Iggy Pop rejected calls from the Grammys for years.
The former Stooges frontman was finally honoured with the Lifetime Achievement prize at the 2020 Grammy Awards, but he has admitted he refused to speak to Grammys bosses because he didn’t want to be “an exhibit in their museum”.
He told Classic Rock magazine of the accolade and The Stooges making it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010: “Things changed and society met me halfway.
“The Grammys kept wanting to talk to me on the phone and I kept telling my manager: ‘I don’t want to talk to them. I hate those people. They want me to be an exhibit in their museum or something.’
“Then when I finally spoke to the lady from the Grammys a couple of months later she said: ‘We’re giving you the Lifetime Achievement.
Without you, there’s no Lil Nas X and there’s no Billie Eilish.’
“According to her, ‘You’re a direct link to the artists that are at the top of our awards list this year.’
“So that’s what one person had to say, and I’ll take that for what it’s worth.”
Meanwhile, Iggy just revealed he was almost in AC/DC.
The 75-year-old punk star – whose real name is James Newell Osterberg, Jr – claimed that he could have been part of the rock band alongside the likes of Angus Young, Malcolm Young, Phil Rudd, Cliff Williams, Brian Johnson, and Stevie Young but was unsure how he would “fit into” their kind of music.
He said: “They had a manager many years ago, when I hadn’t reformed The Stooges, I hadn’t moved to England. And this guy said, ‘Are you interested in joining AC/DC?’ They were looking for a singer. I listened to their record. I thought, I can’t fit that bill,I wasn’t, like, ‘Ugh, I don’t like them.’ It was quite well made. They do careful work, but I’m not what they needed.”
The ‘Lust for Life’ hitmaker went on to add that he did cross paths with the late Bon Scott – who was the lead singer of AC/DC from 1974 until his death in 1980 at the age of 33 – although he still struggles to remember the circumstances of their meeting because they were so drunk.
He told The New York Times: “I had some wonderful encounter with Bon somewhere, and we were both drunk and stoned. I see pictures sometimes. I go, I don’t remember, but that’s me with Bon. I loved what he did.”