percent while he reaches for a
Speaker 1: glass of water. And if he oh no, no, no
Speaker 1: at all time. It's a concentration. It resembles paranoia, and yeah,
Speaker 1: he's really there, you know, and I used to love
Speaker 1: it is. And one of his autobiographies he would tell
Speaker 1: about a backstage he would have a hairdresser because he
Speaker 1: wouldn't leave the backstage until his hair was perfectly quaffed again,
Speaker 1: and no one could see him that way. And he
Speaker 1: told the story once about how the one they got
Speaker 1: the band got to the point where he had a Cadillac,
Speaker 1: but they didn't have AC at it or it was
Speaker 1: broken or something. At some point they they had to
Speaker 1: travel down the road with all the windows of dying
Speaker 1: of asphyxiation, so everybody would think they had the ac
Speaker 1: you know. And he tells another time about Yes, he
Speaker 1: tells it about another time when the same car broke
Speaker 1: down and he said, yes, so I made the band
Speaker 1: get out and crouch down and push it, but so
Speaker 1: nobody would see jump in, you know, all stuff like that.
Speaker 1: You know, it's very very full full on. You know.
Speaker 1: He has a Christmas song, one of his great Christmas songs,
Speaker 1: and he gets to the end of, you know, some
Speaker 1: some homilies about Christmas, and every day that he goes
Speaker 1: and be sure to come to my Christmas show. You know,
Speaker 1: he said, sell that Christmas show and by the Christmas record,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, his work at it. You know. Did
Speaker 1: you ever get to see The Doors live? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well that was the big push. I saw them twice live,
Speaker 1: and the first one was what pushed me into getting
Speaker 1: on stage or the Stooges. I'd been trying to form
Speaker 1: the band, and we were living together and trying to
Speaker 1: get ideas for what we might do. And The Doors,
Speaker 1: after their first album, came to the University of Michigan
Speaker 1: to play of Homecoming dance in a basketball arena, not
Speaker 1: even arena like we have now, just a basketball place
Speaker 1: with some bleachers, sort of like the scene in the
Speaker 1: Nirvana video, right, okay like that, and there was just
Speaker 1: a little stage, you know, eighteen inches high or something.
Speaker 1: They had Jordan Boss amps and a column speakers instead
Speaker 1: of a PA. They did not have enough equipment to
Speaker 1: reach the room, and they didn't know about that sort
Speaker 1: of thing yet. They were a weekend band, coming out
Speaker 1: and playing on the weekends and then going back to
Speaker 1: LA But they had this big hit record and the
Speaker 1: band came kind of sauntered out without Morrison and started
Speaker 1: up the rift to Soul Kitchen. It didn't really sound
Speaker 1: right because it just wasn't amplified in a way that
Speaker 1: you could grasp it. It was all right, I guess.
Speaker 1: And then he came out dressed in black vinyl head
Speaker 1: to toe with a ruffled shirt. His hair was oiled
Speaker 1: and curled and down past his nipples, and his eyes
Speaker 1: were like saucers. He was obviously on a lot of
Speaker 1: probably LSD, could have been psilocybin, and he sort of
Speaker 1: did this thing like Tina Turner might do, or sothre
Speaker 1: like Mick Jagger might do. Were you the arms go
Speaker 1: up like a chicken, but his was a more drunken version,
Speaker 1: and he didn't sing. He just ad The guys at
Speaker 1: this thing are like, you know, they're frat guys with
Speaker 1: their dates, and they're starting to think, what is this ship?
Speaker 1: You know, they're getting pissed off. And then when he
Speaker 1: started to finally sing, he sang soul Kitchen in a falsetto.
Speaker 1: They're class it's time, Yeah, in a falsetto, and then yeah,
Speaker 1: and they started getting really bad, and you put, you know,
Speaker 1: do things like you do if you're if you're drunk.
Speaker 1: He put his arm around Robbie Krieger's this is my man,
Speaker 1: my man gonna play some blues. You know, there's like
Speaker 1: like a bad drunk and that was about to get
Speaker 1: eighty six from a bar. Yeah, I believe. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: the I was just fascinated. Yeah, I loved it, and
Speaker 1: I said, wow, you know this guy is this is
Speaker 1: quite a spectacle that he's getting away with this, and
Speaker 1: that the gig was. They got through it a very
Speaker 1: short program and left basically, and they were kind of
Speaker 1: lucky not to get their butts kicked. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: a crew cut time still for most people then. So
Speaker 1: I thought, well, boy, I could do that. Well, yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: I could do that. Yeah, the old I could. I
Speaker 1: could alienate people, yeah they hate him, I can yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly exactly. Funny. What was the second time you saw
Speaker 1: them like that? Was different? They played Cobal Hall in Detroit.
