Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Iggy Pop, Part 1

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Iggy Pop, Part 1 · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Iggy Pop is one of the craziest rock and
0:22
Speaker 1: roll frontmen to ever grace the stage. As a lead
0:26
Speaker 1: singer of The Stooges, Iggy was known for bending and
0:28
Speaker 1: contorting his sometimes blooded body while feverishly pacing the stage
0:32
Speaker 1: like a wild animal. His fifty year career has been
0:35
Speaker 1: as tumultuous as his performance style. After starting the Stooges
0:39
Speaker 1: in Michigan in sixty seven, the band released three albums,
0:43
Speaker 1: including fun House and rob Power. The band eventually disbanded
0:47
Speaker 1: in the mid seventies, and Iggy went solo, recording a
0:50
Speaker 1: series of albums, some of which were instant classics like
0:53
Speaker 1: the two recorded with David Bowie, and others more experimental
0:57
Speaker 1: actually some of my personal favorites. At seventy five years old,
1:01
Speaker 1: He's just released his newest album, produced by Andrew Watt,
1:04
Speaker 1: Every Loser. On today's episode, Iggy shares incredible stories with
1:08
Speaker 1: Very Ruben about his career. Their conversation was so great
1:12
Speaker 1: we decided to split it into two consecutive episodes. Today.
1:16
Speaker 1: In part one, will hear Iggy reminisce about recording fun
1:19
Speaker 1: House in Los Angeles and the first time he saw
1:21
Speaker 1: the ocean He also talks about the tight knit rock
1:24
Speaker 1: scene in Detroit and how it was in some ways
1:26
Speaker 1: led by a local Madman, writer, activist, and music manager
1:30
Speaker 1: named John Sinclair. And stay put at the end of
1:33
Speaker 1: this episode to hear his song off of Iggy's newest album,
1:40
Speaker 1: This is Broken Record liner notes for the Digital Age.
1:43
Speaker 1: I'm justin Richmond. Here's Rick Rubin in conversation with Iggy Pop.
1:48
Speaker 1: Rick recorded his side in parts unknown, and Iggy recorded
1:52
Speaker 1: his side of the conversation at Shanger Law in Malibu.
1:56
Speaker 1: He what's happening to me? How are you feeling? Hey,
2:00
Speaker 1: I'm alright, good. It's good to see you. Good air
2:02
Speaker 1: up here, Yeah, really really nice. Yeah, you're sitting in
2:06
Speaker 1: my usual spot. That's where I usually hang out. Oh,
2:09
Speaker 1: that's great. That's a good spot. I used to drive
2:12
Speaker 1: over here a lot when when La would get you know,
2:15
Speaker 1: too close. You know, I understood. When did you live
2:18
Speaker 1: in La? Well, I lived here around here seventy seventy three,
2:27
Speaker 1: seventy four and then a little bit into seventy five,
2:31
Speaker 1: so about two and a half years. But I would
2:34
Speaker 1: come out a lot in the eighties. You sort of
2:38
Speaker 1: had to come here to do things. You know a
2:41
Speaker 1: lot in nineties two? And when you when you left LA,
2:43
Speaker 1: did you moved to New York? When I left LA
2:46
Speaker 1: in the seventies, I hitched onto David Bowie's Station a
2:52
Speaker 1: Station tour and started writing with him as that tour
2:57
Speaker 1: progressed across America until we got busted in Rochester and
3:07
Speaker 1: then from there went to Europe. How did you guys
3:13
Speaker 1: hook up in the first place? We hooked up originally
3:16
Speaker 1: when I was staying in New York in nineteen seventy
3:23
Speaker 1: one at the loft department of a guy named Danny Fields,
3:28
Speaker 1: who was a key positive force for people like the
3:32
Speaker 1: Ramons myself. He helped out Lou Reed in a lot
3:38
Speaker 1: of ways, all sorts of all sorts of good people.
3:40
Speaker 1: Did Danny sign you to Electra? Danny was the guy
3:44
Speaker 1: who originally came to the Union Ballroom at University of
3:50
Speaker 1: Michigan to see the MC five and we were opening
3:54
Speaker 1: and he saw us, and he recommended. We spoke, and
3:58
Speaker 1: he recommended to Jack Holtzman that well, if you're going
4:02
Speaker 1: to sign the five, maybe you should sign this other
4:05
Speaker 1: band too. I thought they had something amazing. He was
4:09
Speaker 1: he was the guy. Yeah, they didn't have a functioning
4:13
Speaker 1: A and R. A lot of a lot of labels
4:16
Speaker 1: didn't at the time, so he was there publicist. But
4:19
Speaker 1: he was the kind of guy that Jack Holtzmann used
4:22
Speaker 1: as the in house hipster, you know, the guy who
4:26
Speaker 1: knew what was going on and what was cool. And
4:30
Speaker 1: apparently he had good taste, because at that time I
4:33
Speaker 1: can't imagine any other label signing those two bands well exactly,
4:40
Speaker 1: and Danny had very, very event taste. He was a
4:46
Speaker 1: very intelligent, well educated guy. He'd graduated Princeton University, and
4:53
Speaker 1: he was a kind of a low key, you know,
4:57
Speaker 1: kind of guide were a little suede or leather jacket
5:01
Speaker 1: but not too flashy, and slacks and that was about
5:06
Speaker 1: that was about as far towards straightness he would go.
5:10
Speaker 1: But he didn't. He wasn't flamboyant about anything, and he
5:15
Speaker 1: sort of fit right in with the back room crowd
5:19
Speaker 1: at Max's with Andy. Warhol would hold court with a
5:26
Speaker 1: group of sort of young eccentrics in New York. They
5:32
Speaker 1: were like people who should have been the Kennedys and
5:35
Speaker 1: they weren't. They were like intelligent, nice looking American kids
5:42
Speaker 1: gone hard left suddenly, and if you became a Warhol star,
5:48
Speaker 1: and we're willing to work in his movies. You got
5:51
Speaker 1: a little paper, a little sort of piece of paper
5:55
Speaker 1: similar to the draft cards at the time, with Andy
5:59
Speaker 1: Warrell's signature that you could present at Max's Kansas City
6:03
Speaker 1: and get all you could eat, but you had to
6:05
Speaker 1: pay for your own drinks. Wow. So yeah, that's how
6:08
Speaker 1: he paid his feel. Yeah. Yeah. It was a little
6:13
Speaker 1: oval room at the back of a steak and beer
6:17
Speaker 1: joint on Union Square, and you would have. The first
6:23
Speaker 1: time I went in there was because Danny was calling
6:26
Speaker 1: me on his phone. I was staying in his loft
6:30
Speaker 1: and I was watching mister Smith Goes to Washington on
6:34
Speaker 1: his TV. And I was just almost in tears at
6:38
Speaker 1: the sincerity of his willie just to take on the corruption,
6:42
Speaker 1: and you know, I was relating it to the music industry.
6:45
Speaker 1: I have was plenty angry at the time. And he
6:49
Speaker 1: had to call me three times. He said, there's some
6:51
Speaker 1: people down here. They really want to meet you. It's
6:53
Speaker 1: David Bowie and his group and you could do yourself
6:58
Speaker 1: a favorite, damn it. So I finally, yeah, I finally said,
7:02
Speaker 1: all right, all right, you know, okay, we'll meet these
7:06
Speaker 1: strange people, and I went down there one in the
7:09
Speaker 1: morning and Lou Lou Reid was down there, David Tony
7:14
Speaker 1: Defreese his manager who had a manager get up Big
7:20
Speaker 1: Cigar for quote, the Big Frow, you know. But also
7:25
Speaker 1: down there was an Ultra Violet and Taylor Mead, who
7:31
Speaker 1: was just a strange, very flamboyant street character. There was
7:38
Speaker 1: a wonderful guy named Donald Lyons in that group who
7:42
Speaker 1: was a professor of Greek. He could teach you, yeah,
7:47
Speaker 1: actual he spoke Greek and Latin. But it was just
7:51
Speaker 1: a cool guy, right. It's like someone it was like
7:55
Speaker 1: my dad without being judgmental, you know, yeah, you know,
8:00
Speaker 1: just somebody like you know, wow, it educated man who
8:04
Speaker 1: wears a suit and everything, but it's just like easy going,
8:07
Speaker 1: you know. And gosh, who else was down there? Baby
8:10
Speaker 1: Jane Holtz was there that night and they all just
8:15
Speaker 1: sit around and chitter chatter a lot. Had you had
8:18
Speaker 1: been aware of Bowie's music at this point in time
8:22
Speaker 1: or not? Really, I was only aware that he had.
