IGGY POPS JACKET

Look at that Leopard Head! - growling from the back of Iggy Pop’s Jacket on the Stooges ‘Raw Power’ album. The jacket was made by John Dove and Molly White in 1971. Iggy Pop - with that vacant sullen stare, immortalised by photographer Mick Rock who created an iconic image that has gone down in Rock 'n' Roll history. I guess every part of the mix that came together by chance (and by design) on the back of the Stooges slab of absolute Punk Rock, would have it’s own tale to tell. If you ever get to read anyone’s account of the Raw Power tour in ‘73, you’ll be convinced that Iggy was,
in his time, the most

Our print workshop was the top floor of the old corset factory in Paddington. The place had been in a complete state of dereliction, walls of rubble with most of the windows smashed. It was shared by a bohemian mix of Painters, Film-makers, Sculptors, Potters and Poets. We had an old Ami Jukebox at the end of the studio which pumped out Rock ’N’ Roll music while you worked. 50s music was having a big revival at the time. The pub bands, Kilburn and the High Roads, Ducks Deluxe, Reds, Whites and Blues, just like John Lennon, Dave Edmunds and The Flaming Groovies, were all reinventing Rock ’n’ Roll. The records on the Juke were mostly the new Rock’n’Roll and 60s Punk records like Strangeloves, Love, 13th. floor Elevators, Troggs, MC5, Velvets, still plenty of early Rock ’n’ Roll, some meaty John Lennon,

Back to the jacket... the concept was to create a ‘Rocker’ jacket using the basic materials of a cheap street level product (plastic, nylon and artificial fur) but still retain a Rock ‘n’ Roll authenticity. It would never be worn by a Hells Angel but someone who identified with that rebel attitude - someone like Iggy, as it turned out, who would encapsulate that wild persona. The jacket was made from a remnant of 50s Leatherette from an old warehouse in Belsize Park. We had to shift through the entire stock to find the last piece of sub-standard plastic manufactured with an excess of wrinkles, with some of the plastic ‘skin’ peeling away from the backing cloth - but it was dead right! The fake leopardskin fur from Shepherds Bush market was embedded in the front and arms and a wonderful cats-eye green leopardskin nylon brocade lined the inside of the jacket. Only two of the Jackets were studded. My partner Molly used the jacket patterns from the DIY Jacket Kits we had

I had started the idea a few years earlier with a pencil drawing of a Black Panther head and had modified the drawing with the leopard spots after seeing a series of wild leopard pictures in National Geographic - then I made a contact film neg. for the metallic gold screen and hand painted the positives for the white teeth, red mouth and green eyes. The ink was a new product made for outdoor advertising, garage banners etc. - an opaque base which needed a ton of ‘gold’ powder and yellow pigment to give it opacity and make it shine. You couldn’t bake the ink to cure it without melting the Leatherette, so the prints had to lie on the print table for days until dry enough to print the other colours. Local lads positioned on the roofs opposite, regularly took pot-shots with air- rifles at the few remaining windows, so you couldn’t leave stuff out too long.

There were only five Leopard jackets ever made. I had the first - three were sold through Paradise Garage- to Iggy, Zoot Money and some other guy. The final unfinished one was a gift to our agent in Paris, Jacques Neville. There would have been a few more Jackets made, but I used the Black Plastic and the remaining green Leopardskin brocade to line the changing room when I was painting out the back of Paradise Garage with the manager, Bradley - everything matt black - there were just enough larger pieces of black Leatherette to upholster the door which was punctuated with some enormous chrome - headed studs I had scrounged from Trevor Miles' New York Fasteners delivery. Later, the changing room and the rest of our Leopardskin collection would become part of a wildcat
‘Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die’ legacy in

The saga of IGGY POP’S JACKET returns 18 years later when Iggy’s Jacket turns up on the back of Stan Lee, lead guitarist of the Dickies in the pages of Rolling Stone. Ruby Ray’s picture shows Stan half heartedly assuming the Raw Power stance. The interview starts with Vale’s recognition

“ The jacket looks like the one Iggy wore on Raw Power!”.

“It IS Iggy’s jacket - I got it in a dope deal a few years ago. He didn’t have the bucks so I took that for collateral. For a while, he couldn’t afford it back, and now he’s a rich bitchin’ Iggy,

Will Iggy ever hear the last of this Jacket saga? Recently, The Guardian published an article on Iggy Pop by Dave Simpson who discussed the Raw Power album and "on the rear, Iggy again leering from within an absurdly cool leather jacket decorated with a painted tiger bearing fangs. The music - alienated, deathly, psychotic, raw yet strangely beautiful..." A German reviewer: "the other two members of the Tiger Gang visually come on just as strong, bass player Klaus Meinhardt displaying Iggy’s 'Raw Power' cheetah head jacket design on the front of his shirt" - and from Los Angeles ... "wearing the skintight silver pants and that

sitemap