Iggy Pop Quotes

The Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame was a great idea when it started, but I think they ought to close it, I think it's full.

Onstage I've been hit by a grapefruit, beercans, eggs, spit, money, cigarette butts, Mandies, Quaaludes, joints, bras, panties, and a fist.

Second only to the sea, the Miami sky has been the greatest comfort in my life past 50. On a good day, when the wind blows from the south, the light here is diffuse and forgiving.

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.

It is very important what not to do.

I'll love you when my eyes are open, I'll love you when my eyes are gone.

I feel a great comfort and relief knowing that there are others who lived and died and thought and fought so long ago; I feel less tyrannized by the present day.

Well, after Zombie Birdhouse came out, I toured behind it in the fall of 1982, into the spring, and in the summer in the Far East. At that time, I found my work self-referential; it was getting to be rock songs about a rock singer who lived a rock life on the rock road, and I was starting to wonder what I would be like to rent my own apartment, what it would be like to have a checkbook.

As society has changed, what had formerly been unacceptable has become colorful.

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

I try to beat back the producers and engineers so they - there's not an excess of stuff used to squeeze my voice to make it artificial. There's a person in there, and people will listen; if they hear another person speak to them, they'll listen because it's lonely out here.

The future of rock n roll is Justin Bieber.

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

DMT was a gaseous wax that you could smoke that gave you a 20-minute psychedelic high. You'd inhale it. And then when you'd exhale—poof, you'd be high. I saw Buddha, man. I know that sounds like no big deal. But I saw a gigantic holographic Buddha — correct in every way! Buddhas can be very intricate — these drawings that you see in books. Thousands of details were included in this Buddha. Where did they come from? I didn't make them up. I can't even draw, you know? I could barely spell cat, you know? And there it was. And I thought, Wow — the power of the mind, you know?

Miami is nothing like me, and thats why I need to be here - its the opposite. Im practical, where this place is moody, Im stolid in my interior, where this place has a certain flair, and Im materialistic in a sense that this place is fundamentally spiritual - theres a quicksilver quality about this place.

When the 'godfather of punk' thing started floatin' around, it was, I was really, really embarrassed. I thought I should have a great, big rig and a cape and everything, and it was very embarrassing. And then after a while, you learn that if people call you anything, this is a great gift.

I don't think I'm lucky; I think I have a tough constitution. That's a lot of it. And I've been wise enough to listen to other people. I was unconsciously cultivating as many straight friends as I could.

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

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.

Living in England was wonderfully civil and easy-going.

The 2 things I like the most are girls and loud noises.

There was a time when I wanted to get out of the Western world. I went down to Grenada and looked at a place, and I realised that if I lived in a Grenadian manner I'd be nothing but a blah. I'm going to need constant bodyguarding, guns and money to join the community there. Otherwise you just got a bunch of fat, old white people dying together, overeating, drinking. Not very attractive.

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.

I never say never about anything.

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.

Well, it wasn't like I was going to run out and score heroin and score an ounce of coke - but incidentally, on the road, I would usually get tanked up and as stoned as I possibly could to go on stage. And offstage, it would be a demon that would come up about twice a week.

What the world needs right now... a good, artistic, gothic, terrifying scare

You know what I think you get scared of more - especially me, after touring for so long and being in bands for so long - you start to associate certain behavior with the music. It's like people associate having a cigarette with having a cup of coffee, or lunch.

The nut of the thing is that if what you make is hard like a diamond, you can put it anywhere. You can put it up your and it will still be beautiful.

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

When it comes to art, money is an unimportant detail. It just happens to be a huge unimportant detail.

My general take on American music since 1969 is that it's just getting stiffer and people are getting more uptight - audience, performance, and palace guard.

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.

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.

And if somebody's going to produce me, they should be producing my sound for me. And that's something I have to come up with myself.

Sex may be a little more factual than love. You know whether it's good or bad. You know whether you liked it or not. You're not going to change your mind about it ten years later.

If I started thinking too much about how influential I've been, then I'd be more of a turd than I already am.

There are no pimps, no whores, no transvestites - gone. Now that's more the culture I'm comfortable in ... I don't like it in the house, you know what I mean, but I like it somewhere around.

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.'

I don't get my bliss by listening over and over to people in the street thinking, "Boy, is it that good?" Even though every time I hear it that's what I think. But I get it in human situations. There is this little voice that is going, "The reason you're able to enjoy your life now is that you made it in rock'n'roll and people are giving you free visas all over the place. Dude, you are being spoiled".

Cigarettes and coffee, man, that's a combination.

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

The more walking-around money I have, the less I walk around.

I never had a checkbook. It used to be cash in hand, stuff in the pocket, or a manager would keep some accounts and give me money. I started to wonder what it must feel like to actually make a profit, pay taxes, and to have a phone listing, and a manager. And also, I was sick of sleeping around every night.

I was feeling that I was the in the dead-end circuit from 1980 to 1983, and I didn't know what else to do. I remember doing a show in some college town, in a tiny club, and afterward some fans came back. I thought I had done good gig and they were going to tell me that.

I wasn't so stupid that I didn't realize the implications of what they were saying. In my live work I was going for the quick thrill, rather than spending time concentrating on my voice. I figured I'd get on, make as many quick movement as possible, dance my ass off for five minutes, move into the insult portion of the evening, and then, at the end, create some kind of chaos until the 55 minutes were up.

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

I thought that if I practiced doing melodies for a year or so at home, I would learn to think melodically, and when I went to work it would come out, and it did, on this album. What else was important to me...? I spend a lot of time in the grocery store, shopping.