Speaker 1: It was either on their second or third album. Had
Speaker 1: a full house and a large, you know, typical arena
Speaker 1: stage and beautifully amplified. Everything really well separated and produced,
Speaker 1: and he sounded great and they just went through their
Speaker 1: stuff and it sounded good. But he's still took the
Speaker 1: effort to try to do something a little different. So
Speaker 1: at one time he sort of jumped off the stage
Speaker 1: and ran again kind of in a pre Raphaelite way,
Speaker 1: up the whole setter aisle of the arena to the
Speaker 1: back and then ran all the way back during an
Speaker 1: instrumental part. And then later after the show, Dave, all
Speaker 1: the students went. Dave the bass player, said to me, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was walking. I was walking to the men's room.
Speaker 1: There's Jim Morrison walking around, you know, outside in the corridor,
Speaker 1: and he said hi. You know, so he was like
Speaker 1: that he had this concept, you know, he had this
Speaker 1: one lyric American boy, American girl, most beautiful people in
Speaker 1: the world, a nice, nice sentiment, you know. So I
Speaker 1: think he had this, uh he wanted to be a kid.
Speaker 1: And he would say, they teach me how to live.
Speaker 1: So I think he wanted to be a kid forever
Speaker 1: sort of thing. And there was something really really nice
Speaker 1: in that. I saw a footage of his performances, and
Speaker 1: he was deliberate on stage. He'd be thinking he'd been
Speaker 1: wanting to come up with something to get put some
Speaker 1: entertainment in here. But on the other hand, he would
Speaker 1: sought her across the stage just to move the mic
Speaker 1: stand or something. Okay, I'm moving a mic stand now
Speaker 1: or whatever it is. What was the first time you
Speaker 1: ever bled on stage? That would have been the second
Speaker 1: Stooges show. It was sort of my first stage dive too.
Speaker 1: We re opened him from Mothers of Invention at the
Speaker 1: Ballroom and I was just at this point it was like,
Speaker 1: if this group is going to survive, we have to
Speaker 1: do something every show, make sure nothing nobody forgets us.
Speaker 1: And so I didn't feel the full connection was being made.
Speaker 1: And there were a couple of very healthy girls who
Speaker 1: were laying on their backs right in front of the
Speaker 1: stage watching the thing, and I thought, well, I'm just
Speaker 1: going to fall on top of them that maybe that'll
Speaker 1: be exciting and I so I did that, and they
Speaker 1: separated and I hit my teeth. I used to have
Speaker 1: these protuberant front teeth. I hit them on the floor
Speaker 1: and I chipped one and one went through my my
Speaker 1: you know, I cut a little cut in my lip
Speaker 1: and started to bleed a little. So that that was
Speaker 1: the first time. Do you think if you were not
Speaker 1: in a band and not performing, you would still in
Speaker 1: regular life put yourself in situations where you would end
Speaker 1: up bloody or beaten. That's interesting. I don't generally, I
Speaker 1: don't have a very long history of being beaten by others,
Speaker 1: just a couple of times. So it's mostly, you know,
Speaker 1: mostly my own doing. Probably, I would say, if only
Speaker 1: because my mother used to. My mother told me that,
Speaker 1: I think, and I remembered. By the time I was six,
Speaker 1: I already had twelve or fifteen stitches in my chin
Speaker 1: from running and falling overhead first, headlong, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: So maybe that was just there in my fate. Perhaps. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I haven't blared in well, Yeah, I had one on
Speaker 1: the last tour. I tripped over something. It hits. I
Speaker 1: bleed a lot less these days. Yeah. Yeah. Has it
Speaker 1: ever been intentional or it's always been accidental? It has been.
Speaker 1: There was a long period of time when I was
Speaker 1: just very uncomfortable with the relationship with the audience it
Speaker 1: would be with if the relationship wasn't good and I
Speaker 1: had to keep going or you know, here I am
Speaker 1: in the wrong town or the wrong place or whatever,
Speaker 1: and I would just kind of scratch, you know. And
Speaker 1: I wasn't scratching to make blood. I was just scratching,
Speaker 1: you know. So that became kind of a something that
Speaker 1: was present on and off for a long time and
Speaker 1: had to do with my nerves. I don't have those
Speaker 1: problems anymore, but other times, like there was a fairly
Speaker 1: famous time when I got a big gash and Max's
Speaker 1: Kansas City, and that was just I was on top
Speaker 1: of a table trying to get a rise out of
Speaker 1: a Look you play Max's Kansas City. At that time,
Speaker 1: it had become so celebrated that they put in rock
Speaker 1: shows and if you were someone like us, like the
Speaker 1: Stooges at the time, the entire audience, it seemed they
Speaker 1: were all critics, and they all have glasses on and
Speaker 1: I could see the stage lights reflected at their glasses.
