James Osterberg og Esther Friedmann, Mauerstadt, 1977.

Det var sensommer på Strøget i København. Helligåndskirken kørte som så ofte hollandsk bogudsalg med beskedne priser. Poul Borum var død samme forår og efter sigende var det vraggods fra hans samling af musikbøger der gjorde forskellen denne dag. Fandt Patti Smith’s Babel og Morrissey’s fansamling af New York Dolls-artikler. Det bedste og mest interssante med hjem var dog I Need More, Iggy Pop’s selvbiografiske 1982-bog af udvalgte sange, små tekster, private fotos, live-snapshots, tanker, erfaringer, selvoplevet historie. Ikke noget litterært mesterværk, men ligesom de bedste af hans plader så rig på nærhed og en evne til uforstillet at kommunikere mennesket bag rockmyten Iggy Pop levende ud. Her – måske i anledning af Iggy’s fødselsdag i dag – nogle ord fra bogen om Bowie-tiden i Berlin…

I had a real home once. It was in Berlin. I lived there for two years, well really just over that. I had a residence for two years with a girl named Esther. A lot of people don’t know Berlin is a special city. There are just a few children, and hardly any people in middle ages. It is mostly young people and old people – old and young – and very little in between.

Music movements have been springing up there. That was very nice. It’s like a fairy land. I found a whole deserted city. When the Germans lost the war, the Russians came in and all industry vanished, practically overnight, from Berlin. What remained was a whole city of beautifully constructed factory buildings – though smaller than what we would think of as a factory today. These were huge loft spaces – all built in the twenties and thirties, right? They had such wonderful designers. It’s all free space, and that’s why artists have flocked there.

When we practiced for The Idiot tour, David, I, the Sales boys and all the rest had an entire screening room in the old UFA studios, where they made all the movie greats – you know, like Metropolis. Fritz Lang worked there before the Nazis took it over. Many, many great films were made at UFA. They still had all these wonderful German Expressionist films just sitting in cans rotting, because they still can’t figure out the politics of who should get them. You could smell the film slowly going bad.

I guess that’s why I loved it: it was like being in a ghost town, but with all the advantages. As far as the police there, because it is a four power zone, they have a totally laissez-faire attitude toward, shall we say, “cult behavior.” And it’s such an alcoholic city: someone is always swaying down the street. They also don’t really care about drug traffic. Many laws are not enforced, and they have a very “Yes Sir, No Sir” attitude there. The local police were very polite and very sensible in the way they enforced the law. I shouldn’t say that they don’t care about drug traffic, rather they don’t care about people having fun. And the city is open 24 hours a day. It’s a tradition of Berlin, something left over from the swinging Berlin days. When one brace of clubs is closing the next brace is opening up. And this goes on around the clock.

Just in West Berlin alone, there are at least seven lakes, most of them connected by waterways – nice place to sail and swim; many nice places to sail and swim. There are also these villages you can go out to that are part of West Berlin – a very large area, very beautiful, just vast, vast areas of rinky dink villages full of strange old German people. We used to get lost; I like to go and get lost and be in places made of wood, just to totally wash every shred of America off, just to wash it all off. Taking a walk was like taking a shower, you know, just washing all the filth that my upbringing put into me. It can only be obvious to anybody who can find it – a ghost town of some size far away. It was a fascinating experience.

© Iggy Pop/Anne Wehrer

Now let there be Pop music…