Original subtitles

Well, here comes Johnny in again with a liquor and a drug

and a flesh and cheese.

He's going to do another 50.

Hey, man, where'd you get that lotion?

I've been hurting since I bought the diamond.

Oh, love, love, love.

Well, now you just hypnotize a chicken.

Now I am just a modern guy.

I thought I had it in the year before.

I got luck for life.

I got luck for life.

I'm worth a million in prizes.

I got a car, truck, film.

I drive a GTO.

I wear a uniform.

A lot of government loans.

I'm worth a million in prizes.

And I'm sick and sleeping on the sidewalk.

No balls in my place.

I don't want to lose my place.

I wear a little handjob.

I'm just a modern guy.

I got love for life.

I got love for life.

Here we go.

I got love for life.

I got to be about nine years old and found myself

fascinated by the industrial hum that was always around

me. Even everything from my father's electric shaver.

which was all the time to the electric space heater in our metal trailer uh

i was about nine i was taken on a tour of the ford motor company assembly main

assembly plant at the river rouge and there i saw my first machine press a

machine press is a giant basically it's it's a metal a metal foundation and a

giant piece of very heavy metal cut in a form and then you put what's about to

become a fender in the middle, and it crashes down, and you pull out the

metal and put another piece in. I loved that sound.

So I began to play the drums around the house.

When I was 14, my parents loaned me the money to get my first drum set, and I

joined a musician's union, put together a band in high school called the

Iguanas.

We played weekends for college fraternity dances, high school sock

hops, and private parties for the next four years of my life, 14 to 18.

I had enrolled for...

college in the university of michigan for one semester uh for september uh

september semester of 1966 or no that was still 65 yeah because i graduated

school in 65 so i went back home to ann arbor the band broke up the rest of them

went on to become bankers or divorce aides or whatever people do and and i

I went to school, to college, which basically insisted of going to the

union in the morning, drink a lot of coffee with sugar in it, and sitting

donuts and thinking, God, I don't really want to be here and do this. This is a

bunch of shit. Oh, my God. And I'd fall asleep, miss the first class, and then

think, if I've missed this class, why not just miss the whole day?

At the same time, I was playing in a band called the Prime Movers. I did that

for about six months until I passed my 19th birthday in April, and I thought,

I've gotten everything out of this town I can.

The band, the Prime Movers, was the number one band in town.

I had studied all my old blues records. I had studied all my English Invasion

records. I already knew my stones of Bob Dylan by heart.

So I decided I wanted to go to Chicago to investigate the blues.

What impressed me about the Chicago Blues at the time, and this was a very

important turning point in my life, was the way when these men played the music,

it almost dripped off their fingers like tree sap, like honey. It was just

oozing out of these guys. And the way they moved was very loose, very like

when they did the music. And it was not a studied thing.

And I thought, my God, you know.

I'm free white, 19.

I'm not 45, 50 years old, and I'm not a Chicago blues man.

What I've got to do now is I've got to take what I've learned here, and I've

to apply it to my own experience.

I'm going to go home to Detroit, and I'm going to find three or four guys who

are not impressed.

with the music scene, who do not want to imitate British bands, who do not want

to do cover songs, and we're going to make a music that'll blow the roof off

town. Out of the protests over the Vietnam War and the racial violence in

the trikes saw the rise of a band called The Stooges.

Their lead singer was known as Iggy.

No fun for my babe.

No fun.

No fun to hang around.

Feeling that same old way.

No fun to hang around.

Freak out for another day.

This is one of our first rehearsal spots.

This is the basement of my mother's place.

At that time, I discovered the famous three -finger bar chord.

So a lot of just, you know, a lot of songs came from that, like No Fun With

Simply, Moving.

I used to just like...

that came from listening to all that rabbi shankar and stuff you know so as

simple and same with like um um i want to be your dog it started out just being

a jam that

magical

three fingers this this one you didn't borrow you just find you just same thing

i want to be your dog as uh the title came from you see some girl that you

really liked and uh

puts the crudest but kind of polite thing you could say well hey baby i want

be your dog you know that's like all the titles came from like real life playing

there was a lot of always half about turn those amps down and to us the

was the spirit of the music to play clean and quiet you couldn't get into it

wasn't like and the songs were so simple the power the actual physical power the

amplifier that's what brought the song to life

The reason we're here is this is where we were discovered by Danny Fields.

