Iggy Rose
Birth date: December 14, 1947. Star Sign: Sagittarius.
Nationality/Ancestry: English/Mizo.
Parents and siblings: Harry Charlton Joyce and Chawnpuii “Angela”. Younger brother Stephen Lalungmuana (b. 1949) and younger sister Elizabeth Anne (b. 1959).
Complexion: Dark Eyes colour: Dark brown. Hair colour: black. Height: 5′4" (163 cm).
Ocupation: actress, model, shop assistant.
Partner and children: Married to Andrew Rose in 1978. They had no children.
Extended family: Maternal great grandfather Thangphunga; Rosangzuala (her great grandmother and Iggy’s grandmother were sisters), Chawngmawii (auntie), Thana (cousin). Brother-in-law Rob (Elizabeth Joyce’s partner).
Death date (age): December 13, 2017 (69). Resting place: Worthing Crematorium, West Sussex, South East England.
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Evelyn “Iggy The Inuit” Joyce Rose was a model and actress who was inmortalized by Mick Rock at Syd Barrett’s “The Madcap Laughs”, his first solo album after Pink Floyd, released in 1969. She was known as Iggy the Eskimo back then as it was rumored she was part Inuit.
Early life
She was born Evelyn Laldawngliani Joyce on the 14th of December 1947 in Rawalpindi (a couple of months before, British India had split in two, and her birthplace was now lying in the dominion of Pakistan) to a British father, major Harry Charlton Joyce, an officer in the British army, and a Mizo woman, Chawngpuii (known as Angela in English). Iggy would never use the word “Pakistan”, as the country was taboo in the family.
Evelyn’s parents had met at the end of the Second World War, when he was stationed in Mizoram — then, the Lushai Hills (northeastern India, then still ruled by the British). Evelyn’s middle name, Laldawngliani, means gift of the gods, in mizo, a language Evelyn never spoke.
She had two younger siblings, Stephen Lalungmuana, who was born in Dhaka (Bangladesh) in January 1949; and Elizabeth Anne, who was born in Worthing, Sussex, around 1959.
For decades there were political and military troubles in Mizoram, located in the North-Eastern part of India, bordering Myanmar and Bangladesh. Evelyn and family lived a luxurious and protected life in one of the British enclaves, politely ignoring that a civil war was raging around them. One day a mob invaded their house and burned it down.
The family flew to the colony of Aden, Yemen, another melting pot of colonial and religious problems. This was only a temporary solution as the family returned to England where they lived the upstairs life. Iggy received a ‘traditional’ ladylike upbringing with tutors who taught her to play musical instruments, like the violin. She had a voice coach and took ballet classes, but not to much avail.
The Mizo branch had lost contact with the English family members in the sixties, when there had been a military conflict between India and Mizoram freedom fighters. In the aftermath of the conflict the Indian government censored all letters to and from Mizoram, and communication was lost between Chawngpuii and her family in north-east India.
Teenage Years
For an unknown reason, Evelyn was nicknamed Iggy or Ig. After moving to England Iggy was briefly an art student. She lived in Brighton but she ranaway from home in 1961, when she was fourteen, discovering boys, girls, alcohol, and drugs. Iggy danced through life, her pretty looks and free spirit mostly assured her some food and a place to stay.
She worked at Granny Takes a Trip, the “first psychedelic boutique in Groovy London of the 1960s”, as a shop assistant, and was a regular at the Orchid Ballroom in Purley between 1963 and 1967. DJ Jeff Dexter, who regularly played at the Orchid, vividly remembers the beautiful girl who used to talk to him while he played his set. He first noticed her in 1963. He said: “Iggy was part of a group of very wonderful looking south London girls. She was very mysterious, she was unusual because she did not look like anyone else at the time.“
Iggy spent a brief part of the 60s living in Croydon with Dexter. She said: “The Orchid Ballroom was the place to be, the atmosphere was fantastic. I loved going there, I loved to dance. Jeff wanted to turn me and two other lovely girls into the English version of the Supremes, but that never happened.”
When her mixed-race appearance was exoticised in the London of the 1960s, she gave the name “Eskimo” to an NME photographer as a joke, although she always said she was “from the Himalayas”.
