Iggy Pop, Part 2

Published Jan 31, 2023, 10:00 AM

Today we have part two of Rick Rubin’s conversation with proto-punk icon, Iggy Pop. If you didn’t catch part one last week where Iggy talked about his early days with the Stooges and the inspiration behind some of their most seminal songs, make sure you check that out.

On today’s episode you’ll hear Iggy talk in-depth about the years he spent working and touring with David Bowie. He also explains how James Brown inspired his legendary performance style, and then Iggy recalls the ridiculous antics that led to him bleeding on stage for the first time.

You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite Stooges and Iggy Pop solo songs HERE.

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

Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

From Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam, and Justin Richmond. The musicians you love talk a 
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