‘Dead Dog Island’: The insane TV pitch in Iggy Pop’s rider
A shirtless ball of energy who has spent the majority of his surprisingly long life writhing around onstage in a puddle of amphetamines, sweat, and broken glass, Iggy Pop is an expectedly strange individual. A true individual, in every sense of the world, Pop’s bizarre onstage antics and eccentric persona suit the similarly individualistic music the songwriter has crafted over the decades, from the stunning proto-punk rock of The Stooges to mature and experimental works like The Idiot. Seemingly, though, Pop’s writing talents are not limited entirely to music.
Pop first emerged from his den of proto-punk iniquity alongside The Stooges during the late 1960s. Crafting an abrasive alternative to the complacency of ‘peace and love’ hippie groups, and laying the foundations for virtually all future punk and alternative rock movements, The Stooges were in a league of their own throughout their relatively short tenure. From the offset, it was clear that the frontman did not operate on the same wavelength as anybody else, and that theme has continued throughout his life.
Admittedly, much of his eccentricity and unpredictability during The Stooges’ heyday came from Pop’s excessive drug use. Amphetamines, sedatives, psychedelics: you name it, Iggy Pop probably took it in abundance during his early years. It was this deadly cocktail of illicit substances that carved out Iggy’s stagecraft, which was defined by unpredictability and a constant air of danger. Seemingly, though, Iggy’s bizarre personality did not cease when he finally kicked his drug habit during the 1990s.
During the early 2000s, Iggy participated in a reunion with his proto-punk outfit, The Stooges. Lasting, on and off, from 2003 until 2016 – following the deaths of Ron Asheton, Scott Asheton, and Steve Mackay – this reunion provided Pop with an opportunity to return to the wild ways of his early 20s, minus the drugs. A key piece of evidence that Iggy was still the strangely eccentric character he had always been comes in the form of The Stooges’ 2006 rider, which Iggy wrote himself and published on the band’s website.
A standard tour rider might be made up of specific equipment like amplifiers, maybe instruments and lighting equipment, as well as crates of beer and water for the band members. However, Iggy Pop’s rider was littered with jokes, criticisms, and satirical comments in between requests for very specific pieces of equipment. Even stranger, the multi-page rider concludes with an insane pitch for a reality television show called ‘Dead Dog Island’.
“By the way, if there are any Reality TV executives reading this – hardly likely, I know, but – here is my idea for a Reality TV show,” the frontman writes, before explaining the hellish reality game show. “It’s called ‘Dead Dog Island’, where a group of contestants/dog lovers is asked what is their favourite breed of dog, then whatever they reply (for example, ‘Poodle’. Or ‘ Labrador’) they are then presented with a dead dog of that particular breed.”
Already sounding like the deranged ramblings of a madman crossed with a satirical sketch thought up by The League of Gentlemen, Pop’s pitch quickly becomes much more worrying. Once the contestants have been presented with their dead dog, they would be forced to “have to cook [the dog] in a number of different ways, say about six or seven, and then eat it all up over the course of the next oooh… two weeks or so.”
To add a sense of suspense, Pop shares, “All the knives are blunt, and they have to wear a pair of those enormous clown trousers, made out of wood or something so that they can’t quite reach anything.” The winner of the programme would be “the first person to completely eat all his (or her) dog, and not be thrown off the island by the public for being too pleasant, or maybe unpleasant.
As a reward for this gruesome televised social experiment, the victor would be awarded “another, live dog of exactly the same breed. And pots of money. And free dog food for life (of the dog).” Pop even suggests a celebrity version might be on the cards, “with currently out-of-the-spotlight celebrities in it. Does anybody know if Cher is a dog lover? I think Stevie Nicks probably is,” he wrote.
Thankfully, no television executives were ever exposed to this inhumane reality television pitch – or, if they were, they never commissioned the programme to be made. Whether the rider was simply meant to exemplify the singer’s dark sense of humour or whether it was a comment on the already present inhumanity within much of reality television, nobody but Iggy Pop could have thought up such a strange idea for a television show and presented it with apparent normality.
