It’s hard to pass up posting all the great quotes Iggy Pop keeps throwing out there in his promotional interviews for Préliminaires, so here we go: Today’s quote kind of follows in the same vein as Pop’s slamming of intellectual rock stars last week. When it comes to writing lyrics or playing shows, he says you shouldn’t waste your time.
“Good lyrics take 15 minutes or less,” Pop told Paste Magazine’s Xavier Martin. “Any longer, it’s probably shitty. Up to that point where you can have a good 15 minutes can take a good deal of thought and then, after you fine tune, each song takes 15 minutes most of the time.”
15 minutes is also the perfect concert length, according to the Godfather of Punk. “I have rarely been able to stand an hour,” Pop added. “It was better when it was rock ‘n’ roll and short. Now it’s rock and it’s long and it reminds me of a tuna melt.”
If we think too much about that tuna melt analogy, we may have missed the point.