The Stooges’ first album in 33 years sounds like everything and nothing the band has done before. The Weirdness (Virgin) reunites Iggy Pop with the Asheton brothers and adds Funhouse-era saxophonist Steve Mackay, guest bassist Mike Watt and engineer Steve Albini. After finishing the album’s final mix, Pop espoused just how weird it all got from the Grand Cayman Islands.

I hear the Stooges are big in Macedonia. And that its prime minister loves you.
Macedonia is like the world center for the gypsy-music industry. It was interesting—and at times moving—because the country is seriously poverty-stricken. I enjoy such places anyway. I’ve been going to Yugoslavia when it was still … Yugoslavia! Like 1990. There is usually a better quality of person available to you there. But they’ve had a hard hard time there due to their wars. They couldn’t believe we came (to perform in December 2006). Their prime minister e-mailed us before we got there and said he wanted to have dinner with us. I turned them down. I had an 18-hour flight and a lot of work the next night. And I don’t really go out much, so I declined. Then they came back with the prime minister and the head of police requesting my attendance. Well, it sounded more like, “Either see us in the palace or the police station.” But the prime minister is young and forward-looking—he’s 35—and looking for a photo op and thought I might have something to do with the youth demographic [Laughs] so there we are on Macedonian television with me looking like I’m lecturing him on something far more erudite than it was. He didn’t know about the Stooges, but he was a sweet guy. And a lot of Macedonians live in Detroit, where I came from. He looked like a guy who ran a liquor store there. “Hey, I know you. I tried to buy a bottle of Jack from you.”

Let’s get out of Macedonia and back to Michigan. How did you first meet the rest of the Stooges?
There was one high school in Ann Arbor with three junior high schools around that. In terms of geographical spread, their junior high was on the extreme north side. Mine was on the extreme south. I never met those guys until high school. Dave (Alexander, bassist) didn’t bother with school. Scott (Asheton, drummer) made it for just a few weeks. And Ron (Asheton, guitarist) showed up sporadically to walk in the front door and out the back. Barely there, right. But I knew they played. After high school, Ron was playing around musical circles concentric to mine. I was a drummer around. He was a bass player around. And we both went to the same cafes where no-good people hung out. Scott and Dave used to stand outside a drug store with a guy named Roy across the street from the record store I worked at. They were delinquent kids with tight stretch jeans—kinda dirty, kinda greasy, kinda pimply—standing like crows. Just watching. Not doing anything. Dave looked particularly strange because he wore a lot of Clearasil. Scott introduced himself to me one day because he wanted me to teach him how to play drums. I taught him a few beats and he was away with it. Dave was there because he had a car and would kick in money for the rent on a house we wanted to grow the band in. Dave was just there to party. When we needed Ron to be the instrumentalist and me to be the vocalist, Dave just became the bassist.

You sound different on The Weirdness: younger, blunter. Is that something of a persona you’ve set up? You’re not up to your usual heady, scatological lyrics. And the record does and doesn’t sound like the Stooges. Was that on purpose or was that just a natural occurrence?
Isn’t that weird? You want to reflect growth and discovery, but you want to show off what’s happened to you within 30 years. You want to be recognizable as the same group. But you want to sneak up on people. And you don’t want it to sound conscious. So when all those things happened at once, those were the songs or moments we chose. And I was in charge of choosing those things. I changed some of what I do a little bit. But there’s also the self-consciousness of age to consider. As for persona, I don’t know if I get what you mean. But if you’re trying to ask me if I know who I am, fuck yeah. [Laughs] I know who I am.

Why did you choose Steve Albini to record the album?
At first I didn’t like the idea of him having (recorded) so many records that I don’t like. Don’t ask which ones—that’s my business. But I will say it’s not that those records didn’t sound great. They did. But with Steve, I knew it would come down to the Stooges producing themselves. Steve gives you a little production when he feels like it. [Laughs] He’s a very unique character. He comes in strong and gives you respect and a solid work ethic. He never puts his feet up on the desk. When he had to change the mic, he’d run into the studio. He doesn’t bring a cell phone into your room. And if every once in a while you want a comment, he’ll give you a very incisive one with a bitter wit. Still, at first I thought, “But I don’t like the Jesus Lizard.” Because there’s this thing within alternative culture where they pat each other on the back and say, “Who are you going to be this week—the audience or the performer? Friday, I’ll be the performer, then Saturday I’ll be the audience.”

You’ve been Stooges again for four years now. Are there any lingering resentments from the Ashetons over the band’s break-up in 1974?
We all have lingering resentments and disappointments. Some of us less than others. But we’ve all had a long time to think of this. One of our goals was to overlook all those to make a record we all like. Look, they’re the only people left that I’ve known that long. And we got along well enough to do this. Basically, from here on out, it’s Stooges to death until one of us dies. Then again, if things go wrong or things aren’t tended to properly, then bands can break up. So I expect this to last. And I expect this band’s members will have their own ambitions and this band will act as a portal so that everyone can realize all their things. Though I’m not gonna call Ron about the bossa nova record I’ve been threatening to make, if I want to rock, I’d say look no further.

I know Rick Rubin wanted a crack at the Stooges. What happened?
Rubin’s great, and if we could’ve gone with him we would’ve. He was the first choice of the Asheton brothers. The brothers are simpler souls than I am and really always just wanted to be rock stars. And I mean that in the most positive, nicest way that I can. I mean, I was the guy bringing them the weird John Coltrane album or the Harry Partch stuff to listen to. They were always amenable to it. But they would love a big, established professional guy with a track record. Someone who would’ve done well for them. They have somewhat of an attitude and the hunger of someone who’s been around 30 years watching other people becoming rock stars when it should’ve been them. My feeling was little more subtle than theirs. If a dog that big wants to take you for a walk, you say, “OK.” But he turned it down in the most courteous way. He even made an inquiry as to whether or not the group was available to sign. I was not.

Back in the day, there were some of us who thought you guys were a really great band. Did you?
Yeah, I did. But I never devalued or discounted that there were other bands who were as equally good or better than us at doing other things and that those things were the kinds of other things that would get more visible and immediate rewards: hit records, large paydays. But to use a simple colloquialism, they were hokey. Our qualities were more valid. I mean, I could remember one of our contemporaries was Brownsville Station, and they had a cute song called “Smokin’ In The Boys’ Room” that Mötley Crüe would make a hit the second time around. Brownsville’s dad owned a music store and bought them equipment. Or Alice Cooper, who came to Detroit from Phoenix singing songs about spiders and co-opted themes that we were singing about. They were more organized, had a great manager and had a great commercial voice for a couple years until he lost his adenoids. They did great work. But it wasn’t as forward-looking as what we had to offer. The other 89 percent of the bands then I thought were hokum and should be eliminated.