34 THENEWYORKER, SEPTEMBER 2, 2019
of whoever might be watching. Though
it seems clear that Pop was working, in
part, by instinct, he was also being in
tentional. “There wasn’t much that hap
pened that wasn’t conceived of as a per
formance,” he said.
It’s possible to find echoes of the
Stooges’ penchant for physical and spir
itual obliteration in contemporary music;
I often encounter a similar sort of pur
poseful dissolution in the songs of emerg
ing rappers on SoundCloud. Many of
these m.c.s praise benzodiazepines and
other antianxiety medications, and their
slurred, depleted delivery seems to in
dicate a wish to briefly disappear. They
tattoo their faces, a gesture that swears
off mainstream acceptance. Why worry
over a future when there might be no
future? Watching someone give in to
chaos and panic can be palliative for an
audience. Still, rebellion that vicious will
eventually catch up with a person. Now,
Pop told me, his “skeleton is the weak
area.” Occasionally, he uses a cane.
S
hortly after we met, Pop offered to
accompany me while I moved my
rental car. I was driving a lozengeshaped
gray sedan; he was driving a 2016 Rolls
Royce Phantom Drophead coupe. He
climbed into my front seat, and politely
said nothing about the fact that my cell
phone had automatically synched to the
car’s stereo, and was now blasting “Pump
Up the Volume.”
“Do you want to see mine?” Pop asked,
gesturing toward the RollsRoyce. The
interior was a creamywhite leather.
After I pressed a button marked “Door,”
the door closed. Pop took down the top,
and turned the airconditioning to high.
We spent the next two days cruising
around like this. Pop is a courteous
chauffeur. When the traffic necessitated
quick braking, he shot his arm in front
of my chest. He travels with an extra
hat for guests, in case the sun or the sea
breeze becomes overwhelming.
“Have you ever tried to buy a fuck
ing car? Excuse me—a new car?” he
asked. “You’ve got to fill out this form,
and talk about this, and come down,
and get manhandled and assaulted, and
‘What’s your job?’ and ‘Who employs
you?’” He prefers to buy his cars used.
When he first moved to Miami, he ac
quired a cherryred 1968 Cadillac DeVille,
with a white top and brown Naugahyde
seats. Then he bought an electricblue
1984 Ferrari 308 GTS, which he described
as “a motorcycle with a top on it.” That
one caught fire every once in a while.
“You’d see the paint bubble first,” he said.
“I had a rag that I used to beat it out
with. I had a date with a girl who be
came my wife, and I took her some
where nice, and on the way home she
said, ‘I think the car’s on fire!’”
Returning to the Rolls, he said,
“What I like about it is, it makes me
feel like everything’s O.K.” Though he
lives with his wife, Nina Alu, a former
flight attendant, in Coconut Grove, an
upscale neighborhood opposite Key
Biscayne, he spends a few afternoons
or evenings a week at a small bungalow
that he owns north of Miami, in El Por
tal. He refers to the property as his “spirit
house,” and he does the bulk of his think
ing and writing there. The neighbor
hood is a mixture of Bahamian, Haitian,
Dominican, and Cuban, and is bordered
by the Little River, a brackish, semi
polluted canal.
One afternoon, Pop gave me a tour
of the place. It’s crammed with folk art,
bits of Stooges memorabilia, stacks of
books, plastic skulls, framed photo
graphs, throw pillows, a large painting
of Jesus Christ wearing a crown of
thorns, a Marlins jersey with “Pop” and
the number sixtynine on the back, and
assorted mementos from his travels.
There are a handful of acrylic paint
ings that Pop made himself, including
a striking portrait of his wife, rendered
in shades of blue, gray, and red. In the
vestibule there are framed photos of his
mother and father, and a handwritten
note from Yoko Ono (“Ask the clouds
to remember”). His bedroom contains
an enormous straightbacked wooden
chair that he bought from Sotheby’s.
He believes that it is at least four hun
dred years old. He paused at a black
andwhite photograph of himself, wet
and smiling on a beach. “This is a fa
vorite picture,” he said. “I was on a tour
break at a fairly snobby hotel near Nice.
And there was a beach photographer
who came every day with her giant
camera, and she was photographing
people’s kids. And the kids were jump
ing and having so much fun. I thought,
That’s not like the photo sessions I do!
So one morning I was up early and she
was there—it was just her and me, and
I said, ‘Would you take my picture?’”
The portrait is striking—Pop looks
innocent, grateful, and happy. “He’s a
real Midwestern gentleman, no matter
that wildness that he celebrates,” the
filmmaker Jim Jarmusch told me. He
and Pop have been friends since the late
nineteeneighties, and Pop has appeared
in several of his films, including “Coffee
and Cigarettes,” “Dead Man,” “The
Dead Don’t Die,” and “Gimme Dan
ger,” a documentary about the Stooges.
“People think he’s this wild, shirtless,
Dionysian man, running around the
stage like a pony on amphetamines, and
they overlook the incredible depth that
he has, and his interest in history and
art,” Jarmusch said.
Pop wakes up early these days—by
6 A.M. or so—and his only significant
indulgence is a few glasses of wine in
the evening, usually with dinner. If he
is touring, his preshow ritual takes eight
or nine hours. “I wake up, cup of coffee,
stay in bed, clear my mind, don’t think
about the show,” he said. “I’m not going
to talk to anybody about anything. Three
hours before, I lie down on the floor and
do something called wu chi breathing,
where I breathe very deep into my gut
for almost a half hour. I’m a little high,
but not dizzy, and my voice has wid
ened. Then I lightly visualize for about
an hour. I hit my cues—there’s certain
blocking to remember, like in a play.
Maybe you find one little thing that you
can improve, but you’re not desperate
about it. Then I do Qigong, which loos
ens up my bod,” he continued. “My bod
gets tight. I’m a little gnarly. Then I take
a hot shower and I turn it all the way
cold. And then they pick me up, and
take me where I’m going, and I sit there
for a couple of hours, and I realize where
I am and what I’ve got to do.”
Pop has never imagined a traditional
domestic life for himself. (In 1969, when
Pop was twentyone and living in Ann
Arbor, he had a son, Eric, with Paulette
Benson. Eric was brought up by his
mother, in California, and lives in Ber
lin now.) In part, this is why it matters
so much to him that his work remain
vital. “It’s gotta be fucking good,” he said.
“This is what you’ve sacrificed a lot of
things for, dude, and this is what you
were doing when you weren’t always there
for other people, so it’d better be good.”
This past year, Pop went on a brief