8:27
Speaker 1: He'd mentioned the Stooges or maybe it was me in
8:32
Speaker 1: a little piece in the Melody Maker magazine as one
8:36
Speaker 1: of his favorite groups or favorite songs, and I can't remember.
8:41
Speaker 1: It was right around that time that I heard what
8:44
Speaker 1: he was what he was doing, which was the album
8:47
Speaker 1: I think it was Hunky Dory and it had Life
8:50
Speaker 1: on Mars, and I remember listen to it and I thought, well,
8:56
Speaker 1: this is not my cup of tea, but whoa, this
9:00
Speaker 1: guy can do things musically, Holy cow, you know, they're
9:04
Speaker 1: incredible grasp of melody and not only chord changes, but
9:10
Speaker 1: he would actually do harmonic shifts and uh and transpositions
9:15
Speaker 1: and well, oh, dear, dear, dear me. And he had
9:19
Speaker 1: he had the range in his voice to carry what
9:23
Speaker 1: they call lift a chorus, you know, the old lift
9:27
Speaker 1: the chorus singing the song the refrain. So that was
9:30
Speaker 1: out I think at the time, and I was listening
9:33
Speaker 1: to that and that was my That was my first impression. Bold,
9:38
Speaker 1: not any it's not at all related, like you know,
9:43
Speaker 1: tough bro rock music, but there are skills. This person
9:48
Speaker 1: has actual skills. Who were the tough bro rock music
9:52
Speaker 1: that spoke to you in those days at the time.
9:56
Speaker 1: Mitch Rider in the Detroit Wheels, for instance. Yeah, yeah,
10:01
Speaker 1: he's still alive, right, yes he is, and he's still
10:04
Speaker 1: doing us. They still do the same songs. And gigs
10:07
Speaker 1: and Johnny b who is amazing, you know, one of
10:12
Speaker 1: the finest drummers in America. Still will go out, still
10:15
Speaker 1: play with him. But Johnny also did like Stevie Nicks tours.
10:20
Speaker 1: You know, he gets he gets good work. Who else
10:25
Speaker 1: music like that. I always liked the MC five quite
10:28
Speaker 1: a bit. There were some things I liked more than others,
10:31
Speaker 1: like like with anybody else, you know, I liked. I
10:34
Speaker 1: liked very much the Stones albums where they did mostly covers,
10:40
Speaker 1: that was what I was listening to it first. I
10:42
Speaker 1: liked very, very very much the first album by the
10:46
Speaker 1: Paul Butterfield Blues band, We're Born in Chicago, and Melodon Easy.
10:52
Speaker 1: They were doing a lot of little Wallder and stuff,
10:55
Speaker 1: and they had a mixed band. Some of the guys
10:58
Speaker 1: were born into the White Side and some of the
11:01
Speaker 1: guys born into the Black tradition. And sam Ley was
11:06
Speaker 1: on drums, who was later it was nice to me
11:11
Speaker 1: and then he played on Higher sixty one. Revisited the
11:14
Speaker 1: Dylan album That's sound. Did you like Hendrix Hendrix incredibly much? Hendrix?
11:22
Speaker 1: I saw him because we were in the Midwest at
11:25
Speaker 1: the time, in the old days when the groups would
11:30
Speaker 1: come over. You had to get from the east coast
11:33
Speaker 1: to the west or vice versa. And Anne Arbor and
11:37
Speaker 1: Detroit was one of the stops. So I saw Jimmy
11:40
Speaker 1: Hendricks in ann Arbor, Michigan, in a converted bowling alley
11:45
Speaker 1: on a stage about twelve inches high. And I was
11:49
Speaker 1: right in front of that stage, and he had a
11:52
Speaker 1: single stack and Mitch Mitchell on drums and Knoll on bass,
11:59
Speaker 1: and he wore the suit with the eyes and he
12:02
Speaker 1: played the hell out of it. And the stage was
12:06
Speaker 1: right in front of the men's room at I remember
12:09
Speaker 1: before the break, see Mitch Mitchell had to go into
12:12
Speaker 1: the bedroom and come back. You know, it's a little
12:14
Speaker 1: odd things that you remember like that right right there.
12:18
Speaker 1: And in Detroit, Michigan, at the Grande Ballroom, where the
12:23
Speaker 1: Stooges played a lot, and especially with the MC five.
12:28
Speaker 1: We opened for the Who, we opened for Cream, we
12:33
Speaker 1: opened for Sly and the Family Stone. You could see
12:38
Speaker 1: Van Morrison, you know, everybody played there. And again the
12:43
Speaker 1: very close quarters kind of must have held a thousand people.
12:47
Speaker 1: One window, very hot and low procenium, so you were
12:53
Speaker 1: really right there. You could really see it, really hear
12:56
Speaker 1: it for what it was led Zeppelin also led Zeppelin
13:02
Speaker 1: didn't want to use there were these two tiny dressing
13:05
Speaker 1: rooms next to the stage. They didn't want to use that,
13:08
Speaker 1: so they used the manager's office and walked through the
13:13
Speaker 1: crowd to get on stage. But in those days, when
13:18
Speaker 1: Jimmy Page hit his guitar, the sound you heard was
13:22
Speaker 1: coming out of his amp. It was not miked through APA.
13:26
Speaker 1: In those days. At an average ballroom there, PA would
13:30
Speaker 1: be used only for the vocals and they'd usually be
13:34
Speaker 1: one mic placed under the snare drum on the battering
13:37
Speaker 1: side of the bass drum, goin to collect everything and
13:41
Speaker 1: that was about it, you know. So it was a
13:43
Speaker 1: it was a more organic sound, and it was great
13:46
Speaker 1: if you were in the right spot, you know, would
13:50
Speaker 1: you move position to get it to sound as good
13:52
Speaker 1: as he could? Like yes, next, yes, oh hell yeah,
13:55
Speaker 1: yeah that's it, you bet I did. Yeah, and you
13:59
Speaker 1: push yeah, push my way absolutely because you would have
14:03
Speaker 1: to do that, you know, if you were on the
14:05
Speaker 1: guitar side, you'd hear more of that and you wouldn't
14:08
Speaker 1: hear the bass much. Amazing. Yeah. When the who played there,
14:13
Speaker 1: Townsend had the Leslie speaker, you know, the large wooden
14:18
Speaker 1: box with the JBL twelve in speaker and then the
14:24
Speaker 1: fan going around him and want to want to do
14:28
Speaker 1: that to your guitar, And he had that up on
14:31
Speaker 1: stage and in those days it was very hard. H
14:37
Speaker 1: Sly had a B three, so they had to bring
14:41
Speaker 1: to B three. There's no B three in the Psychedelic Ballroom.
14:46
Speaker 1: They had somebody had to get that B three in
14:48
Speaker 1: there and get it out. It was a big deal.
14:51
Speaker 1: That's a huge piece of stuff, you know, So things
14:56
Speaker 1: were different. I always preferred those songs. It's a different
15:00
Speaker 1: world down and a great sound engineer can do a
15:04
Speaker 1: lot of stuff to manipulate what's coming out of the amp. Sly,
15:09
Speaker 1: But the problem is it can become sammy to my ears,
15:13
Speaker 1: in other words, to my ears, still, a drum kit
15:17
Speaker 1: sounds like a drum kit. It's very, very exciting. It's
15:22
Speaker 1: a boom when you hit the whack or didn't didn't
15:26
Speaker 1: ding whatever it is, and a bass sounds like a bass, etcetera, etcetera.
15:32
Speaker 1: And I usually prefer minimum interference. But it's it's different now.
