Episode 400 - Iggy Pop
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what the fuck nicks what the fucking delix what the fucking adians what the fuck aristas i could go oh man i could go on forever but i'm not i feel like i should
Marc:I feel like I should read all of them or do all of them, but I can't remember all of them because this is a special day, but I'm not going to do that.
Marc:Why is today special?
Marc:Today is the 400th episode of WTF.
Marc:400.
Marc:I've never done 400 anythings before.
Marc:It's an amazing undertaking, an amazing accomplishment.
Marc:400 episodes of WTF, and this is the 400th one.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:Look, I wanted you to hear.
Marc:I wanted to be in the garage.
Marc:I wanted to be at home.
Marc:I wanted to be, you know, sort of in the element.
Marc:But things didn't go that way.
Marc:I'm not in the garage for my 400th show.
Marc:I'm in New York, New York City.
Marc:I had no idea I was going to be in New York City.
Marc:It was not the plan to be in New York City.
Marc:A lot of things went down.
Marc:Today on the show, on the 400th episode, Iggy Pop is here, and that is a landmark.
Marc:Is that the word I want?
Marc:I don't know what the word is, but I always wanted to interview Iggy Pop my whole life, ever since I became a fan of his.
Marc:I was not a fan when I was in high school, but later I became completely engaged in
Marc:with Iggy Pop and the menace and the sexual insanity and the amazing rock and roll of the Stooges and of Iggy and his being.
Marc:And I thought, man, I'd always like to talk to that guy.
Marc:And when people would ask me, who do you want to interview?
Marc:I would say, I want to interview Iggy Pop.
Marc:And then that happened.
Marc:But let me tell you what happened leading up to that.
Marc:Let me try to tell you
Marc:Why I'm in New York City.
Marc:I really wanted to be in my garage for the 400th.
Marc:I really did.
Marc:That's the weird thing about doing 400 episodes of WTF and having become known as an interview guy, having started humbly doing standup comedy, which I still do, which is why I am in New York City.
Marc:I plan to go back to Los Angeles from Buffalo.
Marc:I was just in Buffalo, New York.
Marc:And I got to tell you, I had a great time in Buffalo, New York.
Marc:You know, they're a little down on themselves up there.
Marc:And people are down on Buffalo.
Marc:They think it's some decaying Rust Belt town or city.
Marc:It may be that, but it is a pretty warm, beautiful place.
Marc:Very good people.
Marc:Some really shitty great food.
Marc:And Niagara Falls.
Marc:And I got to tell you, man, I mean, I ate some chicken wings at the source.
Marc:I didn't go to the Anchor Bar, but I went to the Duff's, which I'm not going to get into an argument with anybody.
Marc:You know, the chicken wings are good.
Marc:They're fine.
Marc:But, you know, the cat's out of the bag.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Anybody can get Frank's hot sauce.
Marc:But I enjoyed the wings.
Marc:I had beef on Weck.
Marc:I didn't know what that was.
Marc:Weck is an abbreviation for some kind of bread.
Marc:I went to what seemed to be a slightly comforting haunted house.
Marc:called Schwabble's?
Marc:Yes, since 1837.
Marc:It wouldn't kill him to update some of the decor, but the roast beef on the roll, awesome.
Marc:Went to Ted's Hot Dogs, awesome.
Marc:On the grill, all good.
Marc:By the time I got to Anderson's Frozen Custard, I was so consumed with self-hatred that I don't know if they had really experienced somebody like me at Anderson's Frozen Custard in Buffalo, New York.
Marc:I'm not sure they'd ever witnessed somebody waiting to order and looking up at the menu with nothing but a like,
Marc:Oh, fuck this.
Marc:Are you kidding me?
Marc:With that face going up to that window and having a chipper ice cream server say, what can I get you?
Marc:Can I help you?
Marc:No, nothing here is going to help.
Marc:It's barely going to taste good, even if it's amazing.
Marc:It's not going to help.
Marc:I have a caramel Sunday.
Marc:And I'm coming back in an hour to discuss my shame.
Marc:So I guess the point I want to make is that nothing has really changed that much for me as a person other than everything.
Marc:But the basic wiring and the basic life is the same here at 400 episodes.
Marc:I really appreciate the fact that so many people get so much out of this show.
Marc:I really appreciate those of you who are listening to this part of the show right now.
Marc:I'm trying not to have contempt with people, for people.
Marc:I'm trying not to have Twitter fights with my friends that are entertaining but painful.
Marc:But I don't think that I'm going to succeed at that.
Marc:There's such a fine line between contempt and empathy.
Marc:And I experienced that at Niagara Falls.
Marc:I don't know if you've ever been to Niagara Falls, but it's spectacular.
Marc:And by the way, I was staying at a hotel that I think really had the same personality as a as a heroin addict who no longer did heroin.
Marc:Like I was in that place, the Lafayette Hotel, and I'm like, this place was in bad shape at one time.
Marc:I can feel it.
Marc:I can be I know they you know they gutted it they renovated it but some things you can't get out something you know you just I don't know this this hotel could relapse at any second you just you know you felt the ghost in the hall you I just knew walking down the hall to my room that at some other point in time some woman was running down that hall screaming he's got a gun he's got a gun he's gonna kill me as strange drugged out people just watch the drama unfold don't want to get involved
Marc:But I went to Niagara Falls and I got to tell you, the drive up there, not great.
Marc:Niagara, the town, bad shape.
Marc:I don't know if they do it on purpose.
Marc:So the falls are even more amazing than they could be.
Marc:But I tell you, by the time you get to the falls, after you've driven through Niagara, you want to jump into them.
Marc:And I've already got that thing.
Marc:I drove up to the falls.
Marc:There's these horrendous tourist shithole outposts of people selling stuff, several Indian food trucks.
Marc:I don't know why.
Marc:It was just horrendous.
Marc:By the time I actually got to the water, I had such a contempt for humanity.
Marc:Like I felt like it was all a failure.
Marc:Driving through Niagara, hope had left.
Marc:If they could only channel some of that water that goes over those falls and irrigated some hope and light into Niagara, it would be amazing.
Marc:But it's not.
Marc:It's depressed.
Marc:It's sad.
Marc:Then waiting on line with people to get tickets for things I don't need.
Marc:I just want to go on the boat.
Marc:I just want to look at the thing.
Marc:I just want to look at the water going over.
Marc:I was filled with contempt.
Marc:I walked up to the water at the top of the falls and I had to fight the urge to climb in.
Marc:But that's just the way I am.
Marc:There's always that thing pulling me towards that.
Marc:If I were hanging off a cliff, I don't know.
Marc:I think it would be easier to let go than to fight the fight to get back up.
Marc:I don't know if I have the tragic persistence necessary to get to the end gracefully.
Marc:And I was waiting online with all these people.
Marc:And then we went up to get our blue garbage bag ponchos that they hand out to everybody to go on the Maid of the Mist.
Marc:And I'll tell you, man, being on that boat, you know, with just a bunch of other people wearing blue garbage bag ponchos, it just was heartwarming.
Marc:We're just people and we're small people and we're wearing blue garbage bag ponchos.
Marc:And there are these amazing falls that are nothing but invigorating.
Marc:The water just keeps coming.
Marc:It's uplifting.
Marc:Stood on that boat with my other fellow humans, our blue garbage bag ponchos, fighting the urge to applaud, to applaud Niagara Falls.
Marc:Just clap.
Marc:It's amazing.
Marc:It just keeps coming.
Marc:It's never going to stop.
Marc:It's beautiful.
Marc:It's nature.
Marc:It's uplifting.
Marc:It was great.
Marc:I really think that blue garbage bag ponchos are the great equalizer.
Marc:Everybody is equal in a blue garbage bag poncho.
Marc:Just small humans looking silly, barely protected.
Marc:against the elements.
Marc:Whenever there's a problem between peoples, someone should show up with some blue garbage bag ponchos.
Marc:That's what I learned at Niagara Falls.
Marc:That's what I learned.
Marc:Had a good time at Buffalo.
Marc:I almost felt like moving there.
Marc:I don't know what I'd do there.
Marc:I just wanted to do my part maybe to help out, bring a little business in.
Marc:I could be doing this anywhere.
Marc:So why am I in New York City?
Marc:Why?
Marc:Because when I got to the Buffalo Airport, I had my flight all set up.
Marc:I was going to fly out to Los Angeles on Sunday, record this monologue for my 400th episode in my garage at the source.
Marc:And then fly back out here on Tuesday to do the David Letterman show.
Marc:I'm going to be sitting down next to David on the couch, something I've never done before.
Marc:I hope it happens.
Marc:You never know when you're going to get bumped, but that was a career goal.
Marc:So I'm on the precipice.
Marc:Like, it's like, to me, that's just, that's winning.
Marc:That's all I ever wanted to do in my life is sit in that chair next to that guy.
Marc:And it's going to happen on Wednesday because of this podcast.
Marc:Seriously, because of this podcast, I'm going to sit next to Letterman and we're going to have a conversation and hopefully I'll be funny.
Marc:It's going to be hard.
Marc:Love that guy.
Marc:Always love that guy.
Marc:Been with him a long time.
Marc:So I get to the airport Sunday morning.
Marc:I'm getting ready to get on my little plane, and there's mechanical problems.
Marc:And I just knew it.
