He prefers to swim naked, of course,
but he usually saves that for a place
he has in the Caribbean. “Outside the
good old USA,” he says.
When Iggy Pop was photographed
for these pages, each time he changed
into a new outfit, a makeshift screen
was held around him so that he could
dress in modesty. “I didn’t ask for
that,” he notes, almost a≠ronted at
the thought; I mention to him how it
reminded me that he is one of the few
men outside my immediate family
whose penis I have seen several times
in the flesh. (Earlier in his career, there
would often be a moment toward the
end of an Iggy Pop performance when
his manhood would appear.)
He nods. “Everyone’s got one,” he
says. (After a second, he does append
the logically necessary coda: “Unless
they don’t.”)
I ask him about those old days,
because it always struck me how strange
it was, the way he used to expose himself.
It wasn’t like some theatrical Well, here
it is! Get a load of that! It was more like
some kind of challenge or provocation.
“Yeah, that’s right,” he says. “That
was the general feeling behind it.”
Famously, Pop almost invariably
appears onstage without a shirt.
“I’m more relaxed, the less clothes
I wear,” Pop says.
How is singing di≠erent when you
have a shirt on?
“It’s more civilized.”
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
“Well, it’s...okay. I have no quarrel
with civilization. As long as I can do my
thing, you know.”
Pop points out that this year, with
his shows all going so well, he hasn’t
even felt the need to stage dive, as if it is
obvious that all of these possible tech-
niques—anything up to full exposure—
are resources a performer calls on not
to cap the cherry on a triumph but to
change something that is not going
the way they wish it to. “Maybe I was
feeling that particular time, ‘You know,
you’re holding back on me, you’re not
connecting with me, I’ve tried this, I’ve
tried that...how about this? What does
that do for you?’”
When would you last have done that?
“I don’t think I’ve done it this century.”
But it could still happen?
“I don’t think so, no. I do real well,
and I have a real strong thing with the
audience I play to.”
When you would do it, what would
you be thinking?
“When you’re a lifetime performer,
and every performance is your proof
of pretense—and every performance
when you’re me is pretty much a life-
and-death situation—it better be fuck-
ing special and it better go over, and it
better get me to the next fucking perfor-
mance, because I didn’t have the record
company really behind me, I didn’t have
the fucking radio stations behind me...
Who did I have behind me? The band
wasn’t really behind me, they were a
bunch of...well...” He laughs. “It was a
band, what could I say? It was not a pro-
fessional relationship. And so who do
I turn to? I turn to the fucking audience.
And you better make sure. Meanwhile,
most of the audience were standingthere staring at me holding a beer or
cowering in fear or in some sort of vague
judgmental pose. And so then I’d go and
get ’em. That’s all. Because that’s what
I needed to do to be...Iggy Pop! It didn’t
happen that often—just every once in a
while. If things were getting gnarly and
di∞cult. There was no conscious: ‘So
let’s think this out! If I expose my penis,
here are the pros and cons—’”
But you’re well aware that most per-
formers don’t do that.
“Yeah, well, I’m not most perform-
ers. And I’m not interested in most per-
formers—most of them are shit. And
I’m not. How about that? I may not be
just what the doctor ordered for every-
body, but I’m not shit.”chris heath is a gq correspondent.Pants, $1,350,
by Prada.40 GQ.COM NOVEMBER 2019
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