Michigan madman Iggy Pop is probably best known for his unpredictable, human jack-drill onstage performances. Away from the stage, however, another side of the man emerges; he is intelligent, genteel and unpretentious - even if he did once spit at Andrea Corr. He talks to Tony Clayton-Leaahead of his Dublin gig in June

WHAT A GUY; you ask Iggy Pop a question about the main turning points in his life and he takes pretty much the entire length of the interview time answering it.

In normal circumstances, this would be - in the words of Beavis and Butthead, two badly drawn Iggy boys down with the Popman - "a bummer". In the circs of The Ticket, we don't mind at all, because Mr Pop is cool. So cool, in fact, that a minute into the reply to the first question I leave him talking to the tape recorder to put on leg warmers, a woolly vest and a pair of gloves.

Goddam it, Iggy Pop (one of the few rock stars to have been published in a journal of classical scholarship, for his essay Caesar Lives, in the second volume of, believe it or not, Classics Ireland, wherein he astutely ponders on the applicability of Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empireto everyday contemporary living) is cooler than Alaska in winter, than a Frida Kahlo painting, than an Electric Picnic line-up.

And yet for all his smarts and his cognitive prowess, Pop - who will be 61 in a few days - exudes a genteel, sincere and unpretentious demeanor. On stage, the man is a human jack drill, ugly, sinewy, and quite possibly the final frontier in authentic physical stage dynamics. You see other rock acts, clearly influenced by him, going through the motions of confrontation and provocation, but you know they're spineless pussycats in contrast to Pop's lissom, leonine muscularity.

"The main turning points in my life? There are several, and for the sake of clarity and record - your newspaper is the newspaper of record in Ireland, right? - I'll tell you them all1. There was an afternoon in Algebra 4; I was in 10th grade, I felt shitty, and I didn't feel like grasping what I knew I was supposed to grasp that day. I felt a little ill, my stomach was queasy from the school food, and it was a beautiful day outside. I'd already begun to play music, and I thought that day in Algebra class was a preview to real life - I just couldn't do it. I was about 15 back then.

"Another was about two years later, when I graduated. My high-school band managed to secure a summer gig as a house band in a teen club called The Pony Tale, in a resort area of Michigan. And suddenly there I was - a full time musician; it happened really quick, really young, and I liked it a lot.

"In those days, being a musician was a more obvious road to ruin than it is now. These days, it's often a viable career choice for intelligent young people - or seems to be - but it wasn't back then. Being a full-time musician, I started to turn what intellect I had towards studying and examining the whole thing of rock music - what was quality, what was exciting. That led me to drop out of university very quickly and join a couple of bands, which culminated in the band that most people know of, which is The Stooges."

A pause. The start of my second question is politely interrupted. Pop apologises. Yes, the man who threw a microphone and spat at Andrea Corr in Dublin's Olympia Theatre several years back apologises.

"Another turning point? Meeting David Bowie and his entourage, but that was more of an inevitability; it would have been them or someone else, other entourages at the time. I think I was just fortunate that I picked the best one. Then, post-Stooges - which by this time had gone down in flames - a re-encounter with Bowie and his songs, the circumstances of which meant that we were able to write some songs together."

Yet not even Bowie could work his magic on long-time friend Pop. Following his seminal solo albums The Idiotand Lust for Life(both released in 1977), Pop went on to record and release several mediocre albums (including 1979's New Values, 1980's Soldier, 1981's Partyand 1982's Zombie Birdhouse). In 1982, aged 35, Pop couldn't afford to live in Manhattan any more.

"I was sleeping on the floor in Bensonhurst, which was a like a Mafia neighbourhood in Brooklyn. Basically, I was living hand to mouth, my health was going, and I realised I couldn't take on the world anymore - I was going to lose. So I decided to try to go straight; it was a good decision, although it took three or four years of adjustment, and probably led to a fairly long period of mediocrity in my music. But it also led to my survival as a person."

Body in check, financial stability arrived in 1983, when Bowie's Let's Dancealbum, which featured Pop's co-write of China Girl, went global. Pop's star was in the ascendant again. With one or two exceptions, it's been up there ever since; yes, he still delivers the occasional clunker (2003's Stooges-assisted Skull Ringbeing one), but the likes of 1999's Avenue Bstill shows his creativity in a positive light.

Yet for all that, he remains something of a talismanic touchstone for the burgeoning rock'n'roll star. Does music still carry the same level of intensity for him?

"When it's good stuff. When I was less mature, my radicalism would allow me only to be exposed to that music which I really, really liked. When I was in my early teens, I'd listen to the Top 40 and I would wait for the one Beatles song that the radio station would play; this engendered an incredibly emotional reaction, almost like a drug compulsion - waiting for that Beatles song was something I had to have, it was irresistible.