Marc:Some days just aren't going to fucking work out, man.
Marc:It was just not going to happen.
Marc:So I'm like, why don't I just go to New York?
Marc:Because I want to see my girlfriend.
Marc:I want to record this in my garage.
Marc:But you've got to record.
Marc:It's not going to happen, dude.
Marc:You've got to process this.
Marc:It's not going to happen.
Marc:You got to record it outside.
Marc:You got to find a bathroom.
Marc:You got to do something.
Marc:There was an urgency to it.
Marc:The entire day revolved around getting this monologue done.
Marc:I didn't give a fuck about anything else.
Marc:Then I started to sort of rationalize it like, well, it was supposed to be a special day.
Marc:I mean, I feel great about the podcast, but I wanted to record it in my garage.
Marc:But now what are we going to do?
Marc:And I'm like, well, maybe you should fly to Detroit.
Marc:You got five hours there, man.
Marc:Iggy's from Detroit.
Marc:It will be thematically appropriate.
Marc:Maybe get out into the city and record the monologue in Detroit on the streets.
Marc:On the streets where the MC5 and Iggy Pop ran around.
Marc:That was my plan.
Marc:I was like, I didn't give a shit.
Marc:And then I'm like, what if I don't have Wi-Fi that's good enough to get this there?
Marc:All I wanted to do was get this done.
Marc:This was the most important thing.
Marc:And it still is the most important thing doing this podcast.
Marc:But I got down to New York.
Marc:I think I got the flu.
Marc:I had a fever on top of everything else.
Marc:But the urgency was overbearing.
Marc:All I cared about was getting this monologue out.
Marc:All I care about is this podcast.
Marc:This is my 400th episode.
Marc:Iggy Pop is here.
Marc:He's in the garage.
Marc:It's gonna happen in just a few minutes.
Marc:I was reading over an old bio that I wrote long before the podcast.
Marc:I actually should change this bio.
Marc:I don't even know why it's still on my website.
Marc:But it says, since I was 11, being a standup comic is all I ever wanted to be.
Marc:I actually thought it was a noble profession.
Marc:I remember being a kid and watching Rickles and Hackett on the tube, reading the My Favorite Jokes column at the back of Parade Magazine every Sunday, listening to Carl and Pryor Cheech and Chong records with my little brother, going to Woody Allen movies and staying up late on Saturdays to see the first season of SNL.
Marc:To me, being a comic meant to be autonomous, angry, truthful, and funny.
Marc:It meant being alive and present in the moment.
Marc:It meant having the freedom to figure out
Marc:and then be who I am in the purest way and do it shamelessly in front of people, impose it on them, and try to blow some minds in the process.
Marc:It meant avoiding the soul death of the day job.
Marc:Being a comic entitled me to live like a fucking gypsy until something clicked, and if it didn't, who knows?
Marc:I've been fortunate enough to have a few dispersed clicks throughout what I guess has been a showbiz career of relative obscurity, but with a real freedom from the bondage of mediocrity.
Marc:I have a hard time describing what I do or what I am up there on stage.
Marc:I've been called neurotic, a storyteller, heady, cerebral, angry, brilliant, bad, a problem, a cultural critic, a satirist, fucking funny, an important voice, et cetera.
Marc:Recently, a young woman who had just seen me came out onto the street, came up to me excited and said, you were really great.
Marc:You're like Woody Allen.
Marc:Of course, I found a way to make that a negative and said, really?
Marc:I think I'm a little angrier than Woody Allen.
Marc:In response, she said, you're like an Iggy Pop Woody Allen.
Marc:I like that.
Marc:I think if that helps you understand what I do, it's a reasonable description of where I am lately.
Marc:That's my bio that I wrote probably 10 years ago or more.
Marc:And, you know, my life's a lot different.
Marc:But I don't know.
Marc:I think I don't know if I'm still an Iggy Pop Woody Allen.
Marc:But all I know is that, you know, last night I was in Buffalo putting it out there for 65 people.
Marc:Second show.
Marc:Not a huge crowd, but a great crowd.
Marc:I connected.
Marc:There were moments on the other shows where I didn't.
Marc:I'm actually a little drained.
Marc:I put a lot of myself out there, and there was moments in the Friday night show where I just stopped, and I was like, I can't.
Marc:I'm tired of it.
Marc:I'm tired of me.
Marc:I'm tired of it.
Marc:I'm tired of it all.
Marc:But that last show, I got it back.
Marc:I don't know, man, but I'm fucking thrilled and amazed that everything that's happened has happened, and this is the 400th episode, and my guest is Iggy Pop.
Marc:I was very nervous about Iggy coming over.
Marc:I was waiting for them.
Marc:It was late.
Marc:At first, one limo drives up, pulls up up in front of my house.
Marc:A publicist gets out, and I show her where it's going to go down.
Marc:She's got her heels on.
Marc:She's very put together.
Marc:And I say to her, I said, does he talk?
Marc:Does he talk?
Marc:I don't know anything about him.
Marc:Where's he at?
Marc:And she goes, oh yeah, he loves to talk.
Marc:And I'm like, really?
Marc:I had no idea what to expect.
Marc:It's Iggy Pop.
Marc:I was more nervous about Iggy than anything because how do you wrap your brain around Iggy Pop?
Marc:Iggy Pop the performer, Iggy Pop the guy, Iggy Pop the music.
Marc:How do you wrap your brain around that?
Marc:Guy means a lot to me.
Marc:Then another limo pulls up.
Marc:And Iggy's road manager gets out.
Marc:Iggy's girlfriend gets out.
Marc:She's like seven feet tall.
Marc:And then Iggy's in the car.
Marc:I walk up to the car door.
Marc:He's about to get out of the car.
Marc:I go, how you doing, Iggy?
Marc:Do you need anything?
Marc:And he goes, I need to refresh.
Marc:And I'm like, you need to refresh?
Marc:What does that mean?
Marc:Do you need coffee?
Marc:Yes, I need coffee.
Marc:A black coffee would be great.
Marc:Okay, do you need water?
Marc:Yes, water would be great.
Marc:Is there anything I can do for you?
Marc:He goes, I just need to, I don't know, get refreshed.
Marc:And I'm like, okay, man, all right.
Marc:So we walk out back, we walk onto my deck, and Iggy is there, his crew has sat down at the table back there, his girlfriend, the road manager, publicist.
Marc:And Iggy's just walking around the deck with his arms spread out, breathing, looking at the trees back there, looking at the hill.
Marc:He's like, this is great, this is great.
Marc:And then within three minutes of being on my deck, the shirt comes off.
Marc:Iggy Pop takes his shirt off on my deck.
Marc:Now, anybody else, you'd be like, now this is odd.
Marc:But no, not in this situation.
Marc:This is Iggy.
Marc:Now that's Iggy.
Marc:And then I go, you ready, man?
Marc:He goes, yeah.
Marc:And so we went into the garage, shirtless Iggy, sat across from me, and we had this conversation.
Marc:There was a couple moments where he kind of tweaked his nipples a little bit.
Marc:I don't know why.
Marc:He's kind of pulling at him hair or something.
Marc:It wasn't uncomfortable.
Marc:It was a little disconcerting.
Marc:I didn't bring it up.
Marc:Because it's Iggy.
Marc:So let's go now to my garage where I talk to Iggy Pop.
Marc:looking forward to talking to you oh cool like you know people ask me you know who are my dream guests and i keep saying iggy pop and here you are in my garage right cool and a lot of people were uh it was funny because i said i was going to talk to you today and three people said you think you'll be wearing a shirt or no shirt oh yeah well i killed the shirt no shirt right away well i'm more comfortable you know
Marc:it's great it's a it's not going to come over on across on the radio but i mean but i want people to know so you're living in florida uh and i know that because i think right when you moved there when did you move there uh 98 i was down there like in 2004 or something in fort lauderdale and i was down there with my ex-wife and you were playing someplace and it just got announced it was like 400 people yeah it was the culture room yeah so you remember that
Guest:Yeah, because it's in a little strip mall.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it's got a purple script sign that says Culture Room.
Guest:What was that gig?
Guest:Where'd that come from?
Guest:Well, that's sort of a famous, infamous stop for hard rock and metal bands.
Guest:that can't play anywhere else in Southern Florida because everybody's in either like Andy Williams or Julio Iglesias or Enrique or whatever it is.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And who are those dudes?
Marc:Because I just remember like I had never seen him before and I was a big fan.
Marc:I'm like, what's this going to be?
Marc:It was fucking nuts, man.
Guest:The dudes in the band at the time, it was this guy named Whitey, Whitey Kirst.
Marc:Right, Whitey Kirst.
Guest:Whitey Kirst.
Marc:In that Marshall stack or whatever the hell he had.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:He also goes, his alias is Whitey Christ.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I was amazed, man.
Guest:That guy could fucking play.
Guest:He's like a metalhead, satanic, sweetheart, good guy, fighting, fucking, don't tell me what to do, black death vodka, three packs of cigarettes guy.
Guest:So is he still around?
Guest:Well, I'm working with the original Stu just now.
Marc:Oh, I know that.
Marc:I know that.
Guest:We stay in touch.
Guest:He'll send me a text like, oh, what are you doing now?
Guest:That's it, right?
Marc:Still alive.
Marc:Yeah, right, yeah.