Speaker 1: They're all just kind of staring at us, right, they
Speaker 1: give you nothing back. And so I got on top
Speaker 1: of a cocktail table to sing, trying to push things
Speaker 1: a little bit, and the table lost the balance at
Speaker 1: the table, the table went over and I got cut
Speaker 1: on the stem of a broken margarita glass. But it
Speaker 1: was an accident. I didn't roll around in glass or anything.
Speaker 1: It was just an accident. One thing about me, if
Speaker 1: I get hurt or if I get cold, or if
Speaker 1: I'm in the rain or whatever it is, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to stop. I don't do that. I'm not gonna sorry. Nah,
Speaker 1: So you know, I just keep going. In that case,
Speaker 1: I kept going, and and there there was blood was drippy. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: oh wait a minute, ladies and gentlemen, while I take
Speaker 1: care of no, I'm doing the show. Yeah, yeah, you're
Speaker 1: James Brown. I think I'm James Brown. Yes, I do. Yep,
Speaker 1: the spirit of James Brown has crept into my body. Yes,
Speaker 1: I understand. An English guy who had the sir god
Speaker 1: lord somebody he was a lord who had this show,
Speaker 1: south Bank show, a big arts show there, and he
Speaker 1: came to Miami to interview and he said, well, obviously
Speaker 1: you are possessed, so you know. Yeah, so there you go.
Speaker 1: You know. We're gonna pause for a quick break and
Speaker 1: then we'll be back with Rick Rubin and Iggy Pop.
Speaker 1: We're back with more from Rick Rubin's conversation with Iggy Pop.
Speaker 1: We talked a little bit about your relationship to music earlier.
Speaker 1: Would you say that music is different for you than
Speaker 1: other forms of art or can you be as taken
Speaker 1: and moved by all kinds of great art. Painting is
Speaker 1: close painting because it doesn't move, and it gives me
Speaker 1: more of a chance to go in. But it's not
Speaker 1: in the same does not have the same drama for
Speaker 1: me or the same raw excitement, but it does have
Speaker 1: a powerful, powerful impact. It can be anything from a
Speaker 1: primitive to a Francis Bacon to somebody contemporary. Even movies,
Speaker 1: I wish there was something great since the French New Wave.
Speaker 1: Frankly you know less and less, so with the films,
Speaker 1: I would say, you know, but I'm still interested. The
Speaker 1: one thing with the movie is what I used to
Speaker 1: do when I'd have trouble in my career, I would
Speaker 1: go to see a hero. So I remember when I
Speaker 1: was between the first edition of the Studges had fallen apart,
Speaker 1: and I was trying to restart do the second edition
Speaker 1: that would do the raw pour when I was in
Speaker 1: New York at that time when eventually I hooked up,
Speaker 1: But at the meantime, I wanted to see Clint Eastwood.
Speaker 1: So I went to Times Square and I saw the good,
Speaker 1: the bad, and ugly, and I was just reassuring to
Speaker 1: watch a guy that could get the job done. And
Speaker 1: years later here in La. I was down and out,
Speaker 1: and I spent a few of my last dollars to
Speaker 1: see Gosh, it was the again. It was Clints, one
Speaker 1: of Clint's movies where kind of a neo Nazi gang
Speaker 1: has infiltrated the San Francisco police department. I can't remember
Speaker 1: the name of that one. And then later there was
Speaker 1: another time there was an Elvis movie on and I walked.
Speaker 1: I was back at the trailer and with my parents.
Speaker 1: I was maybe in the early twenties, in between between contracts,
Speaker 1: and I walked into town to see Hare Him, Scare Him.
Speaker 1: It was a terrible movie where he's dressed up in
Speaker 1: He's dressed up like ebc Haber before Ecber and singing
Speaker 1: these crappy sage. But it was Elvis, you know, so
Speaker 1: that there's something about that that I like. You know,
Speaker 1: how do you find new music? I look in the
Speaker 1: smaller The main source would be the smaller reviews in
Speaker 1: daily papers. The Guardian in England has a really they're
Speaker 1: very thorough about all sorts of stuff. It'll be mentioned
Speaker 1: or reviewed in a short a short way that's almost
Speaker 1: just like news that it exists. And I listened to
Speaker 1: a lot of that and then gig guides. I go
Speaker 1: through the gig guides and if I like the name
Speaker 1: of the band, like I went through the gig guide
Speaker 1: of a couple of years ago, and there's this band.
Speaker 1: It was in London, some playground and Joe and the
Speaker 1: ship Boys, and I said, that sounds cool. Who are
Speaker 1: these people? And you know what, I listened to their music.
