Iggy Pop People Quotations

My general take on American music since 1969 is that it's just getting stiffer and people are getting more uptight - audience, performance, and palace guard.

I try to beat back the producers and engineers so they - there's not an excess of stuff used to squeeze my voice to make it artificial. There's a person in there, and people will listen; if they hear another person speak to them, they'll listen because it's lonely out here.

The people who were learning from me tended to be more commercial performers who were gonna rip off the salient idea to do it in a way that will sell, but they weren't going for the music.

When the 'godfather of punk' thing started floatin' around, it was, I was really, really embarrassed. I thought I should have a great, big rig and a cape and everything, and it was very embarrassing. And then after a while, you learn that if people call you anything, this is a great gift.

I thought, "Wow, it sounds really stoned anyway." It sounded good to me. I found out that there was a lot in there. what all this comes down to is I was just trying to get in touch with myself. And I met some interesting people in New York who weren't in show business. I even got to know my dentist.

I don't think I'm lucky; I think I have a tough constitution. That's a lot of it. And I've been wise enough to listen to other people. I was unconsciously cultivating as many straight friends as I could.

I can't do it all myself. I'm not that kind of artist, I'm the kind of artist who works off other people best. It was like playing with Tinker toys or dominoes, trying to get all the pieces to fit like a jigsaw puzzle so I'd have a whole portrait but it would still have many facets.

When punk began to be a genre, people were going to go out and try to mine it. Some of the better groups, like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols, were very artificial.

Studios are like hospitals. A lot of people check in, and they don't check out.

If you give a good performance, something that gets some feeling across to people, that’s such a rare gift. It’s underestimated at this point in history, when the music biz is inevitably turning into a kind of politics.

What some people would call antics, I would just call a good show.