Iggy Pop Let Us Down

Iggy Pop Let Us Down By Jim Danger October, 2015

The “Hall of Fame” - what a crock of shit!

Johnny Rotten kept his integrity & his rock'n'roll credentials, by telling this bogus enterprise to fuck off when they came calling to use him for their perverse gain. He didn't let their “prestigious” odor inflate his head. He didn't brush aside his loyalty to reality by finding some excuse to play along with the phony, ego-boosting, corporate shenanigans of the odious & reprehensible institution called the “Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame”. {It pains me even to write the name 'rock'n'roll' in conjunction with the name of this egregious, farcical club.}

There are two main considerations which move me to so vehemently oppose the existence of this institution. The first is that this corporation, the “Hall of Fame” is using each particular artist – using the artist's fame & fandom, as well as their image & their art – for their own gain. The Hall of Fame does not love these people. They view the artist as a commodity, and the inclusion of the artist in their “hallowed halls” as a way of luring more customers, selling more tickets – making more money. They use & package the artist, make a trinket of them, a keychain ornament; merchandise. Who profits by this reduction of a musical artist to a pay-to-see museum display? The Hall of Fame itself, of course. So, why would an artist allow themselves to be used & exploited by this corporation? It's strictly the appeal to the ego, to the blinding vanity of the artist, that would intoxicate them to the point of bending over for the royal & final, eviscerating shaft. Congratulations – you're now a museum attraction, one of our collection, & an item that we can sell, over & over & over, profiting immensely. Hah – sucker! What does the artist get out of it? Nothing but ego-inflation, bragging rights: “Hey, I'm in the Hall of Fame – I'm on a phony pedestal!

This brings me to the second reason why it's a grievous crime for a rock'n'roller who should know better {there are some 'inductees' who I would not expect to know better}, to accept the money-green laurel offered by the corporate hand of the “Hall of Fame”: it's a snobby, self-important, ego-inflated insult to all rock'n'rollers everywhere who are not chosen by this bullshit-stuffed committee, for inclusion. “Ooo, they picked me, they picked me!” Who picked you? God? Rock'n'roll itself? Rock'n'roll fans everywhere? Your own fans? No! Some fucking duly-appointed panel of judges picked you. The institution picked you. {I've said many times, 'rock'n'rollers get thrown out of institutions – not inducted into them. The other way around is anathema to the very spirit of rock'n'roll, which is street-level.} Shame on you for selling your legitimate place in rock'n'roll music for a seat in the esteemed halls of the bureaucracy of the business world. You sold out your friends. You accepted being singled out for a luxury cabin on the corporate yacht, leaving all the rest of the legitimate, hard-working, fully-devoted rock'n'rollers flogging the treacherous waters of ignominy, or paddling honestly in little rowboats. “You can come in, they can't.” “Okay! Gee, thanks for letting me join the club! It sucked just being one of them{pointing to all those pure-of-heart rock'n'rollers who are not allowed on the yacht}!”

I used to really look up to Iggy Pop. I didn't make an effort to buy a lot of his recordings, because so many of them sucked, and it was hard – and expensive – to glean good stuff that was to be found among the useless. Even on a double-CD “essential collection”, I liked only a handful of songs enough to listen to them repeatedly. Still, though, he stood for something – I thought; he was one of us – I thought. He was a no-bullshit, bare-bones, real person – I thought. All of that disintegrated, the moment I found out that he'd played along with the offensive farce that is the “Hall of Fame”. I have absolutely zero interest in hearing him again, or seeing him again – and he was one of my main heroes in life! {I saw him perform in person twice, once in '80 & once in the '90s. I got a letter from him once, too.} Now I see him for what he is – a self-obsessed poser. He stopped surprising anyone decades ago. He has a set-list & an act, & he goes onstage & does all the regular hits, & does his ultra-predictable Iggy Pop act. Once you've seen it, expect nothing different; that's it – that's his jump-around-like-crazy-with-your-shirt-off, same-old-vocal-but-getting-weaker act. There's really nothing there, if no gut-level integrity & substance, which, when I presumed them to be there, kept me signing on as a big fan even when I stopped paying much attention to the same act I'd seen over & over. It was the idea of Iggy Pop – the Iggy Pop integrity – that kept me a fan & somewhat of an idolater; he was real.

Learning that he had accepted induction into the Hall of Fame, & played along with it hook, line & sinker, obliterated the idea of “the Iggy Pop integrity”. He sold it – and me along with it. Now he's got as much depth & substance as any other bubble-gum card. He let me down – he let us down.

An anti-torture ad campaign sought to make the point that anyone can be made to say anything, under torture. They made their point by using Iggy Pop's face in their ad, making it look beaten & severely roughed up, & he was saying, “I really believe that Justin Bieber is the future of music.” This was meant to be considered totally absurd, for if anyone could be trusted to speak the gut-level, no-bullshit truth about music, one would think it would be Iggy Pop. This is what he used to represent: integrity in rock'n'roll. He's the guy, one assumed, who would never sell out. That's what he meant to me, even though I'd heard he could be very deceitful & conniving in matters of business. Well, now I see that his conniving duplicity in matters of business, has bled over into his very rock'n'roll persona, as he's allowed himself to become a product hawked by the institution; and it didn't take torture to turn the messiah into one of the temple money-changers & flim-flam peddlers. Just a high-priced invitation. He has shaken hands with the devil of commerce, hype & phony laurels. I'd guess it was a marketing decision, probably also tinged with a healthy dose of sheer egotism.

It was a fuckin' bad move, though, because to me & probably many other fans, he destroyed the essence of his career by accepting this bureaucratic “honor”.

Recently, I made a note to myself, not thinking of Iggy Pop at the time, but what I wrote can well be applied here, to him:

“Some things are bad for your career, but good for your image – and that's a trade I'll make, any day. Integrity is everything; if you can't believe someone, why listen to them?”

I'm not listening to Iggy anymore. For me, he's lost his Pop.