We got done playing. It's the same stage.

The place was packed.

You know, imagine this was late 60s, like 1968.

He was PR for Electra Records, and he hung out with the Velvet Underground.

And he was wearing, you know, shades, the leather jacket. So we get off the

stage, and he goes, how would you guys like to be stars?

Oh, yeah, right, sure. Throw this guy out.

And he was serious.

We used to get those big amps cranking and this room just rang.

The sound just bounced.

You could hear from this. Just imagine Marshall Stacks at 10.

It was so loud, it was hypnotic.

And it would actually, physically, the sound would assault your body where you

couldn't get away from it. You'd feel the bass drum through the PA or the bass

guitar cranked on 10. You could feel it.

Inside. Inside. And that way you couldn't escape it, no matter where you

lot of times I would break a guitar, either on purpose. A lot of times I left

with bloodied hands, or I would just bang the guitar so hard that my hand

be swollen, not feeling any pain until we were done.

This is what we call just let one go. Every guy would do his own freeform.

And walk off stage, I remember so many times of beautiful harmony feedback.

You actually hear, mmm, go through the different tones, just the whole room.

It's like you, mmm.

You're swallowed up, and we just leave the stage. And the roadies would let the

amps go for maybe five minutes, come off and click it off, and everyone would

just be, huh?

Listen to some songs.

Oh, yeah, you want to give your opinion on that one

Yeah

How did this song come about?

It started as the first two chords.

Like most Stooges songs, we were stoned on our smoke and jamming, and Ron came

up with the...

Two chords over and over, which is just this one.

Just those two back and forth.

And then I was the one who said, I had been a written poetry in high school and

songs in my early band.

I was the one who said, let's take this and do a little more with it, make it

into a song.

And I used Johnny Cash's I Walk the Line as a model for this.

If you could actually hear it, if you listened to I Walk the Line, you got, I

keep a close watch on this.

Let's see, wait.

Wait a minute. I keep a close watch on this heart of mine.

Boom, I keep my eyes wide open all the time. I keep the ends out for the eyes

that bind. Because you're mine, I walk the line.

So we used that structure in this song.

Then the middle eight is a typical Stones middle eight. I did use a lot of

Stones. I took a lot from them.

And the Velvets. A lot from the Velvets.

The Velvets at that time was an influential art band and affected me a

And then the words were just, again, the words were an attempt. What we didn't

want to do was sing a song like...

Oh, baby, I'm going to keep on rocking. And I'm going to rock your pussy.

And I'm going to rock your little ears.

And rock, rock, rock. You know, that was right out. I wanted to make songs about

how we were living in the Midwest.

And what was this life about?

And basically, there was no fun and nothing to do. So I wrote about that.

It's 1969, okay?

Walked across the USA.

It was another year for me and you.

Another year with nothing to do.

It was another year for me and you.

Another year with nothing to do.

This is the house. This is the house also where we, like most people at that

time, have experimented with drugs.

And those experiments with the drugs, how did that go?

Was it very heavy?

Well, this was the first place that we all took acid.

I know Jim tripped almost every day for a summer here.

And right down the street, as a matter of fact, was our local dope dealer where

we would score our acid.

You know, for me it was like a once a week thing. But that's how we thought,

know, we really got to know each other and formulated that real tightness that

carried us through.

We were actually also selling lids of marijuana out of this house.

Many times the police would come to the door, but they'd be undercover agents,

you know, with crew cuts, white socks and brown shoes.

as soon as you see him you know that it's the man so but i don't know luck

with us and we never got popped you you get to know yourself in here yeah did

you talk about what kind of music always amazing listening the whole experience

in this house consisted of talking about music practicing but this is where we

listened to a lot of music and got like for example well when we first lived

here the jimmy hendrix first album came out and our manager who became our

manager went to uh the monterey pop festival where hendrix first played i

remember it was like nine in the morning we never left our door we never locked

our door he came busting and going i've got this great music you won't believe

so once that hooked us to hendrix we listened to it day and night day and

so uh

Well, I have.