Marc:So, like, what was the, like, I want to do some backstory a little bit.
Marc:When you grew up, what was your family situation like?
Guest:I had a real super responsible, completely together mother and father.
Guest:Never a drink in the house.
Guest:Never a curse word.
Guest:Never an argument.
Guest:We lived, the three of us, in a small trailer home.
Guest:The trailers were really small to start with, and they got bigger until when I graduated high school, it was 500 square feet.
Marc:Right, right.
Guest:So that's like astute.
Guest:But we all lived.
Guest:We were like Japanese people in a way.
Guest:It causes a tension that I didn't even realize, but later it was helping create me.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But we lived by the side of the road, as most trailer parks are, out by a cornfield.
Guest:In Michigan.
Guest:In Michigan.
Guest:But my father had gone to school on the GI Bill.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he thought it was important to give me a good education.
Guest:So we were within the Ann Arbor School District, which is a very, very fine secondary system run by the University of Michigan.
Guest:There I met like the son of the president of Ford Motor Company.
Guest:company oh really the McNamara relatives oh really when he was secretary of defense I was graduating high school so there were there was all that around a lot of power a lot of power and money and I started playing drums in a in a little high school band siphoning off drips of that power and money and we go out on the weekend and
Guest:1964 and make 250 bucks each you know what you're playing do you remember yeah sure we were playing you really got me and then the Louie Louie and there was one the frat boys liked called hi ho silver it had dirty words you know see that
Guest:that girl with it, it gets hurtier, and keg parties, things like that.
Guest:And then we'd do some Beatles and some Ray Charles, you know, like that.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And it sort of grew from there.
Guest:I did that for a while, and it was just an awful lot of fun.
Guest:And we got a job in a teen club for the summer.
Guest:in Harbor Springs, Michigan.
Marc:And that's where they book you out for the whole, like once a week?
Guest:Yeah, for the whole summer.
Guest:We stayed, you boys can just bunk here.
Guest:We stayed in a log cabin with cold running water and bare mattresses.
Guest:Bunk beds?
Guest:Yeah, $55 a week to play five sets a night.
Guest:in this club but like the four tops came through shangri-la's came through the crystals uh louie louie uh what's what are their names kingsman yeah yeah bobby goldsboro yeah everybody came through and half of them didn't have a drummer so i would drum for them and i learned a lot they would play at the team club
Guest:Yeah, their avaricious and crooked record company owners would send them on these bizarre tours.
Guest:Every night, another team club.
Guest:Yeah, it was called the Ponytail.
Guest:And it was Cherry Cokes were the strongest drink.
Guest:Sure, yeah.
Guest:And the kids were upscale.
Guest:These are like the daughter of the Reynolds, son Ricky DuPont.
Marc:DuPont, Reynolds, aluminum foil and chemicals.
Guest:Those people still keep summer homes up in that area.
Guest:Mike, what's his name?
Guest:The guy, Fahrenheit, he hates Bush, the filmmaker.
Marc:Oh, Michael Moore.
Guest:Yeah, Michael Moore has a place up there.
Marc:So did you feel like some, because what did your dad do?
Guest:My dad was an English teacher, high school level.
Marc:Did you feel like some tension, some resentment building towards the upper class?
Marc:Were you starting to get some fury at all?
Guest:I had some fury, yeah.
Guest:I had some fury.
Guest:The first song I ever wrote was about, there was an upper class kid.
Guest:I used to be friends with his sister.
Guest:He gave me Tude.
Guest:And I remember I wrote a little, it was four lines.
Guest:It was called, Why Do You Hate Me?
Guest:It was, why do you hate me?
Guest:Why do you hate me?
Guest:Why do you hate me like you do?
Guest:Someday I'll have this stuff and I'm going to come after you.
Guest:There was no music to that one.
Guest:It was just this little poem I wrote.
Guest:Because you could feel it building, right?
Guest:I felt it building, yeah.
Guest:The other thing I felt building was the euphoria and the freedom of
Guest:of that that summer suddenly I was a professional musician free by day yeah yeah worked up up all night all that that sort of thing and uh and it felt great and I started getting wild had my first DUI I got the band fired you know yeah all that sort of thing how'd you get the band fired from the team club the DUI yeah that didn't fit the image so kids no good so I thought
Guest:I don't care, that guy's a hick anyway, I'll promote my own show.
Guest:So I found some guy who was this typical, an area manager, not unlike Lou Pearlman, the kind of manager that really likes young guys.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:And I found him and he helped me.
Guest:Yes, I can help you rent a warehouse.
Guest:But we did.
Guest:So I did that, and I tried to go back to school for the first semester of university the next year, and I couldn't do it.
Guest:I got in school, and God, the professors all had a stick up their ass, and nobody communicated.
Guest:There were 30,000, there were herds of people.
Guest:i liked a couple of the classes i had asian studies i liked that i really liked social ants you know especially reading about the stony age behavior hey this is for me you know right yeah get primitive yeah so so i just decided to leave there was a
Guest:There was a blues band on campus, older guys, sophisticated relative to me, 25-year-old dropouts.
Guest:I think one of them, his claim to fame was that he'd hitchhiked with Bob Dylan.
Guest:So I told my dad, I was living at home commuting to university at the time, and I told my dad, well, I'm going to go be a professional musician.
Guest:my father was a very responsible earnest man who you know like a lot of guys right around that World War II period that went out and set things up for the family yeah from more dubious guys like you and me right they went out and you know when he was 20 something and he had his dreams it was like no no no time to go fight Hitler yeah and then you know and then when when that's done
Guest:No, no, no, you've got a kid.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:So he was, I think there was something he had to set aside and instead be a good dad.
Guest:So he stood in the door of our trailer, and he's a big man and a much better fighter.
Guest:And he said, you're going to have to push me out of this door.
Ha, ha, ha.
Guest:and so i took a deep breath and got ready to get you know oh this is gonna hurt you know and then and i made two steps and he he backed away of course yeah he's a nice person you know so did it break his heart somehow i think i think i i really put him in my the two of them i put them come on they were pop's parents in the 70s 70s and 80s you know
Guest:And you're the only son.
Guest:Yeah, I was the only son.
Guest:I went and played a concert at his high school.
Guest:And I was hanging out with Nico at the time.
Guest:And she was hanging out with you guys.
Guest:She was hanging out in Michigan.
Guest:Hello, I come to Michigan with you.
Guest:And I think you are much better than Lou anyway.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So... But this was... You're already with the Stooges?
Guest:Yeah, I was with the Stooges by that time.
Guest:And you're playing a high school gig?
Guest:And Nico's hanging out?
Guest:And Nico's hanging out.
Guest:Yeah, Nico is like that.
Guest:How the fuck did she find you?
Guest:She found me when we went to New York to record and John Cale was hired to produce us.
Guest:The first album?
Guest:The first album.
Guest:Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So the two of them, he started inviting her to the sessions.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they'd sit there.
Guest:It was like the Adams family.
Guest:He had a...
Guest:Have you ever seen Beyond the Valley of the Dolls?
Guest:He had a cape like Z-Man.
Guest:He had this cape that he wore black with a purple satin lining and she would sit there knitting.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:While we're going, you know.
Marc:It's hilarious because he was here.
Marc:He came over.
Marc:Really, really?
Marc:And he was wearing athletic shorts.
Marc:Well, okay.
Marc:That's how things have changed.
Marc:He's sitting there wearing athletic shorts and a sweat jacket.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:And you're sitting there with no shirt on.
Guest:It's amazing how things change.
Guest:He's a beautiful musician.
Guest:He played viola on our first album.
Guest:You know, it's funny.
Guest:There's a song eight minutes long on there that's just a... You Will Fall?
Guest:We Will Fall, yeah.
Guest:It's sort of a, we tried to adapt a Hindu chant.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And people just block it out.
Guest:When you hear about the group, you never hear about that.
Guest:You just hear about, yeah, the teen angst, nothing to do.
Guest:But we did that too, and he played viola.
Marc:Yeah, it had sort of like almost a dirge kind of flow to it.
Marc:Yes, it did.
Marc:And I asked him about you guys, because it's always in my mind as a producer, I'm like, well, what did you bring to that Stooges recording?
Marc:And he's like, they were fully loaded.
Marc:That guy had nothing.
Guest:Well, yeah, we were fully loaded, but what he brought was...
Guest:That was the audience.
Guest:Right.
Guest:We need an audience.
Guest:And he, you know, if it had just been some engineer dude sitting there, pew, no stiffy, you know.
Guest:Right, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But he had presence.
Guest:And he did, there was a point where they were trying to do tracks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was just sitting there while they did the tracks.
Guest:And he said...
Guest:you need to dance around they play different when you dance around and that's true because that's really how the band how we got our style we were trying to find a style for about a year yeah one day i just got frustrated and angry and i started jumping up and down and dancing in the rehearsal room and the group were all embarrassed for me and they kind of like looked down you know like we don't want
Guest:to look you know like we want to look but we don't want to look what's he doing yeah this isn't cool right exactly because they all just wanted to be rock stars yeah and and up rose the energy changed you know so he spotted that in the studio so
Marc:So they were almost fighting your awkward jerking around.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Like, we can still be cool even if he's going to do that.
Guest:Yeah, something's going on in the room.
Guest:It's really weird and it's just weird, but maybe it's kind of cool or something.
