Iggy Pop Remembers 1960s London

The most civilized place I’d ever been. Everybody would get a little bottle of milk on their doorstep, and no one would steal each other’s milk. It was very good milk. Rupert Murdoch hadn’t bought the Times yet, so it still published with the beautiful old typeface.

Anorexia was in. We lived in a nice little neighborhood, with the Forum ABC movie theater on the corner and a little Turkish restaurant called the Baghdad, where they’d play Neil Young music and sell you a joint. We thought we’d died and gone to heaven.
Iggy Pop

He answers question: “Almost 40 years ago, you recorded ‘Rave Power’ in England with David Bowie. What was London like?”

Storytelling is an artform—and one not often requiring lots of words. Iggy’s response is 93 words, which would fill about four 140-character tweets. He paints a poignant and vivid image of 1960s London. The vividness comes from familiarity about community. The milk bottles, the fine old newspaper, the theatre and restaurant evoke emotions of a simpler, better, familial time.

The time probably wasn’t that much better than today. The 1960s swept great change and conflict across the planet. The past is only simpler and better in the imagination. But the glorified past has its place, of seeking a better future in the idealized things we remember—as individuals and societies.