"And I'd get very angry when the likes of Lesley Gore would get played instead - very upset. Whereas now I've gotten to the point where I say to myself: alright, let's face it, if there wasn't something good about Sting, then he wouldn't be worth all those oysters, you know. My inner feelings are still exactly the same, mind.

"When you listen to music these days the notion of concentrating on it is totally different. I'm guessing, but I have a feeling that smoking a joint as an activity was something I did while I was listening to music back in the day. That type of activity made me inert, but it allowed me to concentrate, whereas now I'm more like other people in that mostly these days they listen to music as they ride a bicycle, go to the gym, or vacuum the house, cook dinner or clean nappies. I find that as I get busier with the administration of my survival, it gets harder. Either that, or perhaps my concentration isn't as good."

Pop knows too well that he's something of an aberration in rock'n'roll terms. There is only so long his body will allow him to continue with the rigours of his performances - performances for which the word "visceral" is all too appropriate; and there is only so long that he can willfully fuse his credentials as a confrontational rock star with his obvious wisdom.

"There are days," he says, "when I want to be impossible to others and myself - and I'm still very capable of doing that. I have to think about things like that. I don't know how it is for everyone, but I certainly reckon experience helps. If experiences are at all quantifiable, and if they vary in quality, then some people at age 60 are going to have more than other people at another age.

"I'm not above applying other people's experiences, either - I've been a fly on the wall around a lot of talented and capable people in my life, so I try to make use of that."

In relation to The Stooges, he talks eloquently of trying to balance the music's white-hot rage with a sense of reflection, harking back to Avenue B's more ambient, considered moments.

"Ron and Scott [ Asheton] are going hell for leather for the loud stuff. They recently sent me a bunch of stuff that is so fierce, my first thought was the way I'm kinda typecast in some movie parts I get offered; every six months, I'm asked to play either a monster or a criminal. Sometimes I really want to indulge the Proust side of me and be somewhat more morose."

But not just yet; there is the not so small matter of his forthcoming performance in Dublin. After all the years of twisting his body this way and that, of throwing more shapes than the Aurora Borealis, do the gigs still do it for him?

"I feel different on stage," he admits in a no-shit-Sherlock manner. "It's quite cathartic for me, yet it wasn't always because it didn't always go as well. For the last few years, I've hung around long enough to know what kind of preparation you need to do in order to do the shows properly and consistently. A lot goes into it - nerves, effort, concentration. But the musicians are unique, too; personally, I'm glad it's becoming possible for people to value what it is that Ron and Scott do.

"So it's good onstage, yes. And it's good for a couple of hours after. And then it's five in the morning and I can't sleep."

• Iggy & the Stooges play the Royal Hospital Grounds, Kilmainham, Dublin, on Monday June 16th. Special guests are Stiff Little Fingers and The Kills. For more info, visit  www.myspace.com/iggyandthestooges

Pop: a life in rock
• Iggy Pop is of Irish/English descent on his father's side, and Danish/Norwegian on his mother's. His father was adopted by a Swedish-American family called Osterberg.
• Iggy Pop has made guest appearances on several TV shows, including The Adventures of Pete and Pete, Miami Viceand American Dad. His latest voice talent "appearance" was in the English language
version of Persepolis(opening next Friday).
• In 1996, Nike used The Stooges' track Search and Destroyin its Olympics promotional video clips.
2003's Gimme Danger - the Story of Iggy Pop, by Irishman Joe Ambrose, was Pop's first full-length biography.
• On March 10th, Pop and The Stooges played at Madonna's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of fame. They sang Madonna's Ray of Lightand Burning Up.
• Two Pop-related movies are out this year: his music will feature in an adaptation of Irvine Welsh's book, Ecstasy: Three Tales of Chemical Romance; while The Passengerwill document Pop's early career with The Stooges. Elijah Wood (Frodo from Lord of the Rings) will play Pop.

A brief history of stagediving
Stage diving didn't exist before Iggy Pop - simply put, no one was mad enough to jump off the stage onto and into the crowd (as he did during his 2004 gig in Dublin Castle, above).

Yet during the early Stooges gigs, Pop was so fuelled up on the excitement of the music and the nervy rush of that he shrugged off self-consciousness and offered himself to the audience (he also mutilated himself with broken bottle glass, but that's another story).

In many ways, stage diving was a confrontational and edgy statement of intent, deliverance and - ultimately - faith in the audience; what Pop was possibly very aware of was how it connected with the audience's potential for proximity to genuine danger.

Stage diving can cause serious injury - pity the stage diver who is given the cold shoulder by an audience; pity the people that the stage diver lands upon. Stage diving and crowd surfing is now a regular part of countless rock stars' acts, but only a few can get away with it.

And only one person can do it with such authority - Iggy Pop.