manuscripts don't burn.

gq:

The Survivors: Iggy Pop

Today’s exclusive Q+A from our November 2011 mega-music issue is with The Stooges frontman. Full interview is here. Below, a brief bit about hating hippies and making his peace with American Idol.

GQ: Was the band in any way a rebuke to the 60s and the hippie era?
Iggy Pop: That came about accidentally in the same sense that it did when I recently played American Idol. I thought I was having a good time, and then The Christian Science Monitor said J. Lo looked like she needed a shower after that performance.

GQ: Sounds like you did your job.
Iggy Pop: Exactly! I was, like, “They know me at The Christian Science Monitor! How cool is that? Can I meet Jesus? Can I heal some people now?” But with the hippies, it was more that they didn’t accept us. And what happened was, they had the platform, so we were going over and to play on their platform. The people who didn’t play on that platform would be the few old guys who would hold on to their greasy old haircut and play in a bar for people who were getting older and older. But once we got on that platform, there were some violent, negative reactions. Now, if you give me a negative reaction, I’m not going to let you get away with that, because this is life and death, this is what I do. Don’t fuck with me. So, at that point, conflict begins to build, and I’m not gonna back down, I’m gonna go further at that point, and then it became interesting. But it was always by example. There was nothing in any of lyrics—we didn’t say “No fun…and it’s all your fault, flower eaters.”

GQ: That Age-of-Aquarius vibe was (and still is) the dominant cultural identifier of that era, but you guys must have been heroes to the garage rockers, people like the Sonics and stuff.
Iggy Pop: Yeah, and a lot of the intellectuals, people with Masters degrees in theater arts who didn’t get with the whole program, and the kids at the bottom. Garage kids, the stoners. The ones who were saying “This is bullshit. There’s no action. I don’t dig this.” But we used to go have sex with flower power girls at their communes. Read any R. Crumb comic from the times and that’s pretty much what the deal was.

GQ: Hey, a party’s a party.
Iggy Pop: Yeah, exactly.

GQ: In regard to the American Idol experience, 1) How did you feel when you were asked to do it, and 2) Despite what you or anybody else might have felt about it, it does represent a sort of validation, that you’re recognized as a mainstream artist at some level, doesn’t it?
Iggy Pop: Well, mainstream enough to have a drink after dinner. [laughs] “We know him” sort of thing. I knew it was going to be a trip out of my comfort zone, to say the least, but I like a challenge, and I thought that having slunk around hating that show for years like so many other people, when given the chance to show how I would do it on the same stage, I thought that was a valid think to uptake. So I got it over with, and it was four minutes of my life and I won’t be hosting anytime soon.

[Fucking Incredible Photograph by Mark Seliger]