Speaker 1: They're a simple but effective, well they play well together,
Speaker 1: really cleverly thought out punk band. But it turns out
Speaker 1: at the time they build themselves as vegan queer punk
Speaker 1: from the Pharaoh Islands, right, So I just liked to
Speaker 1: listen to their music. They have like songs like Macho band,
Speaker 1: Randy Savage, Randy Savage, right, and it's entertaining and clever
Speaker 1: and they have a lot of good songs. There was
Speaker 1: another one I found that way. There's a band it's
Speaker 1: basically two guys I think they're probably Island heritage in
Speaker 1: England called Bob Villain Vy Lad and David has some
Speaker 1: smashing good numbers and that's more like a little more
Speaker 1: social protest all the ship Boys or social too. But
Speaker 1: I listened to everything. I listen to everything. I have
Speaker 1: a radio show on the BBC. I have to come
Speaker 1: up with two hours forty weeks a year, so you
Speaker 1: come up twelve hundred songs and I try not to repeat.
Speaker 1: So listen to a lot of new stuff and I
Speaker 1: I like it pretty wide selection. And then sometimes if
Speaker 1: you use Spotify, then it leads you. Sometimes the algorithm
Speaker 1: is right, well, I do like this other thing you
Speaker 1: thought I would like, you know, so I do it
Speaker 1: like that. And sometimes I'll go to the music papers too,
Speaker 1: you know, but they tend to cluster around something that
Speaker 1: has to do with their advertisers or their backers or
Speaker 1: their particular thing, so it's not maybe not as fruitful
Speaker 1: for me. But I go there, Oh and friends and France.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I have sources. I ask, can you send
Speaker 1: me more of that? Like, yeah, you have a couple
Speaker 1: of people in France, or send me I especially like
Speaker 1: the Francophone afro beat stuff as killer and you need
Speaker 1: somebody French to steer you with that. Have you ever
Speaker 1: used the what's the name of that? It's a French
Speaker 1: app radio wo wo wo woa. No, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Radio whoo whoa, whoa whoa. You'd like that. It's not
Speaker 1: new music, but it's really cool. It's a streaming service
Speaker 1: that shows you a map of the world a globe,
Speaker 1: and you can pick any country in the world, yeah,
Speaker 1: and any decade and it'll play music as if it's
Speaker 1: the radio playing in that country, like Morocco nineteen fifty.
Speaker 1: What does that sound like? It's so cool. You'll love
Speaker 1: thank you. It's fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like radio. Whoa, woa, whoa,
Speaker 1: You're gonna love it. Wow cool. Tell me about the
Speaker 1: Electric album covers. So I feel like those album covers
Speaker 1: are some of the best album covers in the history
Speaker 1: of rock music. How did it happen? Well, the first
Speaker 1: one we did was a guy named Joel Brodsky and
Speaker 1: the first Stooges album done at his studio, and he
Speaker 1: had done the Doors albums, So the guy directing the
Speaker 1: art at Electra was also the general manager. They used
Speaker 1: to double up in those days. Well, get Robsky to
Speaker 1: do it, but do something a little like the Doors,
Speaker 1: you know. So I had ten got ten stitches back
Speaker 1: to the Blood because I was like, this is I
Speaker 1: don't want to be just like the Doors. This is
Speaker 1: going to be too boring. So how about there There
Speaker 1: are outtakes from that session that are around where the
Speaker 1: stooges are all crouching out the floor as I fly
Speaker 1: through the air over them, and he had a concrete
Speaker 1: floor and I so we had to stop the session.
Speaker 1: They stitched me up and brought me back and we
Speaker 1: continued later in the afternoon. But that was that was
Speaker 1: how that one was done. The fun house cover that
Speaker 1: is mainly my part, and the back ground of that
Speaker 1: is the that is the floor of the Whiskey of
Speaker 1: Go Go in front of the stage. And we played
Speaker 1: at the Whiskey. As bands often do when you're fledgling,
Speaker 1: you go somewhere to record, and then the company says, yeah,
Speaker 1: how about a couple of dates to defray our expenses,
Speaker 1: you know, you play, will take the money, you know.
Speaker 1: So we played the La and San Francisco and at
Speaker 1: the Whiskey. I was sort of rioting around on the
Speaker 1: floor trying to get some action going, and there was
Speaker 1: a photographer there who was Edgariff, a very groovy young guy,
Speaker 1: you know, and he shot the group in the studio
Speaker 1: and also at the Whiskey, and then collaged the things
Speaker 1: really nicely. I thought, so beautiful and just beautiful, beautiful art. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I thought it was really really nice, and
Speaker 1: we were all we were all young and fresh and
Speaker 1: excited to do it. You know, we all had a
Speaker 1: certain The band had a certain aesthetic. You can see
Speaker 1: it that carried on later. We wore we never really
Speaker 1: went deep into stage costumes. We stated it was like
Speaker 1: a certain area of normal clothes, but not quite normal,
Speaker 1: cut a certain way. So when we started, you were
Speaker 1: telling the story, we ended up going back to talking
Speaker 1: about the Stooges. But when we started, the first thing
Speaker 1: we were talking about was how you met David and
Speaker 1: you said that you joined the Station Station to tour.
