Iggy Pop Quotes

Your skin starts itching once you buy that gimmick about something called love. ~ Iggy Pop

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

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. ~ Iggy Pop

I'm glad I am crazy, it keeps me trying. I despise trendies, I know they're lying. ~ Iggy Pop

I stayed in L.A. long enough to get on my feet, and then I moved back to New York. The reason I moved here was that I don't feel warm outside of a city; it's too barren in the suburbs, and L.A. is a suburb. Here, it felt active. ~ Iggy Pop

I'm deeper than the shit I'm in and I don't really give a damn. ~ Iggy Pop

I don't know anyone who has described that terrible yearning for ecstasy and immolation through music as lucidly as Sean Madigan Hoen in Songs Only You Know. Only a thorough initiate of the scene who also had some genius with language could summon the demotic yet electric voice for the job. If there is ruefulness, now, for the way he treated his body, his girlfriends, and his family, he wisely reprises in his book, in neon detail, the fever that once placed him in the same drunken boat with Iggy Pop, Rimbaud and Artaud. ~ Jaimy Gordon

I give Iggy credit for deconstructing the very idea of entertainment. ~ Kim Gordon

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. ~ Iggy Pop

The period right before punk rock where people like Lou Reed and Iggy Pop were really strong. ~ Arto Lindsay

I'm a street walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm. ~ Iggy Pop

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. ~ Iggy Pop

I'm bored, I'm the chairman of the board. ~ Iggy Pop

I'm not ashamed to dress "like a woman" because I don't think it's shameful to be a woman. ~ Iggy Pop

I have always maintained that Iggy Pop is the Heavyweight Champion of Rock & Roll. ~ Henry Rollins

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

I'm a travel enthusiast. ~ Iggy Pop

I never say never about anything. ~ Iggy Pop

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. ~ Iggy Pop

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

What do you do with a lifetime of work? Face it in the morning. ~ Iggy Pop

The future of rock n roll is Justin Bieber. ~ Iggy Pop

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. ~ Iggy Pop

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. ~ Iggy Pop

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. ~ Iggy Pop

Iggy Pop is God, if God looked half that good with his shirt off. ~ Kate Christensen

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. ~ Iggy Pop

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

I'm not the kind of person who could join AA or have rules for myself or on Thursday take this vitamin pill. So, basically, I learned the hard way. I learned by trial and error, and tried to get drugs out of my work. That took about a year. If I was going to work, it was best that I be straight. And I was surprised at what came out. ~ Iggy Pop

When I get up in the morning, I stay nude for three or four hours. If I really feel like getting formal, I'll put on board shorts. ~ Iggy Pop

It's more fun to look at an old picture of me than it is to look at a new one sometimes. Although, I still wear a dress pretty well. ~ Iggy Pop

I always went in with a very specific idea of the sound I wanted, and once I'd recorded I'd try and make it sell as much as I could, but I only went in thinking of a sound I wanted. So, it's no surprise to me that he got the hit and I didn't. But what I realized was that he did dress it up nicely, and my god, he does sing on key well. ~ Iggy Pop

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

No, I don't really think there's a "golden age" of anything. I think now is pretty fucking amazing. I'm probably the least nostalgic person. I don't think there was a golden time for music. There's always been people making great music standing here on Earth and saying, "This is where I stand, and this is what I've got to say, and this is how I feel about it." The industry of music has always been lousy. The stuff on the top, the stuff that rises, it's always been bad, right from when we first started getting into music. You just have to dig deeper. You have to look inward and outward. And then, when you make music, you can't just copy people. You can't just say, "This is how this was done, I'll do the same." You have to find what makes it good and kind of drag that kicking and screaming into your own world. Music is like a time capsule with no bearing. It doesn't really carry a message from the time when it was made. 1930s blues music doesn't really give you a sense of what it was like to live in America in 1930. It relates to your heartbeat now and where you are and what you're doing. I've said this in other interviews, but when I listen to Iggy Pop singing "Search And Destroy," it has no reference to Vietnam in my world. How could it? I'm from a small town in the middle of England. That's how music works. Looking back in music isn't even really looking back. Music's traveled to where you are. ~ J Spaceman

