Iggy Pop is gearing up for tour dates in support of his new album Every Loser, but fans won’t see the veteran performer stage diving anymore.
In a new interview with Billboard, the 75-year-old Pop said he was happy if members of the audience wanted to keep throwing themselves around the way he used to.
“I’m not doing that right now. I hit my limit,” he said. “I did about 40 shows last year, and I crossed over a few times, but not with a full dive. A couple of times I sorta fell in and a couple of times I walked around, but if I don’t have to, I prefer to stay on the stage. It’s too much wear and tear at this point. I would get hurt.”
He added, “I prefer to stay on the stage, but now at some of the shows people do it themselves; they leap up, touch toe, do a grab and dive off. That’s cool with me.”
Every Loser – which arrives on Friday – was produced and co-written by Andrew Watt, who’s developed a reputation for working with rock icons like Ozzy Osbourne in recent years. “He seems to have absorbed classic rock in a way that it comes out and it doesn’t sound classic,” Pop said. “It sounds like now, but it still sounds like that. There’s one thing about my records … they’re all in one way or another kind of rough sounding. They never get too polished.
“Some of them, maybe Lust for Life, a couple things on Brick by Brick did, but my own taste is more for the DIY. I like Link Wray a lot better than Yngwie Malmsteen, put it that way. I think that influences the producers I work with to stop short of polishing the project too much.”
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