Product Description

Author Joe Ambrose does full justice to the original spirit of Iggy Pop's through a rich and revealing selection of interviews, offering many shrewd insights into the personality of a man whose own comments often seem more confused than anarchic.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #567946 in Books
• Published on: 2004-07-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

About the Author
Joe Ambrose has written Moshpit Culture (Omnibus Press), an investigation of the covert world of punk and hardcore moshpits. He co-wrote Man From Nowhere, which has texts by Iggy Pop, Marianne Faithfull and Keith Haring. He is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, Serious Time and Too Much Too Soon. He divides his time between New York's Chelsea Hotel, London and Tangier.

Customer Reviews

Tabloid Junk
The book is a compilation of interviews, declarations and quotes taken from different sources more or less threaded into the timeline of Iggy Pop's career... There are plenty of escatological insights, sordid details, derogatory comments, and internal band ego fights about, around, to and from Iggy and Iggy's band members-- tabloid readers will love it.
If you ever thought of Iggy as an Icon of the counterculture, perhaps the book will demystify your image.
If you ever thought of Iggy as a sort of picaresque anti-hero with all the human traits, good and bad, the book will reinforce Iggy's charm, achivements and wits.
Hardly any geographical image or description of the changing times in the book, thus one travels through thirty years and different places with hardly any other reference than the picked different babbles from the band members, entourage, journalists etc. etc. that compose the book or worn out generalizations like 'the eighties'.
The book seems to be rushed to completion towards the end for some reason, a fact noticeable in the amount of data, and
quality of the thread...

Sloppy college journalism
If you haven't read any other books on Iggy Pop then you might find this readable, but in all honesty there are better books out there - even the author admits this....he seems to have aquired all his information by reading other books and magazine articles, which are quoted and referred to regularly; despite this there is also a lot of stuff that would appear to be purely the author's opinion, with no explanation as to how he reached it.
Just to give you an idea where this guy's head is - he refers to Joy Division as being 'dippy'....heh, I can think of plenty things to say about Joy Division, but dippy?

gimme danger full of raw power
this book is wild, right up there with victor bockris's books on lou reed and patti smith. joe ambrose has taken the bull by the horns and made a serious effort to understand iggy pop, career druf fiend, enthusiastic pro-Regagan Republican, and the maker of some of the finest ever punk rock records. as a lifelong fan of the Igster i was taken aback by some of the less acceptable facts in this elegantly written book but i was still glad to know those facts. i know joe ambrose and regard him as being a generally good and reliable writer with three great novels out.