Happy Birthday Iggy Pop! Your Biggest Fan, Henry

Happy Birthday Iggy Pop! Your Biggest Fan, Henry

Tomorrow is Iggy Pop’s birthday, and Henry Rollins has written a tribute to him in his LA Weekly column. Here is an excerpt below. Henry also will air an all-Iggy show this Saturday, 8-10 p.m., on 89.9 FM KCRW.

From the ’60s to this moment, Iggy Pop has been a solid reminder of what happens when an artist stays true to himself only and doesn’t give a damn about the rest of it. For this, there is a price to be paid, and most of us cannot and would not have the stamina or the sheer guts to foot the bill.

Elvis Presley has been crowned “the King of Rock & Roll” by someone somewhere, and apparently, it has stuck. That’s fine, kings are swell. I have always maintained that Iggy Pop is the Heavyweight Champion of Rock & Roll.

In our lifetime, there will be no other like him. There is no one alive in music who has been battling the forces of nature like Iggy. Nope, sorry, not Mick Jagger, who, in all his uncontested greatness, has left only a small fraction of the blood onstage that Iggy Pop has. Anyone else? I’ll answer — no, there is not.

Read more at Henry Rollins’ column in LA Weekly.