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.' ~ Iggy Pop

I am the passenger, I stay under glass. I look through my window so bright, I see the stars come out tonight. I see the bright and hollow sky, over the city's ripped backsides and everything looks good tonight. ~ Iggy Pop

I'd come home from school alone with those teenage blues and I'd put on Frank Sinatra's It was a very good year. Here was this mature man singing about the cycle of his life, and as a kid I felt the emotions of it already. It has since been a touchstone for me whenever I want to experiment musically. ~ Iggy Pop

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. ~ Iggy Pop

If I don't terrorize, I'm not Pop. ~ Iggy Pop

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. ~ Iggy Pop

It is very important what not to do. ~ Iggy Pop

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

They say that death kills you, But death doesn't kill you. Boredom and indifference kill you. ~ Iggy Pop

I've probably been spit on more that any person alive outside of, I would say, a member of the prison system. ~ Iggy Pop

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? ~ Iggy Pop

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. ~ Iggy Pop

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. ~ Iggy Pop

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. ~ Iggy Pop

Cigarettes and coffee, man, that's a combination. ~ Iggy Pop

In 1965, when great young white artists in the English-speaking world were successfully re-channeling hillbilly and black music - you know Bob Dylan, Ray Davies, Pete Townsend, Keith Richards - they didn't get any money at first. They were all broke. ~ Iggy Pop

Iggy Pop has a voice that's somehow simultaneously self-mocking, wild, precise, amused, righteous, cool, contained and bold. I don't know how he does what he does. ~ Kate Christensen

And it's a ... it's a term 'Punk Rock' that's based on contempt; it's a term that's based on fashion , style , elitism, satanism , and, everything that's rotten about rock 'n' roll. ~ Iggy Pop

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

Some cats, Iggy Pop, they're going to always have that hunger. ~ Nikki Sixx

I think that prosecuting some college kid because she shared a file is a lot like sending somebody to Australia 200 years ago for poaching his lordship's rabbit. That's how it must seem to poor people who just want to watch a crappy movie for free after they've been working themselves to death all day at Tesco or whatever, you know. ~ Iggy Pop

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. ~ Iggy Pop

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. ~ Iggy Pop

I love the song 'Into the Night.' It's Roy Orbison meets David Lynch meets Iggy Pop on amphetamines. It has a punk edge that is not HIM, per se. It is super melodic and super '60s, and that is very new to me and it is a sense of achievement to me. ~ Ville Valo

As society has changed, what had formerly been unacceptable has become colourful. ~ Iggy Pop

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. ~ Iggy Pop

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. ~ Iggy Pop

Miami's never been more than a spit from New York. ~ Iggy Pop

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. ~ Iggy Pop

Iggy Pop, or should I say Iggy's people, had reached out to me saying he was a True Blood fan, and if any opportunities come up, to please keep Iggy in mind. We sent Iggy the demo of 'LB&R'. He loved it and said, 'Sign me up.' ~ Gary Calamar

It's fair to say that I have a side that is prudent and a side that is not. ~ Iggy Pop

'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. ~ Iggy Pop

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. ~ Iggy Pop

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. ~ Iggy Pop

I wanted to learn a little bit about acting, not because I thought I'd find a star vehicle and set the world on fire, but I thought the discipline of it would be good for me. I met a good coach, and I joined her class - with a lot of hungry young actors who really didn't acre if I was a rock 'n' roll singer or not. I started to learn to get a focus, without having to jump up and down every few seconds. ~ Iggy Pop

When I hear myself singing, I hear Iggy Pop and Jimi Hendrix. There's a conversational thing going on. I suppose it depends on which The Pretenders song you're listening to. ~ Chrissie Hynde

I was watching Iggy Pop videos on Youtube and trying to research miniature horse suicides. ~ Sara Gran

What did Christ really do? He hung out with hard-drinking fishermen. ~ Iggy Pop

I'm always looking to rock out. But it isn't really about rocking out versus being mellow, in terms of your personal satisfaction. In the end, you just want to be good. When you look at something that's really good, it might be Iggy Pop or it might be Leonard Cohen. Whatever it is, you want it to be really good. ~ Frank Black