Marc:I don't know what they thought.
Marc:Well, that's interesting because I don't think people realize the power of a front man all the time and what you have to do to lead a band.
Marc:Because you're the guy up there and the energy's got to move through you.
Guest:The energy's got to move through you and then go out, make it accessible for the other people in the room to receive it.
Marc:So early on, so how do you end up, okay, so you record the first Dooges album, then you go back and play a high school in Michigan?
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:We were playing a lot.
Guest:We played, Don Was was one of my producers later, and we played his high school too.
Guest:As a group or because you needed a gig?
Guest:No.
Guest:In Michigan at that time, we had a kind of fully-fledged kind of a gig chain, a food chain.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You had a psychedelic ballroom, the Grandy.
Guest:There was a string of teen clubs in the upscale suburbs called the hideouts.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Then you had gigs around the campus that were high exposure but never paid.
Guest:Then there was the MC5 who had these hard rock benefit gigs also.
Marc:What was the story with that?
Marc:Because there's the whole Detroit sound that comes up through the Motown and Mitch Ryder and the White Soul and then the MC5.
Marc:What was the event, and I know you've talked about it before, that made you realize that you could get out from behind the drums and fucking push?
Guest:Well, you know, there wasn't.
Guest:It was more that I had to.
Guest:I was in the prime movers, and I was sick of looking at the singer's skinny little ass moving out of time.
Guest:I was always cuing him where the one was, and I thought, this is not a future for me.
Guest:I thought I could write, and I smoked a big joint, and then I really thought I could write.
Guest:And it went from there.
Guest:And then when I actually wanted to start doing that, I tried to get up and sing a blues song in front of my friends in a bar.
Guest:And it was horrible.
Guest:And they were embarrassed.
Guest:You know, I stood there, like, posed.
Guest:And I sang, rock me, baby.
Guest:Rock me all night long.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you went with Muddy Waters.
Guest:Yeah, it was very bad.
Guest:Well, B.B.
Guest:King or... Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But you were a blues guy.
Guest:I had been playing in a blues band at that time.
Guest:And you loved the blues?
Guest:I still do, and my whole idea with the Stooges was I know these juvenile delinquents.
Guest:They have charisma, and they're the only people primitive enough to follow me.
Guest:So I could create a...
Guest:a juvenile blues you know that was a modern juvenile yeah exactly i mean look eddie cochran had thought along similar lines this is not totally a new idea i thought the law yeah yeah a certain way you know and you know even summertime blues where he's got to work and he should rather be outdoors okay okay yeah i get it yeah but but we took it
Guest:more sullen, more picky, more like what Howlin' Wolf would sing.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Did you ever see him?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Sure, I did.
Guest:He was very old by the time I saw him.
Marc:I got that picture right there.
Marc:Oh, that's beautiful.
Guest:When he's on the floor just doing it.
Guest:I never knew that.
Guest:I just read a biography of him that he did a lot of the things I did at the beginning with, you know, theatricalizing his dick and crawling like a snake on the floor.
Guest:When I saw him, he was very, very old, and he just stood there in the middle of a bunch of white kids.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Man, it was like... Electric, right?
Guest:Yeah, it was better than Jurassic Park.
Guest:Wow, man.
Guest:His hands, his hands are very, very... They seem to be a foot long.
Marc:He was a big guy, right?
Guest:A very, very big guy, and he had a lot of presence, and he played a guitar, sort of like the way that Ike Turner plays a guitar.
Guest:At first, you're going, this guy can't play a fucking guitar.
Guest:And then you listen...
Guest:You listen back 20 years later and you realize, I never heard anybody play a guitar that it sounded as down.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:You got a deep thing out of it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I still, God, I love hearing them on the Viagra ad, you know.
Guest:It's sort of sad, right?
Guest:It sounds great.
Guest:Yeah, but I think it's great.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's just great to hear him, you know?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And that's Hubert Sumlin on the guitar.
Marc:He just passed away.
Marc:Great.
Marc:Those riffs.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Hubert was great.
Marc:Yeah, they put out a solo album who Jimmy Favino and those guys put out that stuff.
Marc:Nothing sounds like him.
Guest:I loved that he could beat up his band, too.
Guest:And that's one of my big sort of failings.
Guest:I can't beat up the band.
Guest:He beat up his band?
Guest:Yeah, all the time you're reading his biography, they'd be out on the road, and somebody would do something to irritate him, and he'd say, pull the car over.
Guest:And he'd say, get out of the car.
Guest:You're fired, motherfucker.
Guest:And we're to throw you out.
Guest:Then the guy would, like, somebody would hit him in the head, and then he'd take the guy and literally pound him into a bloody pump.
Guest:It's like the drummer or something, and then throw him by the side of the road.
Guest:And I don't know, sometimes it's all you could do with these guys, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That would work.
Marc:So you saw these old blues cats and you spent time with the MC5?
Marc:A lot of time with them.
Marc:And you saw the Doors early on?
Guest:I saw the Doors.
Marc:I've read that story before, but the way they characterize it in Legs' books and some of the other press is that that was some sort of pivotal moment for you.
Guest:It was a pivotal moment.
Guest:At that time, the Doors probably sounded great in...
Guest:a little shit heel club yeah on the sunset strip right for a bunch of people from LA that don't know what the fuck is what the fuck right you know the flowers in their hair or whatever and you know a deal in their back pocket or whatever but but they were now I saw them at a homecoming dance and
Guest:in a Midwestern field house for 5,000 football players and their dates, right?
Guest:And the dude is loaded on acid.
Guest:The eyes are just all pupil, right?
Guest:And he comes out and he sings every song like this in this voice.
Guest:Show me the wind.
Guest:won't sing right you know and the band sounded wimpy right in other words because the beauty of their sound is that the drummer has a jazz approach right everything's quiet so the music can come out right let's face it the the the dumbing down of of wonderful blues by by the descendants of our slaves into rock
Guest:It's sort of like putting Spanx on the music.
Guest:And everything just gets simpler, more and more compressing.
Guest:So people didn't know how to react to that.
Guest:And the band sort of sounded ultra loose.
Guest:And that made it worse.
Guest:I mean, at least if there had been a power riff going on while this guy... Someone could have rocked to it a little bit.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So there was nothing, and this guy's going, ah, ah.
Guest:And he's making these gestures, these weird gestures, and he's got a little leatherette outfit.
Guest:And the people started getting angry and started bum-rushing the stage.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, it was only...
Guest:I love these stages.
Guest:It was like an 18-inch stage, no barrier.
Guest:Right, right.
Marc:So he's right there on the floor with everybody.
Guest:He's right there.
Guest:So they pulled the gig.
Guest:But I loved the gig.
Guest:And I thought, on the other hand, well, gee, if they can do that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:Did you love his commitment to fucking with them?
Guest:I didn't mind that.
Guest:Maybe that went in the back of my head.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:I just thought, wow.
Guest:wow cool looking cat you know i'll bet he gets a lot of blankety blank you know and i was there i was there with some blankety blank and actually had an orgasm while they did that really yes yeah well with her help you know it wasn't like no no no i've tried to do that it's very hard to just do a mental orgasm yeah right
Guest:So, you know, it was all in all, it was an interesting show, you know?
Marc:And then what goes, so what was your relationship with the MC5?
Marc:Because they were kind of, they had a commune, didn't they?
Guest:Yeah, they had started out as, look, there were a whole lot of guys around Detroit who were the kind of inheritors of the Mitch Ryder.
Guest:Mitch and Jimmy Bacardi and Johnny Badjanak, who still play great, were the kind of the...
Guest:epitome of down river tough detroit rock really heavily informed by by fine fine blues country country blues and fine folk blues and black music too they had that covered had a and
Guest:there were tons of guys around there were bands called the lords and steve hunter was there and the five were guys like that and then they got this manager who was like you know he'd done a little time yeah and uh learned about some uh jazz and revolutionary poetry in the joint you know and came out and hey like sort of like sort of like a a kinder gentler manson right right thing right yeah
Guest:Yeah, all right, I'll get into that as free love, but in a really, like, you know, macho way.
Guest:And so they had this commune.
Guest:Apparently, I don't remember this, but apparently when I was a drummer, they tried to recruit me, and I just don't remember because my mind has blanks, you know.
Marc:You're probably lucky that they didn't.
Guest:Yeah, but I knew them, and we sort of took a couple of steps to see
Guest:if we could get to be one of their regular opening acts.
Guest:And they were very welcoming to us.
Guest:I think we were good for them.
Guest:We helped provide a little dimension to what they did.
Guest:We'd go play the basement of a church with them for nothing, or we'd go play...
Guest:the psychedelic ballroom, and people would see us that wouldn't.
Guest:Otherwise, we'd get 50 bucks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Did it influence you at all?
Guest:Was Sonic Smith's guitar playing in the drive?
Guest:Yeah, they were a big influence, and especially there was one really cold night in Michigan, and we had all gotten into the car, and we were going to drive up to Detroit and visit them.
Guest:And by the time the snow was blowing sideways,
Guest:And they had an old meat locker on Woodward that they rehearsed in with one of the big thick door to keep the meat cold.
Guest:And we couldn't get in and they couldn't hear us, but we stood there freezing in the cold.
Guest:And when you heard it through the door, then I figured out, oh, this is what they're doing.