Let me prove it to you.

Why did you play guitar with your teeth?

Well, actually, I really don't play with my teeth. I play with my ears, my ears

there.

Also for the Stooges, the experiments with drugs demanded their toll. Within

years, the group fell apart due to heroin.

you know like for a spoon what was a spoon of heroin was going for 25 and uh

people actually got up to having hundreds of dollars a day spent on you

keeping their drug habits going just things started missing um the word got

started getting late to jobs drugs really started to interfere with the

performance of the band then people were so swept away by just

The Stooges themselves disappeared, but their musical heritage remained.

Hundreds of punk bands returned to the sound of the Stooges in the mid -1970s,

and countless guitar rock bands of today continue to be influenced by them.

During his concert in Utrecht Iggy recognized the importance of his work

that time. A significant part of the repertoire came from the glorious years

the Stooges.

She got a TV eye.

She got a TV eye on me.

Well, do you see that cat?

Yeah, I love her so.

Well, do you see that cat?

Yeah, I love her so.

She got a TV eye on me.

She's got a demon eye.

She's got a demon eye on me.

Where do you see that cat?

Yeah, I do mean you.

Where do you see that cat?

Yeah, I do mean you.

She's got a demon eye on me.

She got a TV eye.

She got a TV eye on me.

The raw street sound of Iggy and the Stooges was blown into new life in 1976

a group that would change the face of rock and roll drastically.

I want to destroy, pacify, cause I want to

be anarchy.

Now go, buddy.

Anarchy for the UK. It's coming sometime, maybe.

I'll give a wrong time, stop your traffic line.

Tell me about punk rock, because I have heard, I've read all kinds of reviews.

Well, I'll tell you about punk rock. Punk rock is a word used by dilettantes.

heartless manipulators about music that

takes up the energies and the bodies and the hearts and the souls and the time

and the minds of young men who give what they have to it and give everything

they have to it.

And it's a term that's based on contempt.

It's a term that's based in fashion, style, elitism.

Satanism, and everything that's rotten about rock and roll.

I don't know Johnny Rotten, but I'm sure he puts as much

blood and sweat into what he does as Sigmund Freud did.

Johnny Rotten.

Listen,

tell me seriously. I have never seen you perform.

But I've read reviews about vomiting on the stage, about sticking pencils in

your flesh, about bleeding lips, and about all those things. I want to know

purpose behind that. The purpose or the reason?

The purpose or the reason? I vomited. I was ill. I'm not sorry I was ill.

Everyone gets ill sometimes.

And I was ill one evening.

As I felt that I was going to vomit anyway, I decided I may as well do it

some style.

So I did it something like this.

You see, what sounds to you like a

big load of trashy old noise is in fact

the brilliant music of a genius, myself.

and that music is so powerful that it's quite beyond my control

and uh when i'm in the grips of it i don't feel pleasure and i

don't feel pain either physically or emotionally do you understand what i'm

talking about have you ever have you ever felt like that when you just when

just you couldn't feel anything and you didn't want to either you know like that

some Critics. You understand what I'm saying, sir? You don't have to call me

sir.

No, I don't have to.

I forgot your name.

At least I go with the one I was born with.

That was a necessary cheap shot. Iggy Pop is a great name for a rock star.

The songs grew into manifestos of the punk movement.

was not doing much in 1975 he invited me to come along on his world tour station

to station in 76 and i had never seen anybody in

my life work as hard as that guy did i mean he was getting up he was getting up

at eight in the morning to travel by car because he didn't fly to buy car all

day to gig in the car would always be a fresh collection of the newest tapes by

artists from all over the world, studying the stuff, listening to it.

Waits, he knew about Tom Waits before anybody.

Kraftwerk, he knew about Kraftwerk before anybody. So not just, oh, I'm

this kind of music, man, and that's all I like. He gets to the town, does a

couple of interviews, catches a half -hour sleep, and he's on stage doing the

show. Then after the show...

The guy won't stop.

He's out checking out whatever band is in town, knocking on his guitarist's

at four in the morning, let's write a new song.

I was exhausted just watching it.

