Iggy Pop Is Still Recording Despite Thoughts About Retiring
Iggy Pop said that Post Pop Depression, his collaboration album with Josh Homme, would most likely be his last. But now we learn that he's back at it, having recorded five songs since that album's release.
But these tracks aren't planned for a future record by him, but rather cameos on other people's records. As he told Entertainment Weekly, "[T]hey were all recordings not where I’m about, ‘Hey, I’ve got something to say!’ No, it was just, people called me up and said, ‘Do you want to do a vocal with me, about this, under this circumstance?’ More like guesting. I would prefer to do that for a while. You know, there are people I like. I like the people I’ve recorded with — I can’t tell you who they are! — very much.”
Although Pop never officially announced his retirement, he frequently hinted that he was just about done while making the promotional rounds for Post Pop Depression earlier this year. “I feel like I’m closin’ up after this,” he said on one occasion. “To really make an album, you really have to put everything into it. The energy’s more limited now.”
So technically, he's not waffling because he's not making another album. But if Pop is retiring, he's doing it in as high-profile a manner as possible. On Oct. 28, he released Post Pop Depression: Live at the Royal Albert Hall, a video of his London concert from back in May, and his appearance on Austin City Limits debuted on PBS over the weekend. His backup band consisted of Homme, two of Homme's fellow Queens of the Stone Age members -- Dean Fertita and Troy Van Leeuwen -- Matt Helders of Arctic Monkeys and Matt Sweeney.
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