Speaker 1: Tell me how it worked out that you guys started
Speaker 1: working together, and how did it work out that the
Speaker 1: Stooges stopped and you started doing solo. Yeah. Well, basically,
Speaker 1: after meeting him and Tony Defrieze in Maxis, Kansas City,
Speaker 1: it was agreed that we'd go to England and make
Speaker 1: a record. But they really just wanted me to make
Speaker 1: the record. They didn't want to have anything to do
Speaker 1: with the Stooges. I talked them into the first one
Speaker 1: guy and then let's get the Stooges. David offered to
Speaker 1: produce the record. I think that's what he really wanted
Speaker 1: to do, and I declined on the grounds that I
Speaker 1: already had a vision for what the band needed to
Speaker 1: do at this time, which I did and what I
Speaker 1: wanted to make, And I'm glad I did because when
Speaker 1: I got him later to work with me, his skills
Speaker 1: had taken a big jump. So around that same time
Speaker 1: when I declined, the Stoogest thing, he'd cut a single
Speaker 1: with Manta Hoople, and the way that works is he
Speaker 1: could write a better song than they could. So they
Speaker 1: put out all the young dudes, and then a guy
Speaker 1: like that who's moving right along in his career, you
Speaker 1: get the experience he's going to be done with the
Speaker 1: young wants to go do something else. So he got
Speaker 1: them up to a certain point and then they had
Speaker 1: to kind of carry on right another all the young
Speaker 1: dudes or forget it. So that was difficult for them.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't have been good for us. So we did that,
Speaker 1: and there was raw Power was actually finished before Ziggy
Speaker 1: starred Us to Us, but they decided to put out
Speaker 1: Ziggy Start Us first, and through various frustrations and the
Speaker 1: fact that even though it's a great record, s not
Speaker 1: commercial in that way. In those times, raw power kind
Speaker 1: of fizzled out. The band fizzled out, Everything fizzled out.
Speaker 1: I fizzled out. Fast forward. There was a wonderful man
Speaker 1: named Freddie Sessler who was an extremely close friend and
Speaker 1: confident in Keith Richards. Freddie looked and sounded like Cheeko
Speaker 1: Marx and he was a survivor of Auschwitz. He had
Speaker 1: the stamp right on his arm, and he was a
Speaker 1: crazy rocket roll fan. Ain't talking like this, you know, Hey,
Speaker 1: I like what you're doing. I would have COVID see you.
Speaker 1: And Freddie was a guy who knew how to get
Speaker 1: out of any jail. Nobody really knew why. And he
Speaker 1: also had a lot of a certain substance that was
Speaker 1: always pure from the from the pharmaceutical companies. So I
Speaker 1: got caught shoplifting once apples and cheese and the Merry
Speaker 1: Mayfair Market in Beverly Hills, and Freddie bail be out
Speaker 1: of jail and he said, hey, he listened. You know,
Speaker 1: David wants to see you. I want to go down
Speaker 1: to San Diego where's two started. He wants to see
Speaker 1: you and it would be great. And I said, God,
Speaker 1: I don't want to bother you know, me. You know,
Speaker 1: he's no, no, no, it's gonna be great. So he
Speaker 1: put us on the phone and David said, I, I've
Speaker 1: got a track that would be good for you. I
Speaker 1: think we could build something around that. Why don't you
Speaker 1: come down and listen to it. So I had nothing
Speaker 1: else going on, and I liked what he was doing
Speaker 1: at the time that was stationed to station. That was
Speaker 1: a great record. Man cut it Cherokee in La. So
Speaker 1: I went down there and listen to what became Sister Midnight,
Speaker 1: listening to the backing track. So we started from there.
