Random Bloody and Vomit-Filled Behind-The-Scenes Stories Of Iggy Pop, The Godfather Of Punk (19 items)

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  (#1) He Was Lifted Off The Ground By A Gorilla Suit-Clad Elton John

  One glorious night in the early 1970s, Iggy Pop had an incident with Elton John, who just so happened to be wearing a gorilla suit. It all began when Pop was using during a show in Atlanta. The night before, he used so much, he passed out in the bushes next to a Days Inn. When he woke up, he couldn't talk.

  "The preparation for the gig was just [giving] me with enough things to get me up to where I could open my mouth and form a word, but I still couldn't phrase on a beat," he said in an interview for the book Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk.

  During The Stooges' set, Elton John came out wearing a gorilla costume. He picked Iggy up from behind. "I was like, 'Oh my god! What can I do? I couldn't fight him. I could barely stand," Iggy said.

  Rock photographer Jim Marshall attended the show, and remembers: "Iggy was so [messed] up...he had no idea what was happening to him. Iggy was really shrinking in terror, like he didn't know that it wasn't a real gorilla."
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  (#2) He Started Dating A Teen When His First Wife Left After A Month Of Marriage

  Iggy Pop got married and divorced at 21, in 1968. Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton, who was Iggy's best man, wore a Luftwaffe jacket, Knight's Cross, and an Iron Cross to the ceremony. The bride, Wendy, left Iggy about a month or so after they wed. 

  "I was free again. I could roam the streets looking like I used to," Iggy reminisces on his wife's departure. During this period, Iggy spent time around high school students, trying to understand what they were interested in and got up to, so he could use it as material for his lyrics. Through this, he met his Betsy. 

  I never saw anything like that. She was very cute. She was the exact opposite of my wife - blond, white as snow. She was thirteen and she looked at me penetratingly. So I guess you can figure out what happened next.
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  (#3) He Picked A Losing Fight With Angry Bikers At A 1974 Show In New York

  As documented in Lester Bangs's now-infamous March 28, 1977, Village Voice article "Iggy Pop: Blowtorch In Bondage," things got extra wild for The Stooges during a show in Warren, Michigan, on February 7, 1974.  The crowd was reportedly filled with "hostile" bikers, and Iggy wasn't there to play games.

  After a few songs rife with confrontation between the unhinged band, which was coming apart at at the seams, and the agitated bikers, Pop shouted at the crowd “All right, you...wanna hear ‘Louie Louie’? We’ll give you ‘Louie Louie’!” The band proceeded to play Richard Berry's "Louie Louie" for 45 minutes.

  Iggy swapped the songs lyrics for vulgar slurs aimed at the bikers. He then jumped off stage and and took on one of the bikers. Bangs hailed the performance a "triumph."
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  (#4) A Residency At Ungano's In New York City Saw Iggy Vomiting On The Audience 

  In 1970, The Stooges had a four-day residency at New York City's famed Ungano club, during which the band displayed some of its most outlandish behavior. Recalls Scott Kempner, guitarist for proto punk band The Dictators, who went to a few of these shows: "Iggy put life and limb into every show. I saw him bloody every single show."

  Steve Harris, former VP of Elektra records, The Stooges' label (and not to be confused with Iron Maiden's bass player of the same name), recalls: "Iggy took his [junk] out and put it on the speaker. It was just vibrating around. He was very well endowed."

  At one show, Iggy spotted superstar model Geri Miller in the audience. He engaged her in the show in a very bizarre way. A year later, while The Stooges were playing at Electric Circus show in NYC, Miller, recalling Iggy's vomiting, egged him on saying, "Let's see you puke." He proceeded to vomit all over Miller.
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  (#5) He And His Fellow Stooges Decorated The Walls Of Their Detroit Home In An Odd Way

  In 1969-70, Iggy Pop lived with his band in a Detroit-area home dubbed "Fun House." If that name looks familiar, it's because The Stooges' seminal 1970 album, replete with wailing guitars, screeching saxophones, and extended punk jams, was named after the pad. This house wasn't just where the band wrote and recorded some of their tracks; it was where they loaded up on H. 

  The members of the Stooges had some concerning habits during this period, one of which involved pushing used syringes of body fluids all over the walls and ceilings of their home. As outlined in the book Everybody Must Get Stoned: Rock Stars On Drugs, the band would use H, then squirt the fluid collected in their syringes around the house. 
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  (#6) He Sliced Himself To Ribbons At A Show In 1973

  While promoting the release of their third and final (at least for 34 years, until the band reunited) record, Raw Power, in 1973, The Stooges played four nights at Max's Kansas City, a club in New York City. This venue was widely known for being frequented by Andy Warhol and other prominent figures in the New York art scene. One of the performances ended with Iggy Pop spurting blood across the audience.