15:38
Speaker 1: It's better to use some smaller amps, and you know,
15:43
Speaker 1: I get that, but something is lost with size. Yeah,
15:47
Speaker 1: it's hard to say what's better, though, you know, it's
15:50
Speaker 1: just I wouldn't say better, just say you know, yeah,
15:53
Speaker 1: it's just different. I just recently recorded an album with
15:56
Speaker 1: Neil Young in that room, and he had you did that?
16:00
Speaker 1: I heard the first one. It's good. Yeah, yeah, we
16:02
Speaker 1: did that there, and yeah it was all live and
16:06
Speaker 1: all of the amps were in the room and they
16:09
Speaker 1: were playing blisteringly loud, and yeah, yeah we miked it.
16:15
Speaker 1: But on every mic you can hear every instrument, you know,
16:18
Speaker 1: because it's just a barrage of sound in the space.
16:21
Speaker 1: That's I like that. Yeah, I like that a lot.
16:24
Speaker 1: That's I did a couple albums that way, especially the
16:29
Speaker 1: second moment of the Studge is called fun House, and
16:31
Speaker 1: you know that's my favorite of the studges. That's what
16:35
Speaker 1: I liked the best too. We had little we had
16:37
Speaker 1: little baffles in the room, you know, the mini baffle,
16:42
Speaker 1: like about as big as that screen you're on right now,
16:45
Speaker 1: but nothing, nothing too much to separate. The engineer on
16:50
Speaker 1: that was a young Englishman named Byron ross my Ring,
16:56
Speaker 1: and I thought I'd never seen such a dashing young englishman.
17:01
Speaker 1: If he didn't wear an ask out, he should have.
17:04
Speaker 1: And he looked like ready for yachting, you know. And
17:08
Speaker 1: apparently it was his second album and the first one
17:11
Speaker 1: he'd done over here was Barbera Streisando and he went right, yeah,
17:16
Speaker 1: right from that to us and he didn't bat an eye.
17:20
Speaker 1: There was a producer hired to do it named Don Golucci,
17:24
Speaker 1: who had played the organ on The Kingsman on Louis Louis,
17:29
Speaker 1: and Don was worried about. Well, they tried separating us
17:33
Speaker 1: the first day and we were we wanted to cry.
17:36
Speaker 1: It didn't work, so Buyer said, don't worry, it will
17:40
Speaker 1: set this something fighting. It was fine. He wasn't bothered.
17:45
Speaker 1: Where was it recorded at that killer studio? It's the
17:49
Speaker 1: Elector Studios that's right there on Lasienega Boulevard, two doors
17:55
Speaker 1: from the down the hill from Santa Monica on the
17:59
Speaker 1: east side of the street. It was a it's still
18:03
Speaker 1: a studio, I think, but it was the Elector, Yes,
18:06
Speaker 1: I believe, so Japanese architect that was designed, you know,
18:11
Speaker 1: spirit or no Gucci, very minimal architecture with a nice
18:16
Speaker 1: little Bonsai garden and just a nice place. One recording room,
18:23
Speaker 1: you know, mid size. It's all you needed. Really. It
18:27
Speaker 1: was done right there. We stayed at the Tropicana and
18:31
Speaker 1: we would all walk to the corner together with the
18:35
Speaker 1: guitars at the drop sticks and everything each day and
18:39
Speaker 1: wait at the light by the liquor store there Laziannega
18:43
Speaker 1: Lanes and then cross and walk down the hill about
18:47
Speaker 1: forty steps to the to the studio and we each
18:51
Speaker 1: each day we would do one song over and over
18:53
Speaker 1: and over until we thought we that was the take,
18:58
Speaker 1: that where everything went right. That's all we did it.
19:02
Speaker 1: We're gonna take a quick break and then we'll be
19:04
Speaker 1: back with more from Rick Rubin and Aggy Pop. We're
19:10
Speaker 1: back with more from Rick Rubin and Iggy Pop, who
19:13
Speaker 1: are talking about the making of the Stooges nineteen seventy
19:15
Speaker 1: album fun House. How are those songs written? Most of
19:21
Speaker 1: that album I wrote in my bedroom in Michigan for
19:27
Speaker 1: them to play, for the band to play. I understood
19:31
Speaker 1: the strengths of the Ashton brothers. They had a special
19:35
Speaker 1: timing and especially the drummer. The drummer was Elvis Redux.
19:40
Speaker 1: It was Elvis Presley in like every town probably had
19:44
Speaker 1: and Elvis, and he was our Elvis. He was a
19:47
Speaker 1: good looking, large kid and you just looked at him,
19:51
Speaker 1: and you knew this guy had something, and he had
19:56
Speaker 1: been a teenager he dropped out of school and I
19:59
Speaker 1: was a local drummer and he kept bugging me to
20:03
Speaker 1: teach him to play drums. So finally, when I wanted
20:07
Speaker 1: to start a group, I did and he was very good,
20:10
Speaker 1: very good. And Ron had these beautiful A lot of
20:15
Speaker 1: guitar players that are good have these beautiful hands, they
20:18
Speaker 1: have the fingers. He had lovely fingers, and he was
20:22
Speaker 1: playing bass at the time, and he's sort of in
20:25
Speaker 1: a walking style, and it was a very good bassist.
20:32
Speaker 1: And at one point I tried to do guitar and
20:36
Speaker 1: I didn't have the talent. I said, Ron, you're the guitarist.
20:40
Speaker 1: Now I'm gonna front, And that's how we sort of
20:43
Speaker 1: got the group together. It was a three of us,
20:45
Speaker 1: and then their friend Dave came in later to play
20:49
Speaker 1: bass and and he did a really good job with
20:52
Speaker 1: very simple skills, and he was stayed out of the
20:56
Speaker 1: way of what else was going on and held it
20:59
Speaker 1: down well. So basically I would write up something and
21:05
Speaker 1: then go down into our rehearsal room in the farmhouse
21:10
Speaker 1: and pull teeth to get everybody together for a rehearsal
21:13
Speaker 1: is sets banded life in those days, and we rehearse
21:17
Speaker 1: it up and then we go out on the weekend
21:20
Speaker 1: and play the new song in our sets until we
21:24
Speaker 1: had a whole repertoire. And the big number that Ron
21:31
Speaker 1: red the acet which I think is my favorite number
21:33
Speaker 1: on the thing, is tv I too, And that was his. Yeah, yeah,
21:38
Speaker 1: that's the best one because he can actually play a guitar.
21:41
Speaker 1: I couldn't. But Ron had a very slow event horizon
21:45
Speaker 1: in his life. He would play like on the first
21:49
Speaker 1: record that he had, the one big one, I want
21:51
Speaker 1: to be your dog riff. Wow, what a riff, you know?
21:55
Speaker 1: And for this one he had, I just kept knocking
21:58
Speaker 1: on his door in the band house until he said,
22:00
Speaker 1: all right, all right, all write a song with you.
22:04
Speaker 1: And he started playing tv I the way it sounds
22:08
Speaker 1: about three minutes into the song where it's really he's
22:12
Speaker 1: going very furious, and I thought about it. I said, Okay,
22:15
Speaker 1: that's great, but look, if it's gonna develop work as
22:19
Speaker 1: a song, play it like started out like Hooker, like
22:23
Speaker 1: John Lee. Hooker started out single string with a droning string,
22:28
Speaker 1: and that's he. He liked Hooker too, so we started
22:33
Speaker 1: that way. Then I gave him the variation where instead
22:37
Speaker 1: of da da da da da da da da da da,
22:40
Speaker 1: where it's just dada dada that suffices as a chorus,
22:46
Speaker 1: you know, for for the way we played something that's
22:48
Speaker 1: just a little a little wrinkle, yeah, you know. And
22:51
Speaker 1: then Uh developed the part where it kind of melds
22:55
Speaker 1: into the the just the drone. When did the lyrics
23:02
Speaker 1: come there in Michigan in the farmhouse, It wasn't as
23:07
Speaker 1: hard as the first album. I remember that they just
23:11
Speaker 1: kind of came down on the street. Was originally down
23:15
Speaker 1: on the Beach and yeah, I've always liked beach culture,
23:21
Speaker 1: and I would singing about down on the beach and
23:24
Speaker 1: where the stars shine and how the open feeling at night.