In the 1960s, she met The Beatles, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, The Yardbirds, Rod Stewart… She recalled: “I met so many people in the 60s – … I was a free spirit.” She was around rock circles and was one of the familiar hangers-on in the hipper nightclubs of swinging London. Pink Floyd biographer Mark Blake describes her pretty accurately as a Zelig-like presence on the capital’s music scene in the sixties. For a while, she had a love interest in Eric Clapton. He was a serial womanizer who didn’t keep his sweet promises, and her world was shattered when she saw him entering the Speakeasy with Alice Ormsby-Gore by his side.
In the heydays of psychedelia, Iggy frequented the higher strata of the London underground. Her classic upbringing meant that she could mingle with aristocrats, musicians, writers, actors, photographers, and movie-makers. She was basically poor and homeless, asking for a meal and a bed for the night whenever possible.
Actress, model and Syd Barret’s muse
In the Swinging 1960s she was an iconic model. The fact that she was a “free spirit” certainly helped her introduction to the pop-culture royals of those days. She entered the inner circle of The Rolling Stones through Stanislas Kossowski de Rola and befriended Brian Jones and Anita Pallenberg. She attended the Sympathy For The Devil sessions, and was on the “Performance” movie-set because Ossie Clark asked her to but she refused a minor role in that film, even when she was backed-up by Anita Pallenberg and Myriam Gibril.
In 1967 she became involved with film director Anthony Stern, who took many pictures of the model and also made a film of her called “Iggy the Eskimo Girl”. Stern said: “Iggy was my muse. I met her at a Hendrix gig at the Speakeasy. She was a lovely inspiration and free spirit. I never knew her real name. We used to hang out together, occasionally dropping acid, staying up all night, going for walks at dawn in Battersea Park. She entirely captures the spirit of the Sixties, living for the moment, completely carefree.”
The most iconic images of her appear on Syd Barrett`s solo album The Madcap Laughs, where she poses naked in the background, and were took by Mick Rock on the spring of 1969.
Iggy and artist Jenny Spires, ex-girlfriend and lifelong friend of Syd Barrett, met in the summer of 1966, and they met again at Biba’s in the spring of 1967. From then, they went clubbing in many occasions, and Iggy invited Jenny to a Dusty Springfield après-event. Jenny returned the favour and introduced her to Syd Barrett in January or February 1969.
Photographer Mick Rock recalls: “Syd was still in his underpants when he opened the door. He`d totally forgotten about the session and fell about laughing. Iggy the Eskimo was naked in the kitchen making coffee. She didn`t mind either. They both laughed a lot and it was a magical session.”
She stayed for a couple of weeks at Wetherby Mansions and she visited Barrett over the period of a few months. In early August 1969, Syd, Iggy, Twink, and Took went to a King Crimson gig at the Speakeasy, where they created a scandal. By then, Iggy was hanging around with the ‘Pink Fairies All-Star Rock’n’Roll Show & Motorcycle Circus’, an informal drinking club including Barrett, Mick Farren, Lemmy, Twink, and Steve Peregrine Took, whom she lived with for a while.
Iggy dreamt of a career as a model, but lacked the willpower to make it happen. She could easily have forced her way into some form of stardom or have had an easy life at the side of a celebrity, but she, sometimes literally, ran away when opportunity knocked. She was too shy to model for Ossie Clark.
Iggy frequented the underground elite, even going on an Arthurian quest to Port Eliot in a horse-driven cart, led by an eccentric millionaire and his wacky followers. It isn’t certain how Iggy fell out with the British kings of rock ‘n’ roll and descended to the underground. Rock was becoming more professional, and musicians would keep their personal lives hidden from prying eyes. Sadly, she followed the trail where drugs led her. Iggy became addicted to speed and would be for the rest of her life.
The legend was that Iggy vanished all of a sudden after she broke with Barrett, but she just wasn’t traceable on the Floydian radar any more. She moved down the King’s Road to Pont Street Mews, Knightsbridge, where she frequented other, equally alternative and underground, circles. There were painters, musicians, actors, movie directors… There was a pretty serious relationship with Simon Thompson, a Scientologist who belonged to a wealthy family. This relationship also ended, and Iggy carried on, meeting actors like John Myers and experimental moviemakers from the London Film-Makers’ Co-op.