Guest:You could hear it in a way you couldn't when it was echoing and blasting.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What was it, the drum sound?
Guest:No, it was certain rhythmic choices in the guitar approach.
Guest:They were doing kick out the jams.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And the emphasis on that is actually taken from Latin music.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it just, you wouldn't think that.
Guest:It's on the three instead of the four or something.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And, oh, yeah.
Guest:So it not coincidentally resembles on Stooges' Funhouse album.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:i'm loose right yeah yeah yeah so we took a lot of that and also the fact that they were i was starting to go nuts for james brown those were the years when finally james brown was breaking through to radio that white people listen to right right i'm hearing this shit and i'm like what the the space right precision the syncopation it's just fantastic right
Guest:and they could play a couple james brown songs and i thought well there's no way stooges are not going to learn a james brown song but we could do stuff like that right there we i was listening closely to their templates yeah yeah i want you right now by the mc5 closely we later did real cool time which closely resembles but it's a little different feel
Marc:And it's also a little more stripped down.
Guest:Yes, we stripped it down.
Guest:But they were just great.
Guest:And I could always go, you know, they moved to Ann Arbor.
Guest:And even when they lived in Detroit, I could go and just crash in their house for a couple weeks and their wives would sew my pants.
Guest:Or like when they lived in Ann Arbor, if I was really hungry, I would sneak in the back of their house and make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Guest:It was like a den house.
Guest:Yes, it was like a den house.
Marc:Even now, do you have a relationship with Wayne Kramer?
Guest:Yes, I do.
Guest:Wayne is just, yeah, I like Wayne, and he's a trip.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:But you guys survived.
Marc:Is there some part of that where you're like, how you doing?
Marc:We're still alive.
Guest:Yes, there is that.
Guest:But it's sort of like, how you doing?
Guest:You know what?
Guest:You're still shit.
Guest:There's always this little tone in his voice.
Guest:You know, I know you're still shit.
Marc:I mean, not really.
Guest:He's cool, but he lets you know.
Marc:Where'd you meet the Ashton brothers?
Marc:I mean, was that high school stuff or like?
Guest:That was hanging.
Guest:No, they went to my high school.
Guest:Ron used to walk in the back door.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Mom would drop him off and then he'd walk through the school and walk out the other door.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So that was that.
Guest:And he later, they gave him a diploma somehow.
Guest:I don't think Scott, I think Scott made it for a couple days in 10th grade and that was about it.
Guest:I don't think he actually bothered with that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I met him, I was working right in the middle of the campus on a key campus corner in any state university.
Guest:You usually used to have a record store.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I worked at the record store, discount records to help pay bills while I was getting my various drumming careers going.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And their sister would come in to listen to the new hit singles.
Marc:And this is in the mid-60s, early 60s?
Guest:Mid-1966, 67.
Guest:A lot of good music happening.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Scott and his friends Dave Alexander and their friend Roy would stand in front of the drugstore staring, making sullen faces.
Guest:They were what you call townies.
Guest:sure yeah they were doing the james dean thing that's it they were doing the james dean and these tight pants yeah and scott would bug me why don't you teach me to play some drums yeah i taught him to play yeah teenager and ron was sort of this guy he was like one of the one of the first guys in town with long hair right and uh he was come around once in a while i sort of knew him he knew me and
Guest:i knew i was interested in other musicians so it was kind of like that what was he listening to because like somehow that you know the guitar sound on those stooges records like is singular yeah he i think the reason it's singular is because he'd played bass for so long he never thought about playing a guitar till i put it in his hand when i we started the group
Guest:I tried singing it, writing it, and playing it with the two brothers as a rhythm section.
Guest:I realized I did not have the command or finesse to lead a group instrumentally, so I gave him a guitar one day.
Guest:So the first two albums, those are heavy-gauge strings because he was so used to playing the bass.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Now, most guitar players, they want to show off, so they use these incredibly light- Yeah, like nines.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:That also causes problems when you want to record it because the-
Guest:the sound tends to muddy things go out of tune right but those big strings piano wire yeah yeah gave actually the only other people i know who always played the big strings are all the old black players and whenever i would whenever i would play with an old blues guy the effing string is like an inch and a half off the guitar the guitar is from taiwan or somewhere right right it doesn't bother that guy because he's got
Marc:Kill her fingers, you know?
Marc:Monster hands.
Marc:And then you go deep with the sound.
Marc:The sound is, if you pull it out, it's like way, like Cobain used to use like piano, like strings on that.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:All the newer, the newer the groups get, the more they get the roar from technology.
Marc:So part of it was just that when you hit those things, it was such a full sound, it just seared a cut.
Guest:And he had developed a certain attack by playing the bass, and everything was fresh and new to him, and we were in a hurry.
Guest:So he loved The Pretty Things, The Stones, The Who, Jimi Hendrix.
Guest:And then I would come over and feed him drugs and say, well, listen to this Bedouin...
Guest:Medicine champ.
Guest:Listen to Ravi Shankar.
Guest:Listen to this John Coltrane.
Guest:And he was very open.
Guest:He would listen to it and enjoy it.
Guest:And enough of that seeped in that I think his big achievement on the guitar was
Guest:was he realized by chance sometimes while he was playing, there were certain positions where the guitar talked.
Guest:It wasn't about him expressing himself by controlling a tool.
Guest:It was the guitar started talking, the amp started talking.
Guest:There were chance overtones that sounded, it was sort of like instant karma, like an instant American example of
Guest:what took Indians 2,500 years to develop, you know.
Marc:Right, he just, everything, you become the groove almost.
Guest:Yeah, sort of like, and because of the electricity and those giant ants.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Sort of like a takeoff on like, God, that Professor Bloom that doesn't like modern stuff.
Guest:Harold Bloom?
Guest:Yeah, Harold Bloom, and he writes a thing about the kid sitting listening to Michael Jackson, and it's,
Guest:3,000 years of civilization have been distilled into this kid's ears through this moronic tool, you know.
Guest:There's something to that.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Well, that's the magic of music.
Marc:I mean, even thinking about it now, like, you know, I want to be your dog.
Marc:It's not like really a hook.
Marc:It's just a push.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it's sort of just like once you get the hypnotic element going.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:He had the riff and he had the hypnosis.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And I think it helped, too, that those fellas lost their dad when they were young.
Guest:They were 14 and 15, respectively, and they went into a trance.
Guest:Right, the grief.
Guest:And they stopped going to school, and they stopped living in the daytime.
Guest:They switched to night times.
Guest:And I think the trance in their music was a welcome retreat for them emotionally.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And I would take little bits like on I Want to Be Your Dog.
Guest:My big contribution was I thought, well, it can't just be.
Guest:At first, it was just that riff over and over.
Guest:And we'd go and play that at high school.
Guest:And I'd sing whatever came into my head every night.
Guest:So you just had the riff.
Guest:Yeah, and then I came up with...
Guest:Instead of... Then it goes... Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I was trying to write jingles, basically.
Guest:I liked double your pleasure, double your fun.
Guest:That's what I was hearing.
Guest:I couldn't write.
Guest:I couldn't really do the Ronettes yet.
Marc:So you wanted the lyrics to be as simple as possible.
Guest:Yeah, and all I tried, I had loved Soupy Sales when I was a kid, and he had the thing, now kids, when it's your birthday, you just write to Soupy and you send me a letter, but remember, make it 25 words or less.
Guest:25 words or less.
Guest:And then you ended up playing with his sons on two records, right?
Guest:Yeah, I did, yeah.
Guest:I just talked to Hunt in Austin.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:I tracked him down, man.
Guest:How's he doing?
Guest:He's all right.
Guest:Cool.
Guest:He's hanging in.
Guest:He's pretty sober.
Guest:He's got a band going.
Guest:He's got a new baby.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Cool.
Guest:He's all right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Soupy Sale is an amazing talent.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was deep into R&B, so his kids became really knowledgeable in all that stuff.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I guess Hunt used to just hang out.
Marc:He wouldn't go to school.
Marc:I guess his old man, they had split up, and he was living in New York, and he was just hanging out at Manny's Music.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This is it.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Oh, he knew like when he was 16.
Marc:I mean, they were young when they played on... What was the first album?
Marc:I guess you did Lust for Life with them, but did you play with them before?
Guest:Well, they were in Tony and the Tigers.
Guest:Remember that?
Guest:When I started out in the Stooges, I would go to these...
Guest:I would go to 16 Magazine to let them take my picture or something and you'd read about Tony and the Tigers.
Guest:And that was them?
Guest:That was Tony Sales?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And their little kid band, a pop band.
Marc:Yeah, a little pop band.
Marc:That's right.
Guest:You know, just like Dino Desi and Billy.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right, and then he ended up playing with Rundgren when he was like 17 or something.
Guest:Yeah, and the other one.
Guest:By the way, all these people lived in the same neighborhood.
Guest:It's that flat part of Beverly Hills between Sunset and Santa Monica there.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And there was also the Partridge kids lived there.
Guest:I knew them too.
Guest:You knew them?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And they had their Sean Cassidy and the other David, yeah.
Guest:And they would all, any respectable family from that neighborhood, the kid got to a certain age, they'd say, okay, do you want to have a rock band?
Guest:You know, call Moisey the agent, and we know a guy over here at ABC Records.