23:29
Speaker 1: And then I thought, well, look, I'm in this rock
23:33
Speaker 1: culture now, maybe something more people can relate to. And
23:41
Speaker 1: at some point we took a trip to New York
23:45
Speaker 1: and I was pretty high one night and I was
23:47
Speaker 1: hanging out on Eighth Street when it was very active
23:52
Speaker 1: between like university place of sixth, and everybody was down
23:58
Speaker 1: on the street and there were so many young faces
24:01
Speaker 1: milling around that everybody seemed interesting. So I took it
24:06
Speaker 1: from there you know, and it was sort of it
24:10
Speaker 1: was sort of meant to be also a little bit
24:11
Speaker 1: about esthetics. I was just fascinated by everything in the
24:15
Speaker 1: big city, you know, whether it was it might be
24:19
Speaker 1: an attractive girl or it might be just a really
24:21
Speaker 1: interesting guy. But faces. It started from faces, you know.
24:26
Speaker 1: So that one was that was like that TV I
24:30
Speaker 1: I remember that came from We did a gig at
24:34
Speaker 1: a junior high school in ann Arbor, Forsyth Junior High
24:39
Speaker 1: and we were playing We weren't playing that number, we
24:44
Speaker 1: didn't have it yet, but there was one of the
24:47
Speaker 1: students at the junior high she was laying on her
24:50
Speaker 1: back on in the what they call the multi purpose
24:54
Speaker 1: room where you play you know, it's a gymnaisy, it's
24:58
Speaker 1: a luge shrew, it's a dance all which she was
25:01
Speaker 1: just laying there sort of taking it in on her
25:05
Speaker 1: back with her arms folded behind her. And I thought,
25:09
Speaker 1: but she's just taken this like like watching TV. And
25:14
Speaker 1: I thought about that, and then I always liked the
25:17
Speaker 1: CBS logo yeah at the time, the eye the Big Guy.
25:23
Speaker 1: So I thought TV I, well, that's interesting, you know.
25:27
Speaker 1: So that was that was where that came from. So cool.
25:32
Speaker 1: I always loved the song and never had any idea
25:34
Speaker 1: what it meant. Yeah, so it's it's cool and who
25:37
Speaker 1: It takes on its own pretty simple, She's check it out.
25:40
Speaker 1: But it still takes on its own mythical you know.
25:44
Speaker 1: I've been hearing the song my pretty much my whole life,
25:46
Speaker 1: so it takes on a mythical meaning beyond. But knowing
25:50
Speaker 1: that it actually is rooted in reality is really interesting.
25:54
Speaker 1: I tried to keep it away from the strict you know,
25:56
Speaker 1: I did it go into the carnal details or implications.
26:01
Speaker 1: I thought it was more fun to be just I
26:04
Speaker 1: just like the TV I yeah, yeah, just the sound
26:08
Speaker 1: of that. You know, it's funny. I think about it
26:11
Speaker 1: a lot lately. Where Orwell In nineteen eighty four had
26:15
Speaker 1: this idea that the televisions in England would all have
26:20
Speaker 1: an eye that could spy on you. And now, of
26:22
Speaker 1: course you know that could be done through your phone. Yeah,
26:27
Speaker 1: I'm looking at one right now. I'm looking right, looking
26:31
Speaker 1: at me, looking at you. That's how yeah right now, yep, yep.
26:36
Speaker 1: When's the first time you ever saw that the ocean here?
26:40
Speaker 1: It was when we came to make fun House and
26:44
Speaker 1: we all went out. We stayed in the Tropic Cannas,
26:46
Speaker 1: so you had to do is go straight out Santa
26:49
Speaker 1: Monica Boulevard, which at the time was a real boulevard
26:52
Speaker 1: with a grassy medium in the middle, and you'd see
26:54
Speaker 1: horses sometimes there. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And we just
26:59
Speaker 1: drove out and we went to the beach. Me and
27:01
Speaker 1: the Sacks player Steve McKay maybe I think one of
27:05
Speaker 1: the roadies, and we went to the beach right by
27:09
Speaker 1: the Santa Monica Pier and I saw it and the
27:13
Speaker 1: moon was up even though it was light, and I
27:16
Speaker 1: remember I was not upset, but I was kind of
27:19
Speaker 1: bummed because I felt that the moonwalk had ruined the moon.
27:24
Speaker 1: You know, I liked the moon the way it was.
27:28
Speaker 1: I didn't like the idea of God. Now there's some
27:32
Speaker 1: guy up there, you know, playing golf. And I remembered that.
27:36
Speaker 1: So it was nineteen seventy. That's pretty great. That's a
27:39
Speaker 1: great take. I've never heard that take about the moon,
27:42
Speaker 1: that the man going to the moon rounding. Yeah, yeah,
27:45
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy. And the other big impression on me
27:49
Speaker 1: that I used it in a lyric later on Raw Power.
27:53
Speaker 1: It was I had never felt the ocean breeze on
27:57
Speaker 1: a good day. It has a pitter patter to it.
28:01
Speaker 1: It's not like a light wind that blows constantly. It
28:04
Speaker 1: hits your face and it hits your body that you know.
28:10
Speaker 1: I have this really on again, off again rhythm to it,
28:14
Speaker 1: and man, dide, I like that, you know, So I
28:19
Speaker 1: used that in and give me danger on the raw
28:23
Speaker 1: power I was. It kissed me like the ocean breeze.
28:25
Speaker 1: I loved the ocean breeze. It made a big impression. Now,
28:30
Speaker 1: so I was twenty three. You know, some people are
28:35
Speaker 1: raised right by the ocean, but once I saw it,
28:39
Speaker 1: I've always gone way out of my way to be
28:41
Speaker 1: near the ocean as much as I possibly can. It's
28:46
Speaker 1: interesting that down on the Street started as down on
28:49
Speaker 1: the Beach, and it sounds like at the time you
28:51
Speaker 1: wrote it, you hadn't yet seen the ocean. Well, the
28:55
Speaker 1: beach at that time was we have many, many, many
29:00
Speaker 1: lakes in the Midwest. So the particular beach I was
29:04
Speaker 1: talking about was a place called Silver Lake, and it
29:07
Speaker 1: was a little lake where the we would all go
29:10
Speaker 1: on the weekends or in the summer. You know, it's
29:14
Speaker 1: like a bigger than a pond. You know, maybe maybe
29:19
Speaker 1: a mile across, maybe not, you know, like that, and
29:23
Speaker 1: you had this little kind of a dirt slope that
29:27
Speaker 1: was that was a beach in a changing area, you know,
29:31
Speaker 1: like a county park that was. That was the beach.
29:34
Speaker 1: And I had been when I did my first full
29:40
Speaker 1: professional gig. I was a drummer straight out of high
29:43
Speaker 1: school and I was playing in my high school cover
29:46
Speaker 1: band all summer in a beach area of Michigan on
29:52
Speaker 1: Lake Michigan called Harbor Springs, and it had sand dunes
29:56
Speaker 1: and everything. So we had that culture, but it's not
29:59
Speaker 1: the same as the ocean. Yeah, how would you describe
30:02
Speaker 1: your relationship to music? It gives me in my connection
30:07
Speaker 1: to emotion, and I feel if I don't have that
30:13
Speaker 1: connection to emotion, I don't feel for some reason interested
30:19
Speaker 1: or that whatever I might be doing is worth doing it.
30:23
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean I have to go around having emotion
30:26
Speaker 1: every second of the day. That that doesn't work that way.
30:30
Speaker 1: But it started out as I'm sure you've felt this,
30:35
Speaker 1: you know, maybe you're I was on the school bus
30:39
Speaker 1: listening to be My Baby by the Runouts, and you're
30:43
Speaker 1: you have this wave of I don't know what that Is.
30:47
Speaker 1: You know, it's like this adolescent yearning, that sort of thing.