Speaker 1: He said, look, if you come across with us on
Speaker 1: this tour, by the time we get done with Europe,
Speaker 1: we could make a record. So it was common and
Speaker 1: it still is. We worked under something called a production contract,
Speaker 1: which you know, generally the way that works is when
Speaker 1: a star becomes hot, it's easy for them to their
Speaker 1: manager and to go to the record company there with
Speaker 1: and say how much will you give us for our
Speaker 1: start to produce something on this other artist or our company,
Speaker 1: And of course the parent company is gonna doesn't want
Speaker 1: the artist to start talking to any other company. They went, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: we'll help you out with anything you want. To do. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So that's the I was signed to Beauley Brothers for
Speaker 1: three albums and they sold that to our Cia and
Speaker 1: so we started work on it basically as we went
Speaker 1: across America and he was traveling by car. It's the
Speaker 1: same car and driver that is in the Man That
Speaker 1: Fell to Earth movie, Tony Massias. The guys name Tony
Speaker 1: was a wonderful man. He had done some time in
Speaker 1: sing Sing for Manslaughter and he was out just a
Speaker 1: great guy from the Bronx and he was the driver
Speaker 1: minder and we would go by night in his car
Speaker 1: from city to city with one of these little plastic
Speaker 1: record players in the back and it was him and
Speaker 1: me and Tony and his Coco Schwab, his pa. And
Speaker 1: he has always had somebody sourcing him the newest interesting
Speaker 1: records from America and Europe. So the three that were
Speaker 1: in heavy rotation actually the Yeah on that was Craftwork, Radioactivity,
Speaker 1: their first Ramones album, and the Tom Waits album with
Speaker 1: Copper Penny on it that early one. Yeah, those three.
Speaker 1: Listening to those a lot and the craft Work made
Speaker 1: the biggest influence on what we were about to do.
Speaker 1: And then at the end of it, we went in
Speaker 1: Aero V and just started writing sort of king ponging
Speaker 1: back and forth. That was creative and odd, the whole thing,
Speaker 1: and you know, China or was probably the best lyric
Speaker 1: I came up with on that. I was having an
Speaker 1: affair with somebody Vietnamese around the studio, but also the
Speaker 1: Chinese government was beginning to allow small Chinese official government
Speaker 1: shops were cropping up at that time around Europe where
Speaker 1: they sold Chinese rugs, little figurines, the little Red book,
Speaker 1: you know, that sort of thing. And I thought, this
Speaker 1: is a coming culture, and so I was trying to
Speaker 1: sing a song about the two cultures meeting, and I
Speaker 1: sang the line I'll give you television you know which.
Speaker 1: But later Bad Company was recording. They came in to
Speaker 1: start their record and while we were ending ours and
Speaker 1: they heard me singing I'll give you televisions or the
Speaker 1: we're doing, they started boxing that. Yeah yeah, but I
Speaker 1: did well, I'll give you television yea interesting yeah lyric.
Speaker 1: So that was that one, and Brian Eno visited there
Speaker 1: at that time to start the process that was going
Speaker 1: to lead to Low and both albums were done between
Speaker 1: air V and France and Music Box in Munich and
Speaker 1: then Hans in Berlin. But that was that, and then
Speaker 1: the we did the tour after that where he played
Speaker 1: in the band, and immediately at the end of the
Speaker 1: tour we were right back in and the lust for
Speaker 1: life was more. He'd had enough of the whole thing,
Speaker 1: so we sat down and wrote. The whole thing was
Speaker 1: written about two days. Wow, and it's literally yeah, literally, okay,
Speaker 1: here's one I'm rewriting. And I was recording them as
Speaker 1: I had on the first I record his ideas on
Speaker 1: a Phillips manial cassette machine weighed about ten pounds and
Speaker 1: costs like twenty five bucks, you know, And I'd record
Speaker 1: the ideas and then come up with lyrics or a concept,
Speaker 1: and that one went faster. In the studio. We were
Speaker 1: about two weeks kaboom kabum, including mixing. It seems like
Speaker 1: you figured out I wouldn't call it a formula, but
Speaker 1: you found a way to work together, and you can
Speaker 1: you were continuing that process so you didn't have to.
Speaker 1: It was less figuring it out and more just doing
Speaker 1: it exactly. And there was also, you know, there was
Speaker 1: a contractual side to it. He had he would get
Speaker 1: a certain amount of money to deliver album two and
Speaker 1: I needed to have album too, And then eventually for
Speaker 1: album three, we just did a live you know, everybody.
Speaker 1: He wanted to go his way, I wanted to go mine,
Speaker 1: and that as he is very normal and happens. Did
Speaker 1: you guys remain friends for the rest of his life. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and we've you know, he would call and come and
Speaker 1: see this, what about that and everything, and we go
Speaker 1: out and you know, or he'd bring He brought Keith
Speaker 1: Richard to my gig, which was a thrill for me,
Speaker 1: and I got to know Keith. And then he brought
Speaker 1: Mick Jagger to one of my gigs and sat backstages
Speaker 1: and the singers wearing no shirt. He's wearing no shirts.
