The key to The Doors is the culture behind the myth.

I became Iggy because I had a sadistic boss at a record store. I'd been in a band called the Iguanas. And when this boss wanted to embarrass and demean me, he'd say, 'Iggy, get me a coffee, light.'

I thought, "Wow, it sounds really stoned anyway." It sounded good to me. I found out that there was a lot in there. What all this comes down to is I was just trying to get in touch with myself. And I met some interesting people in New York who weren't in show business. I even got to know my dentist.

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.

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.

The people who were learning from me tended to be more commercial performers who were gonna rip off the salient idea to do it in a way that will sell, but they weren't going for the music.

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.