30:52
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, you also listen to Louie
30:55
Speaker 1: Louis by the kigsvid you know, you want to have
31:00
Speaker 1: a wild time a little bit, or some of you
31:02
Speaker 1: get excited, you know, the different things. And I've always
31:06
Speaker 1: been susceptible to it, right up through when I started
31:11
Speaker 1: listening to things. My parents brought up Classical, one of
31:16
Speaker 1: these ten great classics, you know, one of these albums,
31:20
Speaker 1: and they had some revel on it. They had Bolo
31:25
Speaker 1: the Ravel's Bowl there, and I loved it. I was
31:27
Speaker 1: only twelve thirteen when I heard that and liked it,
31:32
Speaker 1: maybe a little more than the records Elvis was making
31:35
Speaker 1: at the time, because he wasn't doing his greatest stuff,
31:38
Speaker 1: you know. It was more like a return to Sender
31:41
Speaker 1: or something. He sounded great with the music. I liked it,
31:44
Speaker 1: but it wasn't you know, it wasn't the greatest. Although
31:48
Speaker 1: Return to Sender was funny because I always thought he
31:53
Speaker 1: was singing return to Cinder, and I saw, my god,
31:56
Speaker 1: he's singing about regeneration, of course. Yeah, and I did it, yeah,
32:02
Speaker 1: you know, I was. I don't know, you hear funny
32:04
Speaker 1: things when nobody tells you what's going on, but that's
32:10
Speaker 1: pretty much it. It was that, and then at some
32:12
Speaker 1: point I wanted to do things and if I could
32:17
Speaker 1: sing like Dion Warwick, I would have tried to find
32:21
Speaker 1: backreck and done music like that, which is so wonderful,
32:25
Speaker 1: you know. But I didn't have that, and I remembered
32:30
Speaker 1: listening to Gloria by them, and I thought I could
32:35
Speaker 1: do that sort of thing, you know, So starting from
32:39
Speaker 1: what can You Do? And then later for fun House,
32:43
Speaker 1: it was that James Brown was a huge influence and
32:46
Speaker 1: the bands he had at that time, the drums and bass,
32:49
Speaker 1: the syncopations. I thought, well, I could be influenced. I
32:54
Speaker 1: could do something that had my own particular flavor of that.
33:00
Speaker 1: You know. It didn't have to sound like that. I'm
33:02
Speaker 1: not going to try to do that, but that was
33:06
Speaker 1: the idea behind it. It's interesting something recently where it
33:11
Speaker 1: described the Stooges as the first rock band that didn't
33:17
Speaker 1: have any of the influence of soul or R and B,
33:21
Speaker 1: and I thought, wow, these people don't really listen to
33:23
Speaker 1: music just in terms of the groove of it. It's
33:26
Speaker 1: so exactly incredibly groovy and there's there's so much music
33:32
Speaker 1: that's not you know, that's just cold. But that's not
33:37
Speaker 1: Chad Scottie. I taught him Stax volt speeds. Yeah, did
33:42
Speaker 1: you become boom? You know that sort of thing. And
33:46
Speaker 1: a lot of the music I don't like is when
33:50
Speaker 1: the artist goes into what I would call aping, you know,
33:55
Speaker 1: aping something that's good. Well, we could do it almost
33:58
Speaker 1: like that, but maybe for a different crowd, did you know.
34:03
Speaker 1: I don't want to hear that. But when you try
34:06
Speaker 1: to take the qualities the qualities and do that in
34:11
Speaker 1: your own way, that's sort of the stuff I like more.
34:15
Speaker 1: I have a funny question about the relationship between music
34:20
Speaker 1: and time, and I'll tell you why I'm asking about
34:23
Speaker 1: it is and I'm wondering, in my case if it
34:27
Speaker 1: has to do with when I was born and what
34:29
Speaker 1: I listened to. When I think of the Beatles, and
34:33
Speaker 1: I think of the Beatles was a very long time ago,
34:37
Speaker 1: and then I think of the Stooges, and I think
34:39
Speaker 1: of the Stooges as much more modern. I don't think
34:42
Speaker 1: of it from the Beatles era. Yet the Stooges existed
34:46
Speaker 1: when the Beatles were the Beatles. The Stooges came into
34:52
Speaker 1: some degree of popularity only very recently, and I think
34:57
Speaker 1: that has a lot to do with it, because it's
34:59
Speaker 1: the social cues that you cannot ignore that come from
35:03
Speaker 1: the outside. The type what subthing is the Beatles right
35:07
Speaker 1: off bang that stuff. Once they got out of Hamburg
35:11
Speaker 1: and got the suits and started singing about love Bang,
35:15
Speaker 1: that was popular. And so I think because of that
35:19
Speaker 1: they have to carry a certain baggage. The students that
35:24
Speaker 1: don't have that problem. It was so obscure and so small,
35:28
Speaker 1: and we'd go places sometimes if we if we went
35:31
Speaker 1: out of the Detroit area and maybe went across to Ohio,
35:35
Speaker 1: we'd have twenty people. You know, that was it, you know,
35:39
Speaker 1: so little by little the group became more popular later,
35:45
Speaker 1: and I think for that reason, and as our listeners
35:49
Speaker 1: are younger, although there are a lot of old people
35:52
Speaker 1: who like it, you know. But I think that might
35:55
Speaker 1: have something to do with it. Although I've been really
35:57
Speaker 1: happy that the group gets included more and more in
36:03
Speaker 1: discussion and portrayal of what's called classic rock, because it
36:08
Speaker 1: is classic suck it away you know in a way.
36:11
Speaker 1: But you know, so I would say it might have
36:14
Speaker 1: something to do with that, and the music also was
36:18
Speaker 1: cut clean, like a Corvette, like Ferrari, like no Gucci,
36:25
Speaker 1: like Jean Prouvet, like clean cut lines done very very simply.
36:32
Speaker 1: Maybe helps it age pretty well. The music hits hard
36:36
Speaker 1: and it kind of it has its power, but it's
36:39
Speaker 1: not it's not grabber music. It's not music that reaches
36:44
Speaker 1: right out and take sure you know you know not
36:48
Speaker 1: those not those first two. And part of a lot
36:51
Speaker 1: of that was the personality of the brothers. They were
36:56
Speaker 1: just drawn back individuals, both of them and Um did
37:03
Speaker 1: not put themselves forward very easily, did not say a
37:06
Speaker 1: lot very easily, just had something a slow groove. It
37:12
Speaker 1: might have been because they lost their father at a keytone,
37:18
Speaker 1: and I think it was traumatic for them. They were
37:22
Speaker 1: in their young teens, and I remember Scott saying toward
37:27
Speaker 1: the end of his life, so well, we just didn't
37:29
Speaker 1: have the guidance. There was a comic named Jonathan Ross
37:35
Speaker 1: who has a popular show in the UK, and we
37:38
Speaker 1: played his show and then we sat for a talk
37:42
Speaker 1: and he sort of asked the brothers. You know, I said, now,
37:46
Speaker 1: if you hadn't been in the Stooges, what would you
37:51
Speaker 1: have done with your life? And immediately didn't miss a beat.
37:56
Speaker 1: Jet pilot race car driver like, yeah, bag right, I was.
38:06
Speaker 1: I wanted to cheer at the boy. Yeah. Honestly, the
38:10
Speaker 1: father had been a marine fighter pilot. Yeah, and I
38:15
Speaker 1: think he had trouble adjusting to life after that experience.
38:20
Speaker 1: After the war was over. He was a macho man,
38:24
Speaker 1: you know, and he was he was teaching was to
38:26
Speaker 1: be a jet pilot, the other way, to be a
38:29
Speaker 1: race car driver a minute, so yeah, yeah, yeah, but
38:34
Speaker 1: there was an abrupt stop to that and all of
38:36
Speaker 1: a sudden, you know, I think it affected them in
38:40
Speaker 1: a deep way. Would you say you were very different
38:45
Speaker 1: than the other members of the band, or would you
38:48
Speaker 1: say you were very different from everybody? Well, I'd say
38:55
Speaker 1: the latter. I didn't realized that at the time. I
38:58
Speaker 1: thought it was just different from them. But of all
39:01
Speaker 1: the people with whom I wanted to communicate, they were
39:06
Speaker 1: the most difficult to communicate with. It was. It was
39:10
Speaker 1: a real challenge, and I did manage and we did
39:15
Speaker 1: some great stuff together. But yeah, that's a good point.