Guest:We'll set you up, get you boys some nice equipment.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And that was it.
Marc:Yeah, that was it.
Marc:So you knew those guys, what, in 69 when you were out here?
Guest:No, I never.
Guest:No, the only people I met out here when I came the first time in 1970.
Marc:Let's tie that up, though.
Marc:So you do the record with John Cale, the first record in New York.
Marc:You go back to Ann Arbor.
Marc:Nico hangs out with you guys and fucks all you guys.
Marc:Right.
Marc:No, just me.
Marc:Okay, all right.
Guest:And then you got a deal to come out here?
Guest:Well, no, and then it was time for our second record, which is like a few months later, they say, where's the next record?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so this time, the idea was to record it out here, and we had been developing material.
Guest:That was our culture.
Guest:We'd play three or four times a week and rehearse three or four times a week, and I'd write, and they'd write, and we'd develop stuff.
Guest:We'd play the new songs at the high school, you know?
Right.
Guest:So we had all these.
Marc:You want to talk to some of the kids in that audience, what it was like for them.
Marc:Did you find that you went over mostly or kind of, or were people looking at you with confused looks?
Guest:The kids, about half of the little kids were either fascinated or they really liked us.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Fascinated ones, I don't know what they thought, but it was like...
Guest:But then when it got beyond little kids, those people didn't like us.
Guest:The ones that were going to run the new counterculture, they were threatened.
Marc:Well, you and them have been fighting for centuries.
Guest:Yeah, this is it.
Guest:Exactly right.
Guest:This is true.
Guest:It's like the Serbs and the Muslims or something.
Marc:The ruling class and the radicals.
Guest:But we went out to L.A.
Guest:and we stayed in the Tropicana Motel.
Guest:With Duke's coffee shop downstairs?
Guest:Yeah, and we were at the same time exactly that Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey came out to film Heat with Joe D'Alessandro and Jane Forth.
Guest:And Ed Sanders from the Fugs.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:You know, Kill for Peace.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:He was writing the book, The Family.
Guest:Yeah, I got it.
Guest:About Manson.
Marc:Did you read that thing?
Marc:Yeah, it's a damn good read.
Marc:It's a good one, right?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:The best part is when they're out in the desert.
Guest:And there was a place near the motel called Bowser Boutique, and I bought this dog collar.
Guest:I was walking by, I thought, I look cool in
Guest:that.
Guest:And then he started, Sanders would give me these dirty looks and say, you don't know what that means, do you?
Guest:You think that's cool, don't you?
Guest:And all this weird stuff.
Guest:But we would stay in there and we'd walk
Guest:the electric studios were just a block down on la cienega off santa monica and we'd walk there with our little guitars yeah and do a one song each day this was the funhouse record the funhouse record and we uh my sightings at that time were i i was groupied by uh the gtos yeah on moss you know they were all like you know try to fool
Guest:We'll all do you if you want, you know, whatever.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I used to go to the drive.
Guest:I saw Superfly with Miss Christine.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:There used to be a great drive-in movie down from the farmer's market.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:On Beverly?
Guest:Yeah, off Beverly.
Guest:Yeah, it was wonderful.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And my best sighting was one day I walked up the hill to Ben Frank's.
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Sunset Boulevard.
Guest:It's not there anymore.
Guest:I know.
Guest:It's a Mel's now.
Guest:And Frank Zappa was sitting at the counter like frowning.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:With a cup of black coffee.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He looked like Frank Zappa.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And he had his hair and his mustache and everything were very, very strong.
Guest:And there he was.
Guest:I didn't do anything.
Guest:You didn't?
I was just like, wow.
Guest:his daughter was just in here last week moon talking about frank yeah he's were you a fan i was a big big fan he took it out especially of the freak out album yeah and uh i i knew him i got to know him years later and i i visited him a couple of times didn't know him great but we would sort of talk you know very serious guy yeah very serious you know damn ouch you know
Marc:Now, what was his story about, because I had read years ago, was it you or one of the other guys that had developed a relationship with one of the Three Stooges?
Marc:That's Ron Ashton.
Guest:Ron was obsessed with the Three Stooges.
Guest:But you didn't name yourself after that.
Guest:the studio well pretty much yeah yeah Ron it was Ron's idea you know one night we were we were all taking LSD and I was saying come on we got to get something done you know so it said and let's think of a name for our band so right we came up with the he said I know I said something psychedelic yeah you know because that was going around so this is 69 yeah 67 67 yeah and he said I know we'll call ourselves the psychedelic stooges you know yeah yeah and uh
Guest:That's where it started?
Guest:Yeah, it was an homage.
Guest:And also his concept was that because he felt we were like the Stooges in that we're never doing anything wrong, but everybody's always upset with us.
Guest:You know, a little disingenuous on his part, I thought.
Guest:But that was his idea.
Guest:And that was good naming.
Guest:And I thought it was, I think years later, he used to visit Larry in the old Stooges' home here or whatever.
Guest:You know, they have some sort of a place.
Guest:Yeah, for a motion picture.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Retirement home.
Guest:And apparently he was like bringing him cigars and whiskey.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:That's sweet.
Guest:Hey, Larry, here, here.
Guest:You know, hey, kid, could you get me some, you know.
Marc:Yeah, it was like that.
Marc:He must have loved it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:All right, so you do the three albums, the Stooges albums.
Guest:and then uh yeah how so you're doing a lot of acid yeah and then you got did you get strung out on other shit uh yeah yeah like i had to calm down when did that start well it all started entering the detroit area and it entered america you know big way 1970 yeah that year 1970 when i went back home all of a sudden there it was it was around everywhere and
Guest:Unfortunately, there was a guy, now deceased, who had been, this is typical too, when you're really low down the totem pole in a group, there comes a day when somebody in the group realizes,
Guest:Hey, we're going to look like fools if we just walk out there and set up our own equipment.
Guest:We need like a roadie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, we don't have any money to pay anyone.
Guest:Well, can't we just find like a guy who hangs around and he wants to be cool and he's not doing anything?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's the guy later who's, there's reasons that people are hanging around and want to be cool and aren't doing anything.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, so this guy was a guy like that.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And he had lived in the house for a while, and he was a reformed junkie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We hadn't known that.
Guest:We didn't even know what that stuff was.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then at some point, we lost, we had a manager who was into health foods and his real...
Guest:ambition was to get become an executive in the health food industry which he since has he lives in irvine right jimmy silver he was the good fairy around the group right kind of the conscience yes a conscience right here have some clean brown rice right you guys should do this and you know moderated are are ill and when he was gone and suddenly at the same time a lot of bikers
Guest:A lot of strange guys with strange accents from strange towns were around Detroit and Ann Arbor with this stuff.
Guest:And so the guy, our live-in roadie, fake roadie, sort of said, hey, I'm going to get back into this.
Guest:This is cool.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, by that time we had hired, we had some really more professional roadies.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We used to get them when they'd come back from Vietnam.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we'd think, perfect resume, right?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Drive a tank, shoot a gun, you can run a Stooges gig, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So those guys weren't as bad, but this one guy was, and he started giving it to me and giving it to this one and giving it to that one, and at first it was just disgusting how you feel, and it's just so horrible.
Guest:Puking and sweating.
Guest:You think, I'll never do this again.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And then one night your nerves are shot.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you say, oh.
Guest:Need a bump.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And down, down, down you go.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And that became a...
Guest:something to wrestle with that started a
Guest:Late 70, early 71 for me.
Guest:And I think the last time I ever messed with that, it took about 10 years.
Guest:I never joined, you know, I never said, Jesus.
Marc:Nah.
Marc:Jesus, this is Iggy.
Guest:Nah, yeah, right.
Guest:Nah, I just sort of gradually, my tastes moved in other directions.
Guest:And for that reason, it took a long time.
Guest:but I'm a lot more solid.
Guest:I don't have to go to a meeting and find God to understand the way I am.
Marc:But it was a fight, though.
Guest:It kept coming back, and if it wasn't that, it would be like 10 bottles of wine or a bunch of pills or a bunch of Coke or methadone or silly little weird shit.
Guest:This was during the prime time of when you... Of my career.
Guest:I did a lot of good stuff under the influence.
Marc:listen i know i know did that fuck with you i mean were you like was that part of the wrestling which was like yeah but man i mean when i went out there when i was high and then i fucking did that and everyone remembers that maybe i need that shit get the people get the other people out get them the fuck out
Guest:When you want to do something creative, the others are not your friends.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The world is not rooting for you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They don't agree.
Guest:They poo-poo.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They see you up.
Guest:They will pull you down.
Guest:Unless you create, through artifice, an arranged introduction to what you do that allows them to support you.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that's the knack of, that's showbiz.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:sometimes you need something to just get the effing crap noise out of here right i don't care who is the fucking president i don't care right i don't even care it's not even the country doesn't even exist right anyway right you know the complete freedom yeah whatever it is right to concentrate because you're constant want to concentrate on i think
Guest:That's all it ever did for me.
Guest:Unfortunately, it also... What's the word?
Guest:Beyond vulgarity, it...
Guest:Transgression, crass, decadence.
Guest:It adds a little crag.
Guest:Things get a bit crass.
Guest:I'll tell it like it is.
Guest:Yeah, man.
Guest:Yeah, there's no limits.
Guest:Yeah, right, right.
