Iggy Pop’s crucial advice to young artists
Iggy Pop has never shirked a challenge during his career, and this characteristic is key to his longevity. The former frontman of The Stooges has always thrown himself into the deep end, and at 75, he’s defying physics with his on-stage antics.
After being in the music industry for half a century, Iggy has forgotten more about the business than most musicians have even learned. Over the years, he’s endured several ups and downs, but the veteran singer has proved to be an impossible person to keep down. Somehow, Iggy has always found a way to bounce back from adversity.
Following the split of The Stooges in 1971, Iggy headed down a disastrous track and stared the end of his career in the face. Thankfully, David Bowie arrived as his knight in shining armour and whisked Iggy away to Berlin in 1976, a decision which saved his life.
Speaking to MTV News in 1990, Iggy Pop said: “Well put it this way, before I made that record (The Idiot), I was a street person in LA basically. I’d been kind of stymied by the entire music business and a really disastrous manager in general, drug problems and drinking, general carousing. So at the time, I could have put together a stock-rock band, something glam, something tasteless, but I didn’t want to do that.”
Unlike most rockstars of his age, Iggy is continuing to live in the fast lane, and the safe route has never appealed to the frontman. In 2017, Iggy told The Double Negative about the motto he lives by: “‘Get out of bed and confront life!’ That’s still the case now. You have to challenge yourself. You have to develop. So I’m always ready to jump into the fire with anybody I think is good, and I think that’s the best thing that happens to anybody.”
Iggy believes every young artist should be fearless and not lose sleep over the thought of rejection. Risk-tasking has been a critical part of his journey, and in all likelihood, every artist who has achieved greatness has shied away from taking the easy option.
He repeated the sentiment during an interview with Red Bull: “As a young artist, you throw yourself into all sorts of insecure situations, and that’s how you grow, through the import of other people and through failure and rejection. You get together with other musicians. You can conceal your insecurity when you work with other people.”
Iggy Pop didn’t get where he is today purely by good fortune or talent, his ability to throw himself into strenuous, unpredictable circumstances. Without this mindset, the great heights he’s hit would have evaded Iggy, and today, he still thrives off uncertainty.
