WINNERS, LOSERS & IGGY POP

Day to day. lggy Pop stares from a larger-than-life poster on my kitchen door. Those eyes mean business and follow you around the room. Escape means the bathroom, where a Rob Halford sticker pouts up from the bowl.

One day I went to an office on Park Avenue South, New York City, and my poster came to life. Now those jeans were splashed with purple paint stripes and the eyes creased into a friendly grin, as if the Lust For Life album cover had replaced the eyes in the kitchen.

An outstretched hand grabs mine. Those hands have probably never been happier. These days they paint, type essays or do housework, rather than stuff drugs up their owner’s nose Qrjft deadly glasses to his lips._

With these hands Iggy Pop has also crafted a bright, genuinely uplifting new album, Blah-Blah-Blah, his first for four years and somthing of a comeback.

James Osterberg in 1986 is obviously a changed man from the careering maniac I last saw staggering around a London stage three years ago. He has left excess behind him to concentrate on building a new life and getting back to music.