I just went to your typical public schools, and my dad would take us to the movies every week, or he'd buy scalped tickets to San Antonio Spurs games. I remember I was four or five years old and my parents, who were very young, took us to see The Police in Austin, and Iggy Pop opened. ~ Pedro Pascal

Even as a fan, as someone who's into his performances, the Stooges and his own stuff, Iggy [Pop] is one of the people who kept underlining something that a lot of my older musician friends with punk roots say: you get into this space in your life where you feel like a weirdo, you're marginalised, you don't fit in ... and then you can get up on stage in front of people who probably hate you. ~ Babatunde Adebimpe

Life is just a bag of pot. ~ Iggy Pop

I'd have a few on and off, but the commitment was always more on the girls' part than on mine, to be perfectly honest. So, I met a girl in Tokyo, on my Japanese tour, with whom I've been living ever since, very happily. Her name is Suchi. ~ Iggy Pop

Music is life, and life is not a business. ~ Iggy Pop

But the reason I decided to go to New York was because I had seen Iggy Pop and I thought I had seen God. And because I had sent to Interview magazine for Rene Ricard's first book of poetry, The Blue Book. I had never sent for anything before but something told me to do this. I had read that book over and over again like a Bible. I realized that a book can reach out and embrace you like an arm and make you walk away from everything you thought you understood. ~ Jennifer Clement

Curious is a good thing to be, it seems to pay some unexpected dividends. ~ Iggy Pop

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. ~ Iggy Pop

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

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 ~ Iggy Pop

How am I going to listen to that horrible noise I make without a gram of coke and a couple of double Jack Daniels? ~ Iggy Pop

My mom was a saint. She taught me to be terminally nice. ~ Iggy Pop

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.' ~ Iggy Pop

Living in England was wonderfully civil and easy-going. ~ Iggy Pop

People always say, 'You look like Iggy Pop.' ~ Carine Roitfeld

I'm not a singer, a walking instrument like Aretha Franklin. When you get an Iggy Pop record, you don't get "Iggy Sings." I am also a style of music, an approach. ~ Iggy Pop

I smoked this joint and then it hit me. I thought, what you gotta do is play your own simply blues. ~ Iggy Pop

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

Nobody understands me, I'm really sensitive. ~ Iggy Pop

I was who I was in high school in accordance with the rules of conduct for a normal person, like obeying your mom and dad. Then I got out of high school and moved out of the house, and I just started, for lack of a better term, running free. ~ Iggy Pop

Student loans are destroying the imagination of youth. If there's a way of a society committing mass suicide, what better way than to take all the youngest, most energetic, creative, joyous people in your society and saddle them with, like $50,000 of debt so they have to be slaves? There goes your music. There goes your culture. There goes everything new that would pop out. And in a way, this is what's happened to our society. We're a society that has lost any ability to incorporate the interesting, creative and eccentric people. ~ David Graeber

I always listen to all kinds of different music from different years. I listen to the contemporary, but once in a while into eighties, you know just for fun, and sometimes classical too. So I have this big mix on my i-pod ... Amy Winehouse, Gwen Stefani, OutKast, Jay-Z. I listen to trance, pop, everything. It really depends on my mood. ~ Olga Kurylenko

The subterranean lair of the wily human relationship: a dark maze of pop-up demons, fun house mirrors, spooky dead ends, multiple false bottoms. ~ Stephen Wright

I respect Snoop even aside from the music, just as a man, and especially the way he still represents who he is, after being a pop star and an icon. He's done it successfully and has still been able to balance it. ~ Nipsey Hussle

I want my rockstars dead. ~ Bill Hicks

I don't listen to the contemporary pop artists. They all sound alike, anyway. ~ Patti LuPone

Fucking hell. "Did you guys plan that out?"
"Yeah, and if you don't fight us"
Hollywood bit down on his grape Tootsie-Pop
"we'll do it again
only with dance moves this time."
"Spare me."
"Fine. Unless you agree to home it, we will rock the dance moves.". To prove the point, the moron linked his palms behind his head and started doing something obscene with his hips. Which was backed up by a series of, "Uh-huh, uh-huh, ohhh, yeeeeeeaaaah, who's your daddy ... ~ J.R. Ward