39:19
Speaker 1: I never thought about it that way. And I read
39:24
Speaker 1: an interview years ago with one of our one of
39:27
Speaker 1: our roadies. He was now I'm a very mature man
39:32
Speaker 1: and works at Chrysler. And he just said, well, the
39:38
Speaker 1: rest of the band they were just you know, they're
39:41
Speaker 1: just regular guys from from down river. But you know,
39:46
Speaker 1: he's not regular. So that was his point of view.
39:50
Speaker 1: I listened to him, and I thought, oh, maybe, so
39:54
Speaker 1: maybe I'm a little different, possible. I think I think
39:57
Speaker 1: the difference is and it's not any uh, it's not
40:00
Speaker 1: a good or bad. It just seems like you have
40:03
Speaker 1: a more let's call it an artistic temperament and good
40:07
Speaker 1: and bad comes along with that. And they had a
40:10
Speaker 1: more workman like jet pilot, you know, mentality, And those
40:16
Speaker 1: are just two very different ways. Even though they had
40:19
Speaker 1: they had a lot of artistic talent, yes, you know,
40:23
Speaker 1: but that's different. They could do stuff really well if
40:26
Speaker 1: you gave them the right setting. Wow, yeah they could execute.
40:31
Speaker 1: But yes, you had a different vision than they had.
40:35
Speaker 1: And that's yes I did. And against better or worse,
40:38
Speaker 1: it's just they're all kinds of people with different strengths
40:40
Speaker 1: and weaknesses. And if they were like you, the students
40:44
Speaker 1: wouldn't be like the Stuges. So the fact that it
40:46
Speaker 1: is what it is is it was perfect. Well, you
40:49
Speaker 1: know years later when the rom did some interviews when
40:55
Speaker 1: we weren't together, before we reunited and then even after,
40:58
Speaker 1: where he said, yeah, you know, we could have been
41:02
Speaker 1: the American Stones, And what I would say to that was, no,
41:08
Speaker 1: the American Stones are aerosmiths. And that's because the way
41:14
Speaker 1: things are done in America. If you're going to be
41:16
Speaker 1: the American Stones, you need a singer who can sing
41:20
Speaker 1: rings around Mick Jagger. You need a guitar player who
41:24
Speaker 1: can play more cleanly and incisively than Keith Richards. You
41:29
Speaker 1: need a band that can do a range of music
41:33
Speaker 1: that's palatable to a large group in a nation of
41:37
Speaker 1: three hundred million. That's that's the nature of our of
41:42
Speaker 1: the USA. And you know that wasn't what we were
41:45
Speaker 1: ever going to be good at. But but that's how
41:48
Speaker 1: they felt, you know, what Ron felt about it, not Scott.
41:52
Speaker 1: Scott was a little more savvy than that. But that's
41:59
Speaker 1: what I would say, Yeah, there was. I had a
42:01
Speaker 1: particular once I got into it with them, and you know,
42:06
Speaker 1: you look, you start out where you are. So there
42:09
Speaker 1: we were in Detroit. Our contemporaries were Bob Seger, tedw
42:15
Speaker 1: Detroit Wheels were more earlier than all of us, but
42:20
Speaker 1: still there was an influence. There was the MC five,
42:24
Speaker 1: of course, Scott Richard Case, various local bands, and then
42:29
Speaker 1: later when they were exposed to our seeing Alice Cooper
42:35
Speaker 1: moved from Phoenix in the Detroit So those that was
42:38
Speaker 1: your competition and also your colleagues. So we kind of
42:43
Speaker 1: worked from that and tried to find our own niche
42:48
Speaker 1: that worked for us. And I was thinking about it
42:50
Speaker 1: twenty four to seven, as you do when you're young.
42:54
Speaker 1: But were you friends with all those guys? Yeah? Friendly, absolutely, yeah,
42:59
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah. Bob Seeger was the guy who really
43:03
Speaker 1: boy that he put the nail in any chance of
43:07
Speaker 1: my straight life when he came to my high school
43:11
Speaker 1: and he had a band called the Decibels. At the time,
43:14
Speaker 1: they were what people called a greaser band, and they'd
43:17
Speaker 1: grease their hairback, wear batching suits and they played mostly
43:21
Speaker 1: in instrumentals beautifully and I heard him in my high
43:25
Speaker 1: school auditorium and then way had sounded coming out of
43:28
Speaker 1: those amps and I was like, yo, just did something
43:33
Speaker 1: to me, electrified me, you know, And they're playing like
43:37
Speaker 1: ventures that sort of music and wow, you know. And
43:41
Speaker 1: then later we'd play the same place as he did,
43:44
Speaker 1: and I'd listened to his singles as he was trying
43:47
Speaker 1: to develop a style, and I knew him and we
43:51
Speaker 1: got along nice, and yeah, of course I got along
43:54
Speaker 1: great with Alice Cooper and all the guys, Glenn Buxton
43:58
Speaker 1: and all that whole bunch and the MC five were like,
44:02
Speaker 1: we could go over to their house and eat a
44:04
Speaker 1: peanut butter sandwich. Their girlfriends would sow my leather pants.
44:10
Speaker 1: You know. Was very very collegial like that. Ted was
44:14
Speaker 1: a little different, but at one point I remember talking
44:19
Speaker 1: to him about he was curious about maybe having me
44:23
Speaker 1: do vocals for him, and it wasn't going to be
44:27
Speaker 1: the right fit for me. But it was a really
44:30
Speaker 1: nice scene where you felt that you could get things
44:34
Speaker 1: done and go out and play and enjoy life and
44:38
Speaker 1: enjoy your music. Within the southern Michigan area, there was
44:43
Speaker 1: also an interesting guy named Terry Knight, and he was
44:47
Speaker 1: a DJ on CKLW in Detroit, and he had a
44:51
Speaker 1: band called Terry Knight in the Pack and he would
44:55
Speaker 1: imitate the look and the sound of the top English
44:59
Speaker 1: bands at the time, and it was a crack band.
45:03
Speaker 1: And that band was later what became Grand Funk Railroad
45:09
Speaker 1: Terry when he did him make it said Okay, I'm
45:11
Speaker 1: not the cigarette he wore, I'm the manager. Yeah, and
45:16
Speaker 1: that was that was them. And they were a crack
45:18
Speaker 1: three piece boy Wicked, Wicked, what are great? They were
45:22
Speaker 1: great players, really really great, you know. And question Mark
45:27
Speaker 1: that was a huge, yeah, huge influence when I when
45:31
Speaker 1: I was yeah, I was still a drummer and I
45:33
Speaker 1: went to play Saginaw where he's from. Saganaw. His people
45:38
Speaker 1: picked the cherries. A lot of people from Mexican descent
45:43
Speaker 1: came up and would picking cherries there in Saginaw Valley.
45:47
Speaker 1: And these girls came to gag. They said, well that
45:51
Speaker 1: was pretty good. But have you heard of question Mark?
45:54
Speaker 1: And I was like, no, wow, And then I heard him.
45:57
Speaker 1: It just boy blew me out. You know. He so
46:01
Speaker 1: that particular number, but he also had other cool numbers
46:05
Speaker 1: he added down by the railroad tracks and a lot
46:08
Speaker 1: of good numbers. We're going to pause for another quick break,
46:12
Speaker 1: and then we'll be back with the rest of Rick
46:13
Speaker 1: Rubin's conversation with Iggy Pop. We're back with Rick Rubin
46:21
Speaker 1: and Iggy Pop. Why do you think there was so
46:23
Speaker 1: much good music going on in Detroit at that time.
46:26
Speaker 1: Like everyone you mentioned, you talk about your group of contemporaries,
46:30
Speaker 1: use to the local artists at the time, and every
46:32
Speaker 1: one of them, whether you like them all or not,
46:34
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. Every one of them is great. There was
46:38
Speaker 1: a positive energy because it was the heyday of the
46:42
Speaker 1: Detroit muscle car culture. They were making beautiful cars that
46:48
Speaker 1: were exciting and fun and looked great and sounded great
46:53
Speaker 1: and were great to drive, and in a wide range.