Speaker 1: You know. Blah blah blah. You know, I had stuff
Speaker 1: like that, and then eventually we did one more album
Speaker 1: again about eight years later, called Blah Blah Blah, because
Speaker 1: he had heard I played him some demos. We were
Speaker 1: swapping demos up at his gigs at the Carlisle Hotel
Speaker 1: and I had I had demos some stuff with Steve Jones,
Speaker 1: you know, a little a little home studio in LA
Speaker 1: and Steve was just newly sober and interested in playing
Speaker 1: in ways he hadn't before. And I was interested in
Speaker 1: singing morna baritone. So I had three or four good
Speaker 1: demos or Steven David heard those and well, we could
Speaker 1: make that. We could make a record out of that,
Speaker 1: and he wanted he wanted to do it in Switzerland
Speaker 1: because he had a residency requirement at that time. Steve
Speaker 1: couldn't leave the US at that time, he didn't have
Speaker 1: the right pisa together. So we used Steve's tracks, and
Speaker 1: Steve plays on the album just by use of the tracks,
Speaker 1: and it's an eight o eight drum machine. And Kevin
Speaker 1: Armstrong also on guitar, and that was that was interesting.
Speaker 1: It was we recorded at Montro, that studio where everybody goes,
Speaker 1: you know. And then we stayed quite friendly and stayed
Speaker 1: in touch up through untill about the beginning of the nineties.
Speaker 1: And then at some point both people were on different
Speaker 1: trips and different wavelengths. But the last time I spoke
Speaker 1: to him he called me up. I had gone to Miami.
Speaker 1: He called me up in two thousand and two or
Speaker 1: three until he was interested in signing me. He was
Speaker 1: going to start a new label. He didn't didn't eventually
Speaker 1: at Columbia, and I wanted to stay where I was,
Speaker 1: so I just stay where I was. He talked to
Speaker 1: me about he curated somebody called Meltdown at one time
Speaker 1: one year in London, the Meltdown Festival, and I ended
Speaker 1: up not doing it because I was busy doing other things.
Speaker 1: So it was it was a cordial, cordial call. After
Speaker 1: this quick break, we'll be back with the rest of
Speaker 1: Rick's conversation with Iggy Pop. We're back with Rick Rubin
Speaker 1: and Iggy Pop. How long have you lived in Miami
Speaker 1: Since the end of ninety eight, so it's been about
Speaker 1: twenty four years though. How has Miami changed over that
Speaker 1: period of time? Oh well, what used to be was
Speaker 1: a large open space under populated, which was wonderful at
Speaker 1: the time, and it drew a lot of quirky people,
Speaker 1: which was just perfect for me. You know. For instance,
Speaker 1: when I got there, there was a street in Miami Beach.
Speaker 1: It was Eleventh Street between Collins and Washington. There was
Speaker 1: a storefront and Luke Skywalker from two Life Crew had
Speaker 1: had Luke Records there and that was the headquarters. And
Speaker 1: there was a large piece of what they called drywall
Speaker 1: in the front window, this picture window of a small
Speaker 1: you know, a small shop window, and was spray painted
Speaker 1: a picture of a brown beauty in a tiny bikini
Speaker 1: with totally impossible curves, right seated sviving at you under
Speaker 1: a palm tree with giant cocaduts, added Luke Records. You know.
Speaker 1: So there's things like that, and a lot of open
Speaker 1: space and breezes and a lot of rundown old buildings
Speaker 1: that had been the great hotels of the fifties. And
Speaker 1: originally when I was there, I got a condo in
Speaker 1: one of those. I bought it from a character named
Speaker 1: Jonathan Shaw, was a son of Artie Shaw and a
Speaker 1: great tattoo artist and a man's man, a two fisted
Speaker 1: rides your motorcycle to Rio dejan Arrow, you know, man man,
Speaker 1: kind of a guy. And I bought it from him
Speaker 1: for Fordy grant. And you had a hot plate. It
Speaker 1: was like an sro, like an old bed's single rube
Speaker 1: occupants the apartment, but right there with the killer view
Speaker 1: of the beach, you know, in the beach, and yeah, wonderful, wonderful,
Speaker 1: And uh I went from there, I bought a little house.
Speaker 1: I'd never I'd never done that for myself before. And
Speaker 1: I went there with no manager, no roady, no minder,
Speaker 1: just all alone and bought a little what they call
Speaker 1: a Venetian revival house. It's like a house you'd see
Speaker 1: in Corsica or something with the barrel vault tiles and
Speaker 1: the ceiling like with the vaulting and the peaks and
Speaker 1: nice tile work. And I was able to I was
Speaker 1: calm enough. I was able to quit smoking, right, you know,
Speaker 1: things things that are very hard to do in New
Speaker 1: York City. And I had never bought my own car.