  Nitebob, who worked at the club at the time and is interviewed in Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History Of Punk, recalls: "Iggy was trying to walk on the tables. Max's had tables all the way up at the front, the stage was too small, and sometimes Iggy would go walking on the tables... I was working the stage that night, and Iggy fell off a table..."

  The table was loaded with glasses, which shattered as Iggy landed on them. Nitebob explains: "He was 20 minutes into the set and I asked him if he wanted to stop the show, because he was cut pretty bad. He had a pretty good gusher going. But he wanted to finish the show, so he went on playing. I was blown away... Alice Cooper wanted him to go to the hospital."

  During the performance, Iggy danced and writhed as normal, spraying all over the audience. Crew tried to seal his wounds with gaffer tape, but failed. The next day, he saw a doctor, and got stiches.
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  (#7) He Defecated Onstage Behind The Band's Amplifiers

  Iggy was on his most iconoclastic behavior on July 3, 1973. Not long after lobbing a watermelon into the crowd at the Civic Arena in St. Clair Shores, he defecated on stage. And it wasn't an accident - he actively chose to relieve himself behind the band's Marshall stacks.

  According to Iggy Pop: Open Up and Bleed, Iggy had an "irresistible urge to empty his bowels" a couple of songs into the band's set. Clad in nothing but bikini briefs and knee-high boots, he ran behind the band's amps and went. When he was done, he ran out from behind the amps and started throwing "stuff" at the crowd. Then, he emptied a cup of water, shoved the ice down his briefs, took it out, "sucked it provocatively", and threw it into the crowd. 
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  (#8) The First Stooges Show Featured Iggy Dancing On Contact Mikes And A Blender Playing Through The PA

  On Halloween night 1967, the Stooges debuted at a house party in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The show was extremely bizarre, antagonistic, and anti-social - everything the band was about. Iggy appeared wearing a thrift store nightgown and tin-foil wig. Uncertain about his vocal chops, he wanted to find other ways to contribute to the band.  "I had the idea that I could make the sound of the whistling wind," he told Rolling Stone. "So I found by putting my thumb over a vacuum cleaner, I think one day I was vacuuming and I went, 'Wow, that's cool!' And later when we started getting gigs, I got a little money and bought an air compressor, because way better! I went professional!"

  As Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton recalled for Please Kill Me: "We invented some instruments that we used at that first show. We had a blender with a little bit of water in it and put a mike right down in it, and just turned it on. We played that for like fifteen minutes before we went onstage. It was a great sound, especially going through the PA, all cranked up. 
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  (#9) He Once Compared The Stooges To Early Christianity And Himself To Hitler

  Iggy Pop had a revelation after the gonzo New York City Stooges performances during which he puked all over the audience. He came to understand that the audience needed his antics, and he would give it to them. "It was like Hitler said, 'Go for the lowest common denominator,'" he recalled. 

  He continued this train of thought in an interview for Please Kill Me, comparing The Stooges fan base to the early days Christianity: “With The Stooges, that was really necessary, because those were the only people that really dug us. When we first started out, our fans were just a mess - it was like early Christianity.”
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  (#10) A Loyal Stooges Fan Always Provided Iggy With Coke In NYC, And The Band Once Shared With Miles Davis

  The Stooges played frequent gigs in New York City in their heyday of the late '60s and early '70s, during which time the band made many friends and picked up a small legion of devoted fans, while hobknobbing with some of their musical heroes. One such fan always made sure the band had coke while in NYC. 

  As guitarist Ron Asheton remembers: "Every time we played New York, this guy would come by our show and give The Stooges a little bottle of coke, totally of his own volition. So we're sitting backstage with Miles Davis, and this guy finally arrives and just throws down a big old pile. Imagine that great scene - Miles Davis' head right next to all the heads of the Stooges going 'SNNNORRRRT!'"
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  (#11) He Gave A Totally Bizarre Interview On TV In 1981, During Which He Was Inexplicably Missing A Tooth

  The Tom Snyder Show was definitely not prepared for what happened during its on-screen interview with Iggy Pop on February 12, 1981. The artist showed up, missing front tooth and all and, after shouting to some unseen person offstage, "Is this mic on?," described why he vomits on audience members.

  Iggy Pop: The first time I ever did it, it was out of frustration. I just felt very bad at the time, and music is an expressive medium that sometimes – sometimes – can get out of hand, you know, and suddenly maybe you'll be playing a tune and you really want to express the truth. And the truth of that moment was that I ought to be cut, so I cut myself.

  Tom Snyder: You see that scares some people.

  Iggy Pop: Well, that was a long time ago, man. What were you doing that year?
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  (#12) He Shared A Sedative With His Girlfriend's Two Dogs

  According to Bebe Buell, Iggy's girlfriend in the early '70s (and, incidentally, mother to Liv Tyler, daughter of Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler), Iggy Pop had two sides to him. There was Iggy, who could be "creepy and mean and nasty" and Jim Osterberg (his birth name), a considerate house-guest who cooked her omelets, vacuumed, and took care of her dogs. Sometimes the two overlapped.