46:56
Speaker 1: There was a lot of work for everybody. There was
46:59
Speaker 1: some urbanism but also a lot of open space. And
47:05
Speaker 1: there was a very, very large migration from the mid
47:10
Speaker 1: South Tennessee and Kentucky to the Detroit area during the
47:15
Speaker 1: Second World War to bolster the auto plants for the
47:19
Speaker 1: war effort. And it never really ended. It just kept
47:23
Speaker 1: on right up through the sixties. I grew up my
47:26
Speaker 1: trailer camp. Where I grew up was on the side
47:29
Speaker 1: of that road. It was a two lane blacktop YS
47:32
Speaker 1: twenty three, also known as the Hillbilly Highway, and went
47:36
Speaker 1: from Tennessee right up to Detroit, and there was a
47:40
Speaker 1: natural hands on power without There were similar things going
47:45
Speaker 1: on out here with the Oki culture transported to southern California,
47:52
Speaker 1: especially Orange County, you know, so you had people who
47:56
Speaker 1: you didn't have to have. You didn't really have to
48:00
Speaker 1: graduate high school to get a good job somewhere and
48:04
Speaker 1: have a good time, and then your kids might start
48:07
Speaker 1: playing guitar in the garage and would have an optimism
48:12
Speaker 1: that would allow them to go do things. That's what
48:15
Speaker 1: I would say, and that that existed there in Michigan.
48:19
Speaker 1: In Chicago or New York, those were bigger cities, so
48:25
Speaker 1: the groups had to be more realistic about everything, had
48:29
Speaker 1: to be very professional, and it was harder to get
48:32
Speaker 1: everything together for your rehearsal. It's that sort of thing,
48:36
Speaker 1: but not quite so in the Midwest. But you can't
48:40
Speaker 1: list ten great artists that came out of New York
48:44
Speaker 1: at that time, musical artists, it doesn't exist. No, no,
48:48
Speaker 1: you can't because it was too just too tight. Everything
48:52
Speaker 1: was too tight. And until the synthetic music came along,
48:56
Speaker 1: disco worked for New York people because they had a
48:59
Speaker 1: more Latin and Afro American energy to it, but it
49:05
Speaker 1: was harder. I mean the Young Rascals that was a
49:09
Speaker 1: very great barband, you know, killer barband that and then
49:14
Speaker 1: they get professional writers and work with them and make
49:17
Speaker 1: a great record, but it's different. The big City's great.
49:22
Speaker 1: In another way, I think it worked for duopop from him,
49:27
Speaker 1: of course, because because you could just get together on
49:30
Speaker 1: the street corner. And then there was all the music
49:32
Speaker 1: that came out of the playgrounds later of the Bronx
49:35
Speaker 1: and you know Brooklyn and all that, because you could
49:39
Speaker 1: steal some electricity and suddenly there were boomboxes and things change.
49:45
Speaker 1: Did you know Johnson Claire? I knew John. Tell me
49:51
Speaker 1: everything about okay. John sycclair was a guy. He learned
49:57
Speaker 1: his music really in the joint. He'd done it. He'd
50:00
Speaker 1: done something. I don't know what he did. He spent
50:02
Speaker 1: a year or two in the joint, and he there
50:05
Speaker 1: he learned about all the great Atlantic records and all
50:09
Speaker 1: the great jazz records. And he was a kind of
50:13
Speaker 1: a kind of a Henry the Eighth character. He had.
50:19
Speaker 1: He was a very large man, like a large knockkneed
50:24
Speaker 1: man with a large girth, knock knees, and wild hairdo
50:29
Speaker 1: and was very interested in promoting free love, free everything,
50:36
Speaker 1: free food, free music. We don't need songs, we don't
50:41
Speaker 1: need money, we don't need this and this and that.
50:43
Speaker 1: And he started several communes in the Detroit area. One
50:49
Speaker 1: was called trans Love Energies, another was the God I
50:53
Speaker 1: can't remember what he called the MC five. He had
50:56
Speaker 1: a musical commune two which centered around the MC five
51:02
Speaker 1: and then finally culminated in something called the White Panther Party.
51:07
Speaker 1: And they were going to be you know. He also
51:10
Speaker 1: had a cider. He liked to be tough, and so
51:13
Speaker 1: they there are MC five roadies were all big and tough,
51:18
Speaker 1: and I remember Fred Smith told the story once that
51:23
Speaker 1: early in their gestation, to prove your place in the band,
51:28
Speaker 1: to make sure everybody was a worthy band member, they
51:32
Speaker 1: all had to fight each other, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah,
51:38
Speaker 1: to make sure, okay, there's no whips of this bad right.
51:42
Speaker 1: So so they were they were really interesting on that
51:46
Speaker 1: like that, and John would egg them on in a
51:48
Speaker 1: certain direction. And he was also doing poetry. And he
51:53
Speaker 1: liked to get up with the band about halfway through
51:56
Speaker 1: their live sets when he and play alto sacks and
51:59
Speaker 1: he didn't play any melodies or any Yeah, he'd get
52:02
Speaker 1: up and really liked to show. But his big the
52:07
Speaker 1: big thing that blew my mind about John was that
52:12
Speaker 1: at one point they no longer could stay in Detroit
52:15
Speaker 1: because the police were coming around trying to bust them
52:18
Speaker 1: for marijuana at that time, trying to bust them for
52:22
Speaker 1: LSD parties. So they moved to ann Arbor, which a
52:25
Speaker 1: little college town, and this is nineteen sixty nine, and
52:29
Speaker 1: they rented an old fraternity house type of house, right,
52:34
Speaker 1: one of these big old Victorian houses that are on
52:37
Speaker 1: every college campus with like twelve bedrooms, run down and
52:41
Speaker 1: somebody wants to rent it. And they lived there, and
52:45
Speaker 1: they called at the White Panther their headquarters, and they
52:48
Speaker 1: printed a postcard, you know, a regular cardboard postcard like
52:54
Speaker 1: people used at the time to send notes in the mail.
52:57
Speaker 1: And one side of the postcard was purple with a
53:00
Speaker 1: white springing panther and on the reverse side it said
53:05
Speaker 1: White Panther Party, our program rock and roll, dope fucking
53:13
Speaker 1: in the streets. And you know that, boy, you know,
53:19
Speaker 1: holy shit. I mean when they we had a police department,
53:22
Speaker 1: and you know that attracted their attention right away, you know,
53:27
Speaker 1: So he would push the envelope. He was a provocateur
53:30
Speaker 1: jon and had a sense of humor about everything and
53:34
Speaker 1: liked to like to smoke dope and make love with
53:38
Speaker 1: his He had a wonderful partner, a girl from Germany
53:43
Speaker 1: who was a very dogmatically artistic person named Lenny Sinclair
53:48
Speaker 1: and is as huge as he was. She was tiny
53:51
Speaker 1: and slim, but Lenny was a good photographer and also
53:56
Speaker 1: took super eight footage and really good photos of everything
54:00
Speaker 1: happening at the time, and her stuff is the real
54:04
Speaker 1: best document of Michigan rock at that time. And she's
54:08
Speaker 1: still she's still living there in Detroit. John at one point,
54:12
Speaker 1: I think he was in Amsterdam for quite some time
54:15
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure where he is now. He was
54:17
Speaker 1: doing poetry. He's just a very h He's one of
54:23
Speaker 1: the most righteous people I've ever met, without making a
54:26
Speaker 1: big deal about it, but he's kind of shocked me
54:30
Speaker 1: at certain times. And there was a one time when
54:34
Speaker 1: the MC five We're going to go to Chicago to
54:38
Speaker 1: play during the big showdown at the convention I think
54:45
Speaker 1: was the Republican or Democratic convention in Chicago that resulted
54:49
Speaker 1: in the police beatings, and they went to play in
54:52
Speaker 1: the park and he wanted the stooges to come and
54:56
Speaker 1: do it, and I said, no, I'm not that's not
54:59
Speaker 1: that's something I'm not doing that He said, well, you're
55:02
Speaker 1: with us or you're not, you know sort of thing.
55:04
Speaker 1: And I said, well, I'm not going to say I'm not,
55:07
Speaker 1: but I'm not going. So there was a little difference there.
