Only five of these Leopard biker jackets were made by Wonder Workshop in the ’70s, one of which would find its way onto Iggy’s back and the sleeve of The Stooges’ Raw Power, as shot by Mick Rock. That iconic image would later bestow a potent significance on the jacket, ensuring it a spot in rock ‘n’ roll immortality. Though by then, Iggy had already traded it off in a drug deal to Stan Lee of The Dickies, who was so proud to own it that he apparently wore it everywhere, including in a shoot for Rolling Stone. Quite some years later, he would then sell it to one Long Gone John, an eccentric collector of kitsch, label owner (Sympathy For The Record Industry), and a much-celebrated individual in the art and fashion underground. Recognising the jacket’s value, John willingly forked out $2,000 for the jacket and today, is honoured to be caretaker of what he considers to be “The Shroud of Turin of Rock ‘n’ Roll”.

“I used to walk around London, through the park and stuff, with this leopard jacket I had, a cheetah-skin jacket actually – it had a big cheetah on the back – and all the old men in London would drive by in their cars and they’d stop and try to cruise me. All I liked to do was walk around the streets with a heart full of napalm. I always thought ‘Heart Full of Soul’ was a good song so I thought, ‘What’s my heart full of?’ I decided it was basically full of napalm.” – Iggy Pop

Yippies demonstrating in Grant Park, Chicago, during the National Democratic Election, 1968

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, 1963

Vietnam War protesters, late ’60s

The National Women’s Liberation Party protesting the Miss America beauty pageant, 1968

John and Yoko’s bed-in for peace at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, 1969

Pat Place: “The most significant thing I remember about those sessions is that he said, ‘Why don’t you go in and warm up?’ We warmed up with ‘I Can’t Stand Myself’, which we’d never played before. And Eno recorded the warm-up and that’s what came out. That was the first time we’d played it, and he got it, and that was it.”

04 i can’t stand myself

Four shots by Peter Hujar – Candy Darling on Her Deathbed; Halloween; Girl in my Hallway; David Lights Up

“That was the height of disco, you couldn’t not hear it. I went to the Paradise Garage a couple of times. Actually, we played as the Contortions once, we did a show with Richard Hell, Contortions, and Teenage Jesus. We had this huge confrontation with the owners. They didn’t want to pay us because no one showed up. They brought all these menacing black muscle bouncer guys, and at one point they were closing in on me. So I broke a beer bottle and slashed my face with it cuz I wanted them to think I was so crazy that they would leave me alone. Which they did. A lot of rock people had a knee-jerk hatred of disco, which I never really shared. There were things I liked about it, although there was a lot that I hated too. It was so bleached out and whitened, but I could see that it was taking the real funk rhythms and really straightening them out, submitting them to this tyrannical beat. I liked the idea of this hypnotic music that would literally put people into a trance. I thought that was cool.”
- James Chance

“I never heard anything avant-garde. To me it was just New York City Blues.”
- Alan Vega

06 The Beat Goes On

“Yes, the urge to let our imagination run riot, and the need to dance to twisted sounds remains. The Mutant Disco, the haunted dancehall will never close down.”
- Kevin Pearce, liner notes for Mutant Disco

“What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. I mean I’ve left schools and places I didn’t even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don’t care if it’s a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I’m leaving it. If you don’t, you feel even worse.”
- The Catcher In The Rye, JD Salinger