Legendary Bands - Iggy Pop Posters

The founding father of punk rock and an acutely intelligent, severely underrated lyricist, Iggy Pop (b. James Newell Osterberg, April 21, 1947, Ann Arbor, Michigan) is one of the most exciting live performers in the history of rock 'n' roll. With his trailblazing band of the late '60s the Stooges, Pop's single-minded intensity confused many critics of the era who had expected the best new rock 'n' roll to display--and perhaps even further develop--the sophisticated lyrical achievements of a Bob Dylan or the melodic inventiveness of the Beatles. Instead, atop a deliberately repetitive, monochromatic rock drone, Pop began his first album singing, "Well it's 1969, okay/All across the U.S.A./It's another year for me and you/Another year with nothing to do.../Now last year I was 21/I didn't have a lot of fun/And now I'm gonna be 22/I say oh my and boo-hoo."

That the album, 1969's The Stooges, was produced by John Cale of the Velvet Underground--one of the most fiercely intelligent bands of the '60s--was in itself indication that this seemingly amateurish Detroit-based quartet was approaching pop music from an angle that had yet to be explored. However sporadically, and with the occasional interference of some of the most severe roadblocks and personal setbacks imaginable, Iggy Pop has continued to pursue his absolutely unique vision of rock 'n' roll through the '90s with unshakable determination.

The son of a schoolteacher father and executive secretary mother, young James Osterberg grew up in a Ypsilanti, Michigan trailer park and displayed an early interest in music. He formed a high school rock band named the Iguanas--from which "Iggy" was eventually derived--and, he has said, was heavily influenced by the early Rolling Stones. After dropping out of the University of Michigan in 1966, he played in the Prime Movers, a blues band which played bars in the Detroit and Chicago areas; in 1967, he founded the Stooges. "Totally did our own thing, like nobody else," Pop succinctly--and very accurately--summarized in a self-penned record company bio in 1993.

One manner in which Pop did his own thing with the Stooges involved confrontation with the audience. Typically, crowd members would scream names or hurl objects at the singer, while he would often leap into the crowd and grab--or kiss--them, sometimes telling male audience members from the stage that he'd had sex with their girlfriends. Occasionally he would physically cut himself onstage, smearing blood over his body while singing. Metallic K.O., a 1976 bootleg recording (and later semi-legitimate release on Import Records) of what purports to be "the last ever Iggy and the Stooges show" suitably documents the Stooges concert experience; as a sociological document it remains an unforgettable listen.

Though the group disbanded after 1970's Fun House, the intervention of fan David Bowie resulted in 1973's final Stooges album, Raw Power. An intense record marred by Bowie's strangely muted mix (and reissued in "Iggy approved" remixed form in 1997), the album captures what seems like the work of a man truly bent on self-destruction; including tracks such as "Gimme Danger," "Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell," and the self-explanatory "Death Trip," the album essentially laid the groundwork for most of the punk rock that would come at the end of the decade. "Went nuts from the life," Pop later wrote, "got screwed in the business, went L.A., went underground, more arrests, hard times."

When Pop re-emerged in March 1977 with The Idiot, this time fully produced by David Bowie, he sounded less like a man at his wit's end than a sophisticated lyricist with a jarringly dark outlook. Recorded in Berlin and containing many of his best-known (and often-covered) songs, all co-written by Pop and Bowie--including "Sister Midnight," "Nightclubbing," "Funtime," and "China Girl"--the album relaunched the singer as a potential long-term serious artist. It rose to No. 72 and remains his highest-charting effort. He followed through with another fine album, the upbeat Lust For Life, which featured the former self-immolator grinning happily like a human caricature of Mad Magazine's Alfred E. Neuman. Contained within were "The Passenger" and "Tonight," the latter again co-written with producer Bowie, who would re-record the song as the title track of his own 1984 platinum album.

After 1978's T.V. Eye, a disappointingly restrained live album that featured Bowie on piano, Pop issued records regularly through the '80s. Most boasted one or two superb tracks but seemed otherwise diffuse and unfocused; the stability that Bowie had provided was replaced by a constant turnover of new guitarists and/or collaborators, including Scott Thurston, Glen Matlock of the early Sex Pistols (who had covered the Stooges' "No Fun" in 1977), Ivan Kral of the Patti Smith Group, and guitarist Rob duPrey. Pop again collaborated with Bowie in the mid-'80s, the results of which could be seen on Bowie's Tonight and Pop's own 1986 album Blah Blah Blah, which at No. 75 was his highest-charting album in nine years. Also on the album, and throughout 1988's Instinct, was former Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones, who co-wrote several songs with the singer.

Increasingly, Pop was performing and collaborating with younger musicians who had clearly been significantly influenced by his work with the Stooges; unfortunately, the net effect--particularly in live performance--was much like seeing the singer fronting a Stooges cover band. Pop signed to Virgin Records in 1990 and released Brick By Brick; produced by Detroit hometown boy Don Was, the album featured the singer's first and only top 30 hit, "Candy," which received heavy MTV play, and included unlikely songwriting collaborations with John Hiatt ("Something Wild") and Slash of Guns N' Roses ("My Baby Wants To Rock 'N' Roll").

In late 1993 Pop released American Caesar, his best record in many years, which unfortunately met a dismal commercial reception. Nevertheless, it vividly displayed how the singer's songwriting style now increasingly tends to go in two distinct directions. First, there's the silly, purposely buffoonish Iggy Pop who sings "Boogie Boy": "I like to eat spaghetti with tomato sauce/I like to eat clams with Spanish moss/I like to go down to mash potato town/'Cuz that's where a Boogie Boy can get down." Secondly, and more interestingly, there's the suprisingly candid Iggy Pop of "Jealousy": "She comes from top cheekbones/She never worried hard/You could camp an army/On her family's yard/When I look at blue blood/I want to make it mud/And tear that difference down/Rock 'n' roll is how."

Turning 50 in 1997 and still in superb physical shape--a necessity considering his live performing style--Iggy Pop is one of few performers left in pop music who is clearly much more interested in pursuing his muse for the sake of art rather than simple commerce. "I want to do something that's coming from inside, and see if anybody wants to hear it," he told writer Pamela DesBarres in 1990. "In the end what's real is real. My feelings about things is most music is bad, most films are bad, most TV is bad, most people are bad--but, hopefully, you can find a little good in anything."