55:12
Speaker 1: But he's a good man, but there seems to be
55:15
Speaker 1: certain unbending things there. And he was a force in
55:21
Speaker 1: Michigan rock. There was him, and then on the other hand,
55:25
Speaker 1: there was just an eccentric school teacher named Russ Gibb
55:31
Speaker 1: who just liked kids and liked music, and he was
55:34
Speaker 1: the one who put together the Psychedelic Ballroom and did
55:37
Speaker 1: things like, you know, the kind of guy mortgages his
55:40
Speaker 1: house to run the club, that kind of thing, and
55:44
Speaker 1: made a lot of things happen for people. And then
55:47
Speaker 1: there was a third force who's still a big manager
55:51
Speaker 1: to this day of Michigan people. That was a guy
55:53
Speaker 1: named Punch Andrews who had a Punch Kid rock for
55:58
Speaker 1: a while. Maybe still does, I don't know, and he
56:01
Speaker 1: did he still does, Bob Seeger, I believe, and Punch
56:05
Speaker 1: just was a very sensible guy who had a string
56:11
Speaker 1: of clubs called the Hideouts in nicer neighborhoods where the
56:15
Speaker 1: kids could have money, you know, and those are nice
56:19
Speaker 1: places to play. We played there, and we were we
56:23
Speaker 1: were proud to be able to get up to where
56:26
Speaker 1: you could play one of Punch's clubs. It was Johnson
56:29
Speaker 1: Claire older than you guys are same age, Yeah, a
56:32
Speaker 1: little older, like two years, three years. I'm not sure
56:36
Speaker 1: I would say maybe more. I'm just guessing maybe five
56:40
Speaker 1: six years. Maybe just that edge that next you know
56:44
Speaker 1: when you're when you're very young, or I would say
56:46
Speaker 1: in music in general, five years or a generation. So
56:50
Speaker 1: maybe like felt like that, I felt like five and
56:53
Speaker 1: did He'm not sure did he put the MC five
56:55
Speaker 1: together or were they already a group when they were
56:59
Speaker 1: listen they were guts interesting, they were good cover band.
57:04
Speaker 1: They were really effing good cover band. And I saw
57:07
Speaker 1: them at the ann Arbor Armory covering stones and pretty
57:12
Speaker 1: things and motown songs and they were just already very,
57:18
Speaker 1: very good. And Wayne Kramer tells me, I don't remember
57:22
Speaker 1: no recollection on this, but apparently they asked me to
57:27
Speaker 1: drum for them at one point and I didn't. I
57:30
Speaker 1: said no, I'm going to try to do my own thing.
57:33
Speaker 1: But I don't remember that. But yeah, no, they were
57:36
Speaker 1: good covering. They were writing and it was a much
57:40
Speaker 1: different thing. But They were already tight and good in
57:43
Speaker 1: a similar way to the members in Grand Funk Railroad,
57:48
Speaker 1: Mark Farner and those guys Great Drummer and Grand Funk.
57:52
Speaker 1: It's very very good. Also were a good cover type
57:57
Speaker 1: band originally. And then how did they switch into being
58:00
Speaker 1: the MC five we know. I think that had a
58:03
Speaker 1: lot to do with John Wow. I think it was
58:07
Speaker 1: John in coming in in the way. I don't know
58:10
Speaker 1: that you hear stories anyway about Andrew Oldham, who I
58:15
Speaker 1: met years ago, sort of telling the Rolling Stones you
58:20
Speaker 1: need to write songs, you know, add listen, the Beatles
58:25
Speaker 1: are the good guys. You're going to be the bad guys,
58:28
Speaker 1: you know. So yeah, you know so I think there
58:33
Speaker 1: was a little bit of that, you know. And then
58:35
Speaker 1: the songwriting their point a departure of writing a song,
58:41
Speaker 1: it was a little more dogmatic and it had to
58:45
Speaker 1: generally be something that was acceptable to the whole group.
58:50
Speaker 1: You know. That's tough to pull off in songwriting, you know,
58:55
Speaker 1: And they did it a couple of times to kick
58:57
Speaker 1: out the jams is you know, and that's there's a
59:00
Speaker 1: dogma to that. Okay, this is what I'm doing, this
59:03
Speaker 1: is what it means. Let me do it, get out
59:06
Speaker 1: of the way and everything, and the guys, know, the
59:09
Speaker 1: guys are all having fun, that sort of thing, you know,
59:12
Speaker 1: you know in the dressing room, getting hazy and etc. Etc.
59:17
Speaker 1: That was their particular way, and then they carried it. Eventually.
59:21
Speaker 1: They had some songs like a Human Being lawn Mower
59:25
Speaker 1: was sort of a social critique type of a rock song,
59:30
Speaker 1: you know, so they went more over there. I would
59:33
Speaker 1: say American Ruse was one of their songs. You know, hey, hey, hey,
59:39
Speaker 1: take a look around. You know, I finally caught out
59:42
Speaker 1: of the American ruse. You know, you want to have fun,
59:45
Speaker 1: they won't let you that sort of thing. We're gonna
59:48
Speaker 1: pause in a Rick's conversation with Iggy right here and
59:51
Speaker 1: pick back up next week, where Iggy will talk about
59:54
Speaker 1: the artist who inspired his frontman style, working with David Bowie,
59:58
Speaker 1: and the first time he ever bled on stage. But
1:00:01
Speaker 1: before we jump to the credits, let's hear a song
1:00:03
Speaker 1: from Iggy's new album Every Loser. Here's the song, strung
1:00:07
Speaker 1: Out Johnny and see open Overkid, Come on out. It's
1:00:37
Speaker 1: help the Loveday comes composer. It's wis a little too
1:00:44
Speaker 1: saying no God Man me your jung keeping. But Setan
1:00:52
Speaker 1: told me so you're strong out Johnny and you can't
1:01:00
Speaker 1: get away. You're strong out Johnny, and now it's time
1:01:08
Speaker 1: to pay the first time to do se down. First
1:01:19
Speaker 1: time it came again like that. I'll don't all from dumb.
1:01:40
Speaker 1: You'll start up, john You'll start up joy rolling, said
1:01:58
Speaker 1: to Donning Sell bad Boys spooming, don't feel like a
1:02:06
Speaker 1: hero will be forgotten soon. I'm strong out on me
1:02:16
Speaker 1: and I can't get away. I'm strong outarmy and now
1:02:24
Speaker 1: it's time to pay. It's time to second time, time
1:02:41
Speaker 1: out all fun. You're strong Johnny. You're trying out Johnny
1:03:02
Speaker 1: and you can't get It's trying out Jo and now
1:03:11
Speaker 1: it's time to day. It's try Jolene. Nobody loves your soul.
1:03:21
Speaker 1: You ry Choline, that's no yours on strong mind. I'm
1:03:36
Speaker 1: strong mind you joy about Jolin. That was strung out
1:04:22
Speaker 1: Johnny from Iggy Pop's new album Every Loser. You can
1:04:26
Speaker 1: hear the rest of the tracks from his new album
1:04:27
Speaker 1: and other songs we love on a playlist at Broken
1:04:30
Speaker 1: record podcast dot com. You can subscribe to our YouTube
1:04:34
Speaker 1: channel at YouTube dot com slash broken record Podcast, where
1:04:37
Speaker 1: we can find all of our new episodes. You can
1:04:40
Speaker 1: follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is
1:04:44
Speaker 1: produced with help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrell, Ben Holiday,
1:04:48
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, Jennifer Sanchez. Our editor Sophie Crane. Our executive
1:04:53
Speaker 1: producer is Mia LaBelle. Broken Record is a production of
1:04:57
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin,
1:05:01
Speaker 1: consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast
1:05:05
Speaker 1: subscription that offers bonus content an uninterrupted ad pre listening
1:05:09
Speaker 1: for four ninety nine a month. Look for push com
1:05:12
Speaker 1: Plus on Apple Podcasts subscriptions, and if you like our show,
1:05:16
Speaker 1: please remember to share, rate, and review us on your
1:05:19
Speaker 1: podcast staff. Our theme musics by Henny beats On Justin
1:05:23
Speaker 1: Richmond