Speaker 1: So I called a car dealership and they started to
Speaker 1: ask me these questions, you know, like well, what is
Speaker 1: your job and who's the employer number and all they said.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, this is not fun. So I
Speaker 1: come up and I looked in the classifieds and I
Speaker 1: saw five thousand dollars cherry red Cadillac Deville convertible nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven. I said, that sounds like me. And you know,
Speaker 1: I go to the guy's house and you know, he's
Speaker 1: like this big hairy guy who you know, could be
Speaker 1: like a motorcycle cop or a pilot or something. And
Speaker 1: I said, well, this is car's beautiful. I said, how
Speaker 1: does she run and he dangled the keys in front
Speaker 1: of me and he said, she ready to go to
Speaker 1: California right now? You know, this is cool, you know.
Speaker 1: So I bought that car and I drove that all
Speaker 1: around Miami and Miami Beach for years. And now the
Speaker 1: big money's there, so they're getting permits. They've built up.
Speaker 1: There's more shade, less light, more wind tunnels, less breeze,
Speaker 1: like hard to park, more dangerous. It was always dangerous.
Speaker 1: It's an edgy place, you know, but so that's just
Speaker 1: what it is. But it's still for America. There's a
Speaker 1: certain ease about the life there. Do you everythink about
Speaker 1: moving close by? But not in Miami just like, you know,
Speaker 1: an hour away in any direction, and it's yeah, more
Speaker 1: like what it used to be. Probably, I have a
Speaker 1: place an hour away by plane. I'm in the boondocks there.
Speaker 1: I love that, you know. I don't know if I'd
Speaker 1: moved to rural Florida or not, because because there is
Speaker 1: no more rural Florida left, ory the everywhere that's nice
Speaker 1: that's rural, they've build up and build over. It's it's
Speaker 1: pretty bad. You'd have to move to the Everglade. It's
Speaker 1: pretty much. You know, there were still people, some people
Speaker 1: in the last hurricane that still had a couple of
Speaker 1: little idyllic communities there and they lost them. It's Florida
Speaker 1: is a very fast growing state, especially since Donald Trump
Speaker 1: changed the tax deduction laws. There's no deduction for state tax.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people from California and from New
Speaker 1: York to escape that, and also from New York to
Speaker 1: a lot of people came during COVID because these are
Speaker 1: people that have had some wealth, but suddenly they didn't
Speaker 1: want to take the elevator anymore. I understand that, you know,
Speaker 1: so you could come to Florida and get a little
Speaker 1: patriledand with with your home. It's growing. It's also more
Speaker 1: of an outdoor culture. I imagine you spend much more
Speaker 1: time outside there than in New York. Yes, that's why
Speaker 1: I went there. And I had visited in the Ovindes
Speaker 1: and I saw houses where the insiders out and the
Speaker 1: outsiders in. There were lizards in the house. I loved
Speaker 1: that there are lizards in the house. They come and go,
Speaker 1: you know, so I wanted, I told the real or
Speaker 1: I want to see something like that, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: house with lizards please, yes, yeah, and I did. I
Speaker 1: got house with lizards. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you ever
Speaker 1: imagine living back in Detroit or would that not be
Speaker 1: a thing he would do? I would if I didn't
Speaker 1: know anybody and nobody knew me, That's what I'd say.
Speaker 1: But because of who I was a long time ago,
Speaker 1: what I went through, and whatever vestiges of that might
Speaker 1: still be there, I would not, you know, I would not,
Speaker 1: but otherwise I would because Michigan people are cool. Michigan
Speaker 1: people are really great people, and it's probably very inexpensive
Speaker 1: to live well, you know, and there's still there's still space.
Speaker 1: Do you think of Detroit as home or do you
Speaker 1: think of Miami as home? Miami? Yeah, Dutch my home
Speaker 1: and that cool? Yeah. Well, I feel like we could
Speaker 1: talk for probably another six hours, so maybe we do
Speaker 1: this again soon. Okay, cool, But I love talking to you,
Speaker 1: and I love learning about music's talking antagony. It's great.
Speaker 1: All right, cool? Hey, this was real nice, say amazing,
Speaker 1: See you soon. Thanks again to Iggy Pop. You can
Speaker 1: hear all of our favorite Iggy and student songs at
Speaker 1: broken record podcast dot com. You can subscribe to our
Speaker 1: YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast
Speaker 1: we can find all of our new represents. You can
Speaker 1: follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is
Speaker 1: produced with helpful Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel, Vent Holiday, and
Speaker 1: Eric Sander. Our editor is Sophie Crane. Broken Record is
Speaker 1: a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show
Speaker 1: and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin
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Speaker 1: us on your podcast. Half my theme music expect Kenny Beats,
Speaker 1: So I'm justin Motion.