Monday , November 16, 2009
Random Picture Entry: Iggy Pop & His Raw Power Jacket
Twice today I've been told the epic and sordid story of Iggy Pop and the jacket he's wearing on the sleeve art for Raw Power. First, I was checking my new favorite blog, The Look ("adventures in rock and pop fashion"), and there's a post about their recently launched label The Look Presents. The first collection's based on designs created by Wonder Workshop in the 1970s, and it's going to include a t-shirt with that same roaring leopard on Iggy's Raw Power jacket. Here's a little snippet of The Look's interview with Wonder Workshop designers John and Molly Dove:
J&M: We were designing out of Paradise Garage (the legendary shop at 430 Kings Road which these days is Vivienne Westwood's World's End) and came up with a rock & roll jacket in black plastic and fake fur with a snarling leopard head on the back...One day Iggy Pop wandered in and bought one. He and the Stooges were recording Raw Power in London with David Bowie. Iggy ended up wearing the jacket on the album sleeve. We only made five; there would have been more, but we used the remaining black plastic and green leopard-skin brocade to line the shop changing room!
And then while re-reading/skimming We Got the Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of L.A. Punk over lunch, I came to this bit about the jacket:
Andy Seven: I remember seeing Iggy at [Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco] after the Stooges broke up when he still had the platinum rinse, and Michael Des Barres, the singer for Silverhead. Stan Lee, who later started the Dickies, used to go there. He was this short, pushy little puffed-out guy with a Marc Bolan poodle shag, and he claimed he had the leopard jacket that Iggy wore on the back cover of Raw Power, he told me he got it from Iggy for dope collateral.
Ron Asheton: Oh, yeah, Iggy would trade his possessions all the time for drugs. That's how he lost some of those great clothes, like that plastic jacket on the back of Raw Power with the tiger's head...that got traded to somebody for drugs or whatever.
Stan Lee: When I was sixten I used to hang out with Iggy. I got his Raw Power jacket in a drug deal that went down in the Whisky parking lot. It was used as collateral, and thankfully I kept it.
Yikes? Awesome? You decide. And I don't know what the universe is trying to tell me by putting this story in my path twice in one day - maybe either "Go out and get yourself a plastic jacket with a leopard's head" or "Try paying as much attention to Raw Power as you do Funhouse and the first Stooges record." I don't know. But let's start off by giving "Search and Destroy" a listen, shall we?
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Posted by Liz in Random Picture Entry |
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