The insane moment Meatloaf saw Iggy Pop for the first time: “It was over in six minutes”
Iggy Pop’s shows in the 1970s weren’t for the faint of heart.He regularly took his performances to the very limit and gained a divisive reputation for doing so.
On the one hand, he fostered a like-minded community of disillusioned punk heads from New York’s grungey downtown areas that wanted danger. They revelled in the unpredictability of his shows, for it was the perfect vehicle of societal shock and awe that they could get behind.
But it soon reached a point where it distracted from the very sentiment of the music. When rumours swirled that Iggy Pop planned to take his own life during a much anticipated New Years Eve gig, Iggy’s performative style started to become somewhat of a circus. Whether it was vomiting all over the stage, resting his penis on an amp or wrestled with crowd members in the depths of the moshpit, fans were losing interest in the euphoric and escapist intent of his punk musings and more concerned with salacious rumours that had nothing to do with the music.
But when the extremism fell away, he was undoubtedly a captivating performer. The energy that pulsed through every syllabic utterance carried through his performance. He felt every single word he sung and in turn, helped lay the foundations of modern punk. So it was only natural that his musical competitors made their way to whatever gig he was playing next, to understand exactly what it was he was tapping into.
Meat Loaf was one of the many musical icons who stepped foot inside the walls of an Iggy Pop gig and quickly experienced both sides of his performative coin. Enigmatic one minute, truly disturbed the next, he lived up to both elements of his highly walked about reputation.
“After an instrumental intro, in the key of E, Iggy came on, immediately took off his T-shirt” Meat Loaf recalled, outlining just how quickly Iggy could descend into outright debauchery. Just seconds after the first note of the first song, he “then started maiming himself by sticking needles through his fingertips and in his chest.”
As if on stage maiming wasn’t outrageous enough, Iggy continued. But no matter how wide his goalposts for ridiculousness were, no one likely expected just what would happen next.
“He then somehow got hold of a cream pie,” Meat Loaf continued, “jumped off stage and started making out with this poor guy’s girlfriend. So, this guy’s freaking out, and Iggy just laughs and slams the pie in this poor kid’s face and starts rubbing the cream all over himself. Then, he jumps back on stage and disappears. That was the whole show. F***ing hilarious! It was over in six minutes.”
At just six minutes, Iggy crammed in more chaos than anybody in the entire music industry was capable of. But at just six minutes long, shows like that had veered far too close into the realms of stupidity, as music had clearly been demoted to the sub bench with drama firmly leading the line. Which as entertaining as it was, was ultimately a shame given the strength of The Stooges back catalogue.
