Who is Iggy Pop really? After being considered the most dangerous and self-destructive singer in rock ‘n’ roll, “the godfather of punk” acquired the status of sage late on. Everyone loves the Iguana today, even advertising, that is to say. However, at 75, Iggy Pop remains a free spirit who has kept his ability to wonder. This is what the documentary shows Tell Me Iggy by the French Sophie Blondy, broadcast on Canal+ until August.
The director, who had already had Iggy play in a fiction, The star of the day (2012), with Denis Lavant and Béatrice Dalle, is visibly a fan of the artist whom she describes as “magical” and “supernatural“. Wishing with this documentary to share with us “a bit of his mystery“, she went to collect the confidences of the person concerned, at his home in Miami, with Antoine de Caunes, who interviewed him at length.
In his sunny new retirement, the godfather of punk, now 75, appears to be in great shape. The excesses are now far away: in Miami, he leads a healthy life. But he remains singular: bare-chested under his perfecto, smiling hair in the wind at the wheel of his convertible Rolls Royce, he drives barefoot. At the edge of the sea, an element that soothes him, the artist tastes a tranquility that contrasts with the noise and the fury of his concerts, always so energetic and inhabited. “I wanted space, light, to get away from all a bunch of people. Here, they leave me alone“, he explains, very zen.
And to deliver, with a laughing eye but with seriousness, some of its great truths. “Integrity is good, but you have to maintain it”, remarks the singer who can boast of having made only rare compromises in his life. “To get there in this job, you have to live things. You can’t sit in your room writing a compelling description of what it’s like to live life to the fullest. You have to go out and live this fucking sick life!“.
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Nick Kent, fine pen of the English rock critic, who met him 50 years ago, confirms in the film: “He was going 100%. There was no plan B with this guy, he lived without a safety net, threw himself headlong into everything he did.“He Who Sees Him As”one of the greatest stage beasts of the 20th century, with James Brown, Mick Jagger and Prince“, is still admiring today of his “creative force. He’s not just doing what he was doing 40 years ago. He is always inhabited by a creative impulse“.
Sophie Blondy interviewed others close to the rock legend for this documentary, such as his French producer Alain Lahana, who describes Iggy as “superior intelligence” having “kept his child’s soul“, the filmmaker John Waters, who offered him his first role on the big screen in crybaby (1980), as well as musicians who rubbed shoulders with him such as Debbie Harry of Blondie and trumpeter Leron Thomas, who co-wrote his last album Free (2019).
Johnny Depp, who played his first part at 17 with one of his first groups, compares him to actor Marlon Brando. “In 1969, he scared everyone”, he recalls. “It’s exactly like Marlon Brando (…) when he played on stage A tram called Désir in 1957. No one had ever seen such a savage. He was unpredictable. And Iggy never did anything predictable.”
When we scan the life of the punk icon, it is impossible not to mention the figure of David Bowie, whose idol Iggy Pop was (with Lou Reed), and who relaunched his career in the late 1970s. Their friendship was born according to him between “a shrewd but quiet Englishman” and “a rough-hewn but also quiet American“. And he assures that by standing up to Bowie, by refusing to give in to him on everything, he has allowed their complicity to last. “If I had acted like the others, he would have had enough of me quite quickly.“, he believes. In exchange, Iggy thinks he has helped his friend “to keep your feet on the ground artistically. It may have kept him closer to the street than he otherwise would have been..”
Although he magnificently survived a life of excess, which is also discussed in this film, and he remains animated by a beautiful vital energy, the question of the Grim Reaper is not evaded in this documentary. . It appears that our immortal rocker does not fear death. And that he doesn’t give a damn about what he will leave of him to posterity.
“The problem with life is that it has to stop. I think I would like to become a ghost who contemplates the world“, laughs the old sage. We will long remember the end of the film, with its very beautiful shots of him at the beach, rolling gently in the sand and the foam of the waves, like seaweed, at the same time fragile and strong, in its element, ready to welcome its ultimate journey when it comes.
“Tell Me Iggy” by Sophie Blondy, 52-minute documentary, to see on Canal+ until August 16, 2022