I had never been exposed.

Up till then, you got to remember, basically in many ways, I had never been

exposed to proper touring. And I watched what he was doing and I said, I'm going

to do that too someday. This guy's really learned, knows what it is to

wonder he's doing so well and I'm not.

Iggy learned a lot from Bowie, but Bowie felt this was also his advantage with

the collaboration.

In 1983 Bowie scored a world hit with a song he wrote together with Iggy.

Louder than the solar star crashing.

I'm a guest without my china door.

The American writer Anne Weirer accompanied Iggy during a tour in 1981

experience in writing Iggy Pop's biography, I Need More.

She discovered how it all started.

They've come with love stories.

They've come with letters. They've come with flowers.

They've come with the Jack Daniels he liked.

They've come with any drug you can imagine.

I mean, we even had Elvis Presley's doctor at the door. I mean, come on. You

know, one girl told me a Bruce Springsteen story where she wanted to

kill herself.

And then she decided better to kill him because then he would be hers.

And I thought, that is very, very heavy about being a rock star.

I've got my license to live.

They won't give it up.

So I stand at the world's end.

I'm trying to break in.

Oh, I know it's not for me.

And the fight of it all makes me sad and ill.

Stop on the field.

I'm trying to break in.

Oh, I know it's not for me.

I'm excited at all.

Makes me sad.

That's when I...

you get out

That's why.

What you get out of it?

Some weird things.

Some weird things.

Some weird things.

The kid in me is still very much alive, but he's kind of under

my management now.

And when I get excited about a subject or talking, I'll talk like I'm talking

to you. My voice even goes up a couple octaves.

If I'm going to control myself, then I speak in a lower register, like this.

The face becomes more calm.

The eyes contract.

The suspicion sets in.

My mind is sizing up the people around me, what I'm doing, and how it

may profit me.

But then we're back to the other thing.

You see what I mean?

So you've got these two people, and that's kind of how I keep it together.

I'm gonna meet all my friends, gonna have myself a ball, kill my friends,

tell them all that I'm a wild one.

Oh yeah, I'm a wild one.

I'm gonna break and lose, gonna keep on moving lives, keep my dreams, baby, I'm

a real wild child.

Well, I'm a real wild one, and I like a wild one. You know, the world's all

crazy, everything.

They say I'm a wild one.

Oh, yeah, I'm a wild one.

I'm a wild one. I'm a real wild child.

Well, I'm a wild one.

I'm a wild one.

I'm a wild one.

Oh, baby, I'm a wild one.

I'm gonna break the blue.

Keep on living life.

Keep on singing. Baby, I'm a real wild dog.

You've never had contact with Iggy since those days?

Oh, gee, I can't even remember. Probably the last time I saw him was when he

played The Second Chance in Ann Arbor, and that must have been like four years

ago. You know, now that his parents have moved from Ann Arbor, he has no real

reason to come back. Perhaps I'll see him when he comes back, when he has a

album out, and I'm sure they'll tour. If he calls me up and gives me backstage

passes, I'll go to his show.

But you still talk. You're not enemies or something? No, not really. I'm always

glad to see him. We've been through so much together.

Even if there is some sort of bitterness, when you see the guy, you

all the good things. You tend to forget the bad.

What's the bitterness then about?

Well, for me, the drug thing, I really thought the students had a chance to be

like the American Rolling Stones.

And I've really put a lot of time and energy, and I...

Never wanted it to go away. And I know under certain circumstances it would

something. But that for me, the chance not to continue on with something that I

think would have been really still happening today, how much better we

have gotten and grown.

I miss not seeing it reach its full potential.

But then again, maybe it did.

What I'm going to concentrate on now for about the next year is going out and

playing gigs.

Because I'd like to... Oh, give me some coffee, will you?

Because I'd like to... I'd like to nail that down and put myself up where I feel

my music should be.

Not, again, when I said as big as David, I don't need to be that big. I just

like to be pretty big.

As big as I can get.

I'm just a modern guy.

Of course I had it in the ear before.

I got love for life.

I got love for life.

Now let's go, asshole bitch.

I got love for life.

Love for life.

Love for life.

Love for life.

Love for life. Thank you.