  As outlined in article in the Guardian, Bebe left Iggy alone at her place while out on a modeling assignment. When she got home, she was so tired she sprawled out on her water bed and fell asleep. Moments later, she was awokened by water seeping through the ceiling. She ran upstairs to the bathroom to find Iggy asleep in the tub with her two dogs, one on each of his shoulders. All three were out cold.

  She shook him awake, and the conversation went as follows:

  Bebe Buell: Jim, what have you done?
  Iggy Pop: Nothing,' he replied, dreamily, 'just a little Valium, relax!
  Bebe Buell: So what's wrong with Puppet and Furburger?
  Iggy Pop: I just gave them a little Valium…

  Bebe furiously rushed her dogs to the ER, where doctors assured her they just had to sleep it off. 
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  (#13) He Got Overzealous With A Watermelon And Gave Someone A Concussion

  According to Paul Trynka's biography Iggy Pop: Open Up and Bleed, Iggy once gave a woman a concussion with a watermelon. It was a hot day at St. Clair Lake, on the border of Michigan and Canada, where The Stooges were performing at an Ice Arena. The band was eating watermelon backstage.

  When showtime arrived, the band took the stage before Iggy, striking the opening chord to "Raw Power." Iggy got a little too excited and stormed from the backstage area with a whole watermelon in his hands. He hurled it into the audience, where it landed on, and allegedly concussed, a woman. It was a harsh introduction for life in the band for guitarist and keyboardist Scott Thurston, who played his first show with The Stooges that day. 
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  (#14) He Terrified Audiences And Inspired The Sex Pistols And The Clash During His London Debut

  Decked out in glam makeup and shiny silver pants, Iggy Pop frightened audiences in the UK with his debut performance at Kings Cross Cinema, London. According to British critic Nick Kent, Iggy "grabbed a [woman] and stared blankly into her face, almost [taking out a guy] who dared to laugh at him... the total effect was more frightening than all the Alice Coopers and Clockwork Orange put together, simply because these guys weren't joking."

  Coincidentally, there were two future rock stars in the audience that night – John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) and Mick Jones, who went on to found the Sex Pistols and The Clash, respectively.
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  (#15) He Lathered Himself Up With Peanut Butter During A Festival Performance In 1970

  Iggy Pop is quite the showman. During The Stooges' 1970 set at Cincinnati Pop Festival, Pop was on his A-game. When he leapt into the crowd, an audience member handed him a jar of peanut butter.

  He proceeded to throw it at the audience, then collapse and smear it all over his body while screaming. 
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  (#16) He Once Screamed 'G'Day! G'Day!' And Trashed David Bowie During A Countdown '80 Interview

  Iggy Pop was in rare form during a now-infamous interview with Molly Meldrum on Countdown '80. Video footage shows the singer bouncing all over his seat and repeatedly yelling "G'day! G'day!" at Meldrum, who sternly asks, "Will you concentrate on the questions?"

  Iggy then took a shot at David Bowie, saying he was just the pianist in his band. 
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  (#17) He Appeared In The Buff On A 1979 Cover Of 'Little Caesar' Magazine

  In the late 1970s, New York-based writer Dennis Cooper launched the first issue of his magazine Little Caesar. The publication was intended as a haven for avant-garde poetry and punk glamour, and came with the tagline "We're young punks just like you."

  Little Caesar only ran for 12 issues, of which Iggy Pop's cover quickly became the most famous. Issue 8 of the magazine depicted a full frontal black-and-white shot of rocker. 
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  (#18) His Tour Rider From 2006 Lists Industrial Fans So He Can 'Wear A Scarf And Pretend To Be In A Bon Jovi Video'

  If you think Morrissey has everyone beat when it comes to snide remarks, think again. Iggy Pop doesn't just have a biting, dark sense of humor on stage. It seeps into every faction of his existence – for example: the star's hilarious concert rider from 2006, as published by The Smoking Gun.

  The rider, allegedly written by roadie Jos Grain, includes two heavy duty fans “so that I can wear a scarf and pretend to be in a Bon Jovi video.”
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  (#19) He Appeared As The Subject In A Nude Drawing Workshop/'Performative Event' Piece For The Brooklyn Museum

  Iggy Pop has never taken issue with being in the buff. His torso is pretty much a staple of his live performance, but what about taking it all off as a senior citizen? In 2016, 69-year-old Iggy bared it all for a Brooklyn art class, which was staged as "a performative event with Iggy Pop as model and subject" by English artist Jeremy Deller.

  This may seem like a softer side of a man better known for slicing himself with glass on stage, but it's pretty radical notion for your average AARP member. The move seemed surprisingly thought-out.

   

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