PT: Well, yes, that’s a large part of their appeal, that they had three albums that were, in a fucked-up kind of way, absolutely perfect. We don’t need anything else to justify their existence.
BC: Who did you find was the most surprising band or artist to cite The Stooges as an influence?
PT: I remember Robbie Williams namechecked him to me once. Go figure.
BC: Favorite Iggy Pop/Stooges album and song?
PT: It changes every day... I'll say Raw Power, because I’m in a London frame of mind at the moment. And the song would be “Success,” which (in the supreme example of ‘critics’ being wannabe musicians) I sang for my wife at our wedding two weeks ago!
BC: Least favorite Iggy Pop/Stooges album and song?
PT: There is a particularly horrible song called “Happy Man” – a few correspondents have attempted to get me to back down, but I maintain not only is it the worst song in Iggy’s catalogue, it’s one of the worst songs of the 1980s, and that’s saying something.
BC: Any particular favorite stories or anecdotes about Iggy Pop that either did or didn’t get included in the book?
PT: I remember doing a photo shoot with him in the mid-'90s, in the Lower East Side on a sweltering hot day. There was a broken fire hydrant spouting water, and we were asking him to splash himself. Some local wags saw what was happening, sneaked up behind with a cold bucket of water and emptied it over him. I still have the photos that show him laughing. Whatever his faults, I can’t imagine anyone else doing the same.
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