Guest:When there's no limits, you're going to find yourself in some weird places.
Guest:Yes, this is it.
Marc:But at that point, okay, so the Stooges and your drugs, and you've defined yourself as this kind of singular rock and roll entity.
Marc:When did the relationship, was that when the relationship with Bowie started?
Guest:He had voiced his interest in the group and the songs.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:In the late 60s.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He saw you in New York?
Guest:No, there was just a little blurb.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think he had been over maybe...
Guest:Maybe it was when he toured America with his little acoustic guitar.
Guest:Before Ziggy.
Guest:And there was something anyway in an American music publication.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Saying, you know, it was one of these, David Bowie, who's your favorite?
Guest:Well, I like the Stooges, especially No Fun.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Someone showed it to me.
Guest:You may know this guy.
Guest:Danny Fields, does that ring a bell?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, okay.
Guest:So Danny showed me that.
Guest:He was the publicist at Electro.
Guest:Here's some guys listening to you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that was that, and I thought nothing of it, but I was grateful that somebody in England knew our music, you know?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And then a couple years later, we were—Electra sort of gave me a—Jack Holtzman, who was a very cool guy, gave me, like, the low-budget equivalent of the gold watch.
Guest:He gave me a nice Nikon camera that said, you know, nice try, kid.
Guest:You need a rest.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We don't really hear any potential in your newer songs.
Guest:So that was it?
Marc:That was after what, three records or four records?
Marc:After two records.
Marc:Two records.
Guest:And then basically at the same time an organization called Main Man was in town making connections based around a launch of David Bowie's career.
Guest:They were meeting people
Guest:mostly in the back room of Max's Kansas City.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Which was a chickpea and steakhouse on Union Square where the Warhol people used to eat for free.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Because that was what you could... If you were a Warhol star, you could get a hamburger.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I'll buy you a hamburger if I really have to.
Guest:How much does that cost?
Guest:Were they all like that?
Guest:He was.
Guest:He was very like that.
Guest:He was like, you know...
Guest:He would say things to me like, my, you swim well.
Guest:That was a great line.
Guest:My, you swim well.
Guest:He still had one suggestion I've never instituted, but he said, why don't you just read the newspaper into the microphone and that will be your songs, and you can write lots of them that way.
Guest:That was his idea.
Guest:Never followed up on that one?
Guest:No, but I kind of, you know...
Guest:why not yeah why not right you know fair enough yeah so you know they were all eating their hamburgers back there with these little they they had these little um manila paper andy credit cards and you were somebody if you had one of those cards somebody look look who i am below 14th street yeah right exactly yeah and so yeah they were all hanging around there and danny i was crashing at danny's house thinking about my next move and uh
Guest:a man named steve paul who was flogging the winter brothers at the time he managed the winter brothers he had something called good blue sky records edgar and johnny yeah he was talking to me about doing something he wanted like everybody else he wanted me get rid of those dirty stooges and we'll get you with a nice guitar player and you know
Guest:And I thought that was going to amount to identity theft.
Guest:I had a feeling I couldn't survive that at the time.
Guest:Well, you guys were an organic unit.
Guest:Yeah, and I was who I was through them.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And also, you're pretty fragile in a weird way, right?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Because one thing about you that has always come through is this strange anarchic vulnerability.
Marc:Well, this is true.
Guest:yeah so like you know the idea of you being pulled away from your drive shaft i mean are you who the hell knows what would have happened right i know i know yeah you know what i mean it's like somebody better take care of that guy i'm a little bit like big bird or something you know yeah so anyway yeah they were around and uh they made a pitch you know and uh sounded good to me and i thought well
Guest:Their pitch was the same pitch, you know, get rid of the Dirty Stooges.
Guest:But these people, I could tell, were people who would respect me as an artist on a certain level.
Guest:Whereas Steve would just get a sign your life away, then he'd get a whip and flog me to death on the blues circuit until I dropped dead.
Guest:You know, that's...
Guest:Or went cross-eyed.
Marc:So you have that old-school mentality where you're just going to put me out there and run me down.
Guest:That's what it would have been.
Guest:So I thought, well, I think these artiste people are a better fit.
Guest:So it kind of went that way.
Guest:So you and Bowie worked on the Last Stooges album?
Guest:Not really, no.
Guest:He was ready to do that, but...
Guest:The new Stooge, Williamson, wouldn't have been comfortable.
Guest:I wouldn't have been comfortable.
Guest:With Bowie around?
Guest:With him doing that.
Guest:We had a little meeting about it in a cafe.
Guest:You and James?
Guest:No, me and Bowie.
Guest:We sat there with some sugar cubes and tea.
Guest:And he says, so do you want me to produce this?
Guest:And I said, no, no thanks, because I have a particular thing.
Guest:Which is true, even before I met him, I already knew what Mach 3, I could hear it in my head.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So this was something I had to do.
Guest:He's really talented and energetic, and what would have happened was if he'd come in, he would have had three great songs for us that would have defined us, and we never would have found our own personality.
Guest:We would have become Mata Hoople.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And even if he didn't push that, what would have happened would have been the record company would have said, we don't want songs by these guys.
Guest:Get that great guy to write.
Guest:We want that song.
Guest:Nice songs.
Guest:And they're very good songs.
Guest:So we did our own thing.
Guest:And then what happened was toward the end of it, I became unsound.
Yeah.
Guest:And I started getting deranged.
Guest:I'm not qualified to mix a record.
Guest:I kept trying to mix it.
Guest:And no matter what I did, it didn't sound evil and scratchy enough and like it was going to blow things up.
Guest:I would carry it around America.
Guest:I went on a radio show in Detroit, and I thought maybe, I said, wait, I'll play you these unmixed tapes, or maybe if I strip naked, I'll have a flash, an insight.
Guest:So I strip naked, and the DJ is selling me, but Iggy is naked in the studio now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they were afraid that they'd lose their license.
Guest:So eventually, the main man just said, David will remix the record.
Guest:We've decided.
Guest:We've decided.
Guest:And at that point, I was brought to ground.
Guest:I was tired.
Guest:I said, you know what?
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And so the three of us, he and I and Williamson went into a
Guest:It was either Western, I think it was Western recorders, one of the old school Elvis-y studios, Elvis, you know, one of those old chestnut studios on Sunset in Hollywood.
Guest:with an old board yeah and when we mixed it and it sounded great in the studio and it still sounds great there's a lot of treble they put the voice way up which was embarrassing but on the other hand that makes it because you can really hear the words and the personality and i i wouldn't have done that i did a remix of it for for knuckleheads later
Guest:Because, you know, the band hated it and I kind of hated it because it didn't.
Guest:What, Bowie's mix?
Guest:Yeah, because it didn't have the big old Kazoombas.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:It didn't have the big bass and all this.
Guest:But on the other hand, I came to realize later, it really didn't need that shit.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He did a good mix.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But doesn't Rollins have a mix of yours?
Guest:Well, no.
Guest:Rollins found the tapes again later.
Guest:And so he wanted to mix them.
Guest:And I said, no, I'll do it myself.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I did.
Guest:I did the loudest mix ever done of Raw Power.
Guest:The loudest record anyone's ever made.
Guest:But because I wanted to get it.
Guest:At that time, there was all these guys lifting weights and listening to nu metal.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they couldn't hear us because we didn't sound loud enough.
Guest:Right.
Guest:and that's how stupid this is and so there is a lot of stupid people out here are ready to listen to our music yeah well you know and i know just what to do you know and just turn it up and turn it so i i did that and the the berlin period there so you were out of your mind and you went and then you recorded with david the two records yeah i started and i became a colorful
Guest:semi-person here around the streets of hollywood yeah basically there's iggy yeah yeah but there were a lot of people you know it's funny all the a lot of the higgs the huge industry giants yeah they wanted to meet me because those guys once they get to a certain point they realize geez you know it's just like a million guys who can play and sing just like me and they get interested in
Guest:What does this all mean?
Guest:What's the angle?
Guest:What's the personality?
Guest:So they would want to meet me and see if they could pick something out.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:How did we fit this guy into a box?
Guest:Yeah, I was hanging around with Danny Hutton and Brian Wilson and Alice Cooper and all these...
Guest:you know hollywood but did you feel like you you've been spat out or you'd had your time or you were wandering or lost or i felt i was i all i was trying to do was always keep making art yeah that's why we did this kill city album where williamson yeah he thought it was a demo i i thought i was making hot if i had sung it as a demo i would have sung something about your lovely beautiful loveliness and fuck
Guest:that you know and i'm singing you know i'm basically saying early elroy on that you know it's it's noir you know i sang about how i found this place and some of the some of the things i expressed came out later in uh the rap stuff right yeah yeah yeah and um so i just kept trying to make some kind of art
Guest:And from time to time, I would try these demo sessions with Bowie, but they would mostly be two out there.
Guest:And then all of a sudden, a couple of the ideas started to click.
Guest:And he said, well, we could make, he was going on a long tour.
Guest:he needed a buddy who could hang yeah his last buddy had gone Hollywood yeah and he wasn't comfortable so he was looking for somebody different and also he had a production talent and a production company right so he was looking for it was okay for him to do something for me and he made a very informal proposition and
Guest:I thought, well, I heard some demos and I was on them and I thought, ooh, I sound good.
Guest:This is a whole other thing to do.