Her big break had to come when she had one of the leading roles in the experimental 1976 film “Central Bazaar” by the provocative avant-garde legend Stephen Dwoski, who gathered together a group of strangers and filmed them as they explored their fantasies over a period of five days. The ceremonial gowns and make-up here not only evoke the eroticism of European horror movies but also highlight the film’s interplay between performance and intimacy.
She moved to Brighton soon after and left London in the 1970s.
The 1970s & Beyond
In the mid-seventies psychedelic tomfoolery was over and Iggy had to look for a job. She worked on a horse-farm for a while and met her future husband Andrew Rose there. According to the painter Duggie Fields, Barrett’s old flatmate, she got married in 1978 to a rich guy from Chelsea and led a “decent” life after that. They relocated to a small village in the Horsham district of West Sussex, where she worked in a local supermarket. For three decades, Iggy lived a relatively anonymous life that was only occasionally disturbed by people who recognised her from her underground days.
In 2002, Mick Rock’s coffee-table book Psychedelic Renegades featured more shots of Syd and Iggy posing outside the Earls Court mansion block, alongside Barrett’s abandoned Pontiac. Rock’s photos found their way onto most Pink Floyd fansites, where Iggy had acquired cult status.
While researching for his Pink Floyd biography (2007’s Pigs Might Fly: The Inside Story Of Pink Floyd) author Mark Blake quizzed everyone about Iggy’s whereabouts.
In September 2008, the Croydon Guardian appealed for information about the model and, more than a year later, they managed to track her down. She inspired artist Anthony Stern, who filmed her dancing in Battersea Park and also took striking photographs of her on a houseboat in Chelsea. They were released at the City Wakes festival – a tribute to Syd Barrett – in October 2008, in Cambridge, in the short documentary “Iggy The Eskimo Girl”.
In March 2010, MOJO 196’s cover story on Syd Barrett’s The Madcap Laughs pondered the whereabouts of ‘Iggy The Eskimo’, the naked girl on the LP sleeve. It came as a shock to the object of Syd obsessives’ fascination; who contacted MOJO after reading the magazine. She was interviewed for Mojo and she learned there was some kind of Iggy fandom on the world wide web.
A deteriorating health forced Iggy to leave social media in 2016. Iggy passed away aged 69 on December 13th 2017 at the United Kingdom, she was survived by her husband Andrew. Her funeral took place on the 27th of December 2017 at Worthing Crematorium, West Sussex, South East England.
After her passing, Iggy’s fansite “The Holy Church of Iggy The Inuit” (link below) found her Mizo connection, and since then renamed their site to “The Holy Church of Iggy the Mizo”. It wasn’t until 2021, thanks to social media, that both sides of the family, the Mizo and the British, got in contact again.
✨ A SPECIAL NOTE ✨
We used to be very active in the Vintage Groupies Live Journal community, and we uploaded many of our muses’ pictures there. When we found that Iggy was not posted there with the same frequency as the Beatles’ girls, the Stones’ girls, the Pink Floyd’s girls… we started to post all the pictures and info we found (mainly from Felix’s amazing The Holy Church of Iggy the Mizo website). She found this through a friend, and Iggy asked Felix:
“Felix, would you do me a really big favour and contact vintage groupies (little queenies) to express my gratitude to all the lovely people who left all the nice comments about me.
Love from Iggy. ”
When we knew about that we were very glad and happy. And of course, we replied to her:
“Wow, thanks so much Felix for the message, please tell to Iggy thanks so much from Little Queenies :)
This is so great, she is so kind to think about us :)
Warm regards to her and to you Felix
Elia & Violeta, Barcelona, Spain”
Also, some other lovely people who posted Iggy stuff at the Vintage Groupies LJ community replied to her lovely message to us: “Its wonderful, to hear from her. Dancas”. “So amazing! Thank you so much for not only sharing the interviews but relaying the message to us here at Vintage groupies! So fantastic. Lynxolita.“
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More pictures and information here.