Legendary performer Iggy Pop is a famously outrageous and unpredictable musician who took everything rock n roll and took it to the next level as the singer of The Stooges.
The Godfather of Punk has had several bonkers on stage theatrics over his career, becoming famous for his over the top performances and throwing things as the crowd, all while performing shirtless.
He also famously popularised the stage dive, after commonly leaping off stage and hoping the audience would catch him.
Here we take a look at some of his wackiest on stage moments to celebrate the star’s 74th birthday.
Flashing penis on stage
(Image: AFP/Getty Images)
One of the most famous of Iggy’s craziest on stage habits was his love of flashing the audience.
In a legend-establishing set at the New York club Ungano’s, Iggy hauled out his sizable penis and let it rest on top of an amplifier in full view of the crowd.
He went on face criticism for his Kiss My Blood video for featuring lots of footage of himself performing with his penis exposed to the audience.
Vomiting on fans
(Image: Getty Images)
In one of his more disgusting on stage habits, Iggy had a habit for vomiting on members of the audience at his gigs.
At an Electric circus show in New York, Geri Miller, one of Andy Warhol’s superstars goaded the rock n roll star saying: “Let’s see you puke.”
Iggy made good on his word and proceeded to be sick all over her.
“He went to sing and he just pukes all over,” Alan Vega recalls in Legs McNeill’s Please Kill Me. “Miles Davis loved it.”
Iggy found the bodily waste aspect of his performances highly amusing, once saying: “I’ve probably been spit on more than any person alive outside of, I would say, a member of the prison system.”
Watermelon concussion
(Image: Getty Images)
One famous incident occurred in St. Clair Lake where Izzy and his band tucked into a watermelon offstage.
He then raced on stage as the band began Raw Power and excitedly chucked the remainder of the melon into the crowd.
According to Paul Trynka’s Iggy Pop: Open Up and Bleed, he accidentally hit a woman in the head with the rind, giving her a nasty concussion.
However Iggy did not stop there, proceeding to drop a cup of ice down his pants before removing the individual cubes and sucking on them erotically before tossing them into the crowd.
Peanut butter
(Image: Getty Images)
Another bonkers moment in Iggy’s career was the time he was handed a jar of peanut butter by a fan while on stage at the Cincinnati Pop Festival.
He went on to slather the peanut butter all over his chest and flung it in gooey hunks at his fans in the latest in a series of insane moments.
The wild incident was memorialised forever in one of the most iconic photos of Iggy’s early career.
Drumstick self-mutilation
(Image: AFP via Getty Images)
The abuse Iggy Pop inflicted upon his body is legendary, and apparently began at an Ohio Wesleyan University gig.
Iggy reportedly picked up a drumstick shard and began absentmindedly running it over his bare chest while performing.
Ben Edmonds said: “He apparently increased the pressure with each stroke, because red welt lines soon became visible, which then discharged trickles of blood running down his torso.”
This would mark the beginning of a series of incidents whereby Iggy would self-mutilate himself all in the name of rock n roll.
Nazi whipping
(Image: Getty Images)
In what is one of his craziest actions to date, in Iggy’s first solo concert after the end of the Stooges, he yelled at the crowd “Do you want to see blood?”
He then got guitarist Ron Asheton, wearing a Nazi outfit, to whip him repeatedly.
Iggy did not stop there, and continued to hurl racist insults at a black spectator in order to goad the man into stabbing him with a steak knife Iggy had brought on stage.
He finished by carving an X into his own chest, closing the set.
Spurting blood at audience
(Image: Michael Ochs Archives)
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In the most gruesome of all Iggy’s performances, he climbed through the audience before a chair slid out from under sending him sprawling into a table of glasses which shattered.
Iggy emerged sliced and stabbed from the shards but did not let that stop him and kept performing.
Despite attempts to stop the show, Iggy jerked his body in a way that caused blood to spurt at the audience.
After attempts to seal the would with gaffer tape failed, his pal and fellow rocker Alice Cooper rushed him to the emergency room.
Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