Guest:I thought we'd burned out the Stooges thing.
Guest:At the time, the New York Dolls were writing more clever songs and they were cuter and looked more like established pop stars.
Guest:And I thought, you know, we've done what we're going to do for a while.
Guest:That's what I thought.
Guest:and then you that's when you guys did the idiot we did the idiot and then uh toured that and then very quickly did lust for life yeah those are fucking amazing those two are amazing are you proud of them i'm extremely proud of those two records yes i am yeah we didn't really cover where how did james williamson come into the mix with you i mean where'd you meet him
Guest:Well, he had been in a group called The Chosen Few with Ron Ashton and a guy named Scott Richardson who was in SRC later, an area singer.
Guest:And these were guys.
Guest:Michigan guys.
Guest:Yeah, these are a different kind of Michigan guys in the MC5.
Guest:These guys were more from a more upscale bedroom community and without much parental supervision.
Guest:And their thing was like to drive out to the airport.
Guest:and pretend that they were a British rock band that had just flown in and try to pick up girls, right?
Guest:It was more like that, right?
Guest:Yeah, they had a scam, a hustle.
Guest:Yeah, they had a hustle, right?
Guest:So James was more like that, and he'd done a little reform school time, and you know.
Guest:So we had heard, I had heard, hey, there's a guy around who's a hot guitar player.
Guest:So that was basically.
Marc:That was James.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And now he's back with you, which is a great story because he went out and built a life in the tech industry.
Marc:Yes, he did.
Marc:And you went and got him for the new Stooges.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Well, you know what happened?
Guest:It just happened to coincide that...
Guest:They farmed him out about the same time that Ron had passed away.
Guest:And I thought, well, what should I do next?
Guest:I want to do my own stuff sometime.
Guest:But at that time, a couple, three years ago, I thought I should try to do a good job of finishing up the group.
Guest:You know, part of it is like, in one real corny way, I think of myself as kind of like George Washington.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, like for this group.
Guest:I founded this thing, and then there's been a lot of complaints about my early leadership.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:So we have the second chance here.
Guest:Everybody gets to make money.
Guest:Everybody gets to buy a house and then make your own mistakes or whatever you want to do.
Guest:But the music has been brought up into the light, played properly, that sort of thing.
Guest:So I thought, well, let's get Williamson and do this.
Guest:it's great and then he didn't he cut his chops on a stooges cover band didn't he like learn all the songs like i read some piece somewhere oh well he he no he went yeah when he was it helped him as he was rehearsing up the stuff it's really hard to rehearse heavy rock all alone right like if you're john fahey yeah you can rehearse your stuff all right right right room like this so there was a there was a band up in san jose that knew all our stuff and he'd play in a bar on the weekends with them yeah
Marc:Well, you know, the thing is, like, you know, because we don't have a lot of time, I just, you know, the solo career, I mean, you've done amazing.
Marc:All of it is amazing.
Marc:Every few years, you know, every record, you know, you bring yourself to it.
Marc:And one of the questions, because I don't want to disregard all that stuff because it's some of my favorite records.
Marc:but uh in the sense that we don't have time but like my question is as a guy who writes all his own songs when you're doing music i mean the the i have to assume that the the it's a collaborative effort for you to get the sound you want because you're you're bringing in songs and then you deal with any number of musicians how does the sound come
Guest:This is it.
Guest:Well, it's different with every bunch.
Guest:Like, let's say you do Don Was.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You've got a bunch of songs, and the way I play them, it just sounds like some kid in eighth grade, right?
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:But the song forms are there.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then he just had a role, what they called a Rolodex at the time in 1990.
Guest:And the next thing you know, you've got the Stones bass player, John Cougar Mellencamp's drummer, and then David Mansfield.
Guest:So you get all these really expensive guys, and they just come in and they pee all over your record and play the way they're going to.
Guest:And for me, I come in and do that, and they're amazing people.
Guest:And then I need to go to Mexico for a year and just calm down.
Guest:Because, you know, it's this sort of American perfectionism.
Guest:It's great and everything, but it's coming from a different place.
Guest:Who are your favorite producers?
Guest:But when I listen back, I have to admit, like the way I like to listen to my music the best is I'm hanging around somewhere and it sneaks up on me.
Guest:Like I hear something coming from a bar while I'm walking down the street.
Guest:It's like,
Guest:Who's that?
Guest:That's you.
Guest:You know, because I don't hear that well.
Guest:You know, my ears are blown.
Guest:Is it me?
Guest:Really?
Guest:That sounds good.
Guest:And that'll be like candy, candy.
Guest:Wow, those guys can really play.
Guest:You know, but at the time, I'm really oversensitive.
Guest:You don't get it.
Guest:Why do you L.A.
Guest:guys just think you're all so effing cool and you've got your big boxes full of fancy instruments?
Guest:It's sort of like that.
Guest:And then with some other things, I'll bring in a guy like Whitey, who's totally salt of the earth, and then the producer will be scared of him.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Hey, that's just a street kid.
Guest:That's the idea.
Guest:Right, he's your buffer.
Guest:He's going to do what he's going to do.
Guest:Yeah, so it just depends.
Guest:It all depends.
Guest:And honestly...
Guest:and they all know you though i mean they they're trying to honor you they are trying in some way or another usually yeah and then but they do have their own agendas right you know but that's okay it just everything varies sometimes now i do guest work and i just work to track yeah they send me a track and i say yeah okay either they ask me to write to it or just to sing something i'll say okay i can do that and i do it by myself you know
Marc:And working with Mike Watt, who's like the legend.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That must be pretty amazing.
Guest:Well, he's deranged, but he's a very, very uniquely dedicated person.
Guest:And the great thing about him is his constancy.
Guest:And he has been there for us.
Guest:Solid.
Guest:He's been there solid for us.
Guest:for over 10 years now.
Guest:And he's a hard worker, and he's a salt of the earth.
Marc:He really is.
Marc:That's cool, man.
Marc:And the new record's great, Ready to Die, right?
Marc:Yeah, Ready to Die.
Marc:The weirdness was great.
Marc:And, you know, I love preliminaires.
Marc:I love that record.
Guest:Well, thank you.
Guest:I enjoy the French stuff.
Guest:And I did a follow-up to preliminaires that you can't even get in America, huh?
Guest:Called A Prey.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Sounds like a perfume, doesn't it?
Guest:But I just did, that's just five French torch songs, and then I did five songs that Sinatra would have done in his Del Canto.
Guest:Yeah, so you're still kind of pushing it, man.
Guest:I just wanted to do something different.
Guest:I even sang Michelle by the Beatles.
Guest:Oh, I've got to get that now.
Guest:Yeah, I'll send you one.
Marc:All right.
Marc:It's been a fucking honor, man.
Marc:Hey, terrific.
Marc:I'm so thrilled that you did this shirtless.
Marc:Fucking cool.
Marc:That's it, folks.
Marc:I hope you enjoyed that.
Marc:I did all that I could in the time that I had.
Marc:It was a real honor to have Iggy.
Marc:It's a real honor to have you people listening.
Marc:It's very exciting that this is the 400th episode.
Marc:I don't know what to say.
Marc:I had no idea we would all be where we are now.
Marc:I don't need to be effusive with gratitude, but the fact that I'm experiencing gratitude is a good thing because sometimes I blow right by it.
Marc:But thank you for listening.
Marc:I'm not going to do plugs here at the end.
Marc:I'm not going to... Well, you can go to WTFPod.com and do whatever you're going to do.
Marc:I'm in New York.
Marc:Cheech and Chong is on Thursday.
Marc:It's a big week.
Marc:That was amazing.
Marc:Iggy Pop and Cheech and Chong in one week.
Marc:Amazing.
Guest:Boomer Libs.
Guest:You know, I didn't really see all of the other... It doesn't sound like you watch... I don't.
Guest:I don't.
Guest:I don't watch anything.
Guest:You watch your own movies.
Guest:It's embarrassing.
Marc:You catch bits and pieces.
Guest:I know.
Marc:What, do you walk by the den where your kids watch television?
Marc:Like, oh, I was in that.
Marc:How am I doing?
Guest:How am I doing?
Guest:17 years ago.
Guest:How am I doing?
Guest:You're all right.
Guest:The Actress Gang was like the clash of theater companies.
Guest:It was politically active, and yeah, there was a point to it.
Guest:Were you politically active?
Guest:Not so much, but I wanted to be.
Guest:Maren, she works with autistic kids, and she makes a dollar.
Guest:She's the greatest person you will ever know.
Guest:She's the best.
Guest:She's the best person in the world.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I love her.
Guest:You're going to make me cry.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:I'm not supposed to cry.
Guest:You've got to imagine, what would it be like for you?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What's your first wife's name?
Guest:Kim.
Guest:Kim.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What would it be like for you if every time you left up your house, every day, for the rest of your life...
Guest:Between five and ten people, between the time you left your house and got back home, came up to you and said, hey, how's Kim?
Guest:You talked to Kim lately?
Guest:Oh, yeah, I remember you were with Kim.
Guest:Weren't you married to that Kim?
Guest:Welcome to my life.
Guest:I had no idea it would be a hit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I thought, well, maybe it'll run for, you know.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It'll be fun.
Guest:It'll be fun.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know, what do you live for?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know, you live occasionally, you live for a grilled cheese sandwich and fun.
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