Pop, Iggy

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Iggy Pop

Singer, songwriter, drummer

“Iggy had gone beyond performance—to the I point where it really was some kind of psychodrama,” said John Sinclair. “I’d just watch him and I’d think, ‘Wow, this guy will stop at nothing. This isn’t just a show—he’s out of his mind.’”

Indeed, that’s the exact reaction Iggy Pop hoped to get out of his audiences as they witnessed a show by his band, The Psychedelic Stooges. Resembling the freak show in a circus, Iggy often reverted to tactics such as smearing peanut butter and feces on himself, rolling around on stage in broken glass and even diving head first into the crowd. All of this a good seven years before the punk movement and about 1, 000 light years away from the Pat Boone school of rock and roll.

Born James Osterberg in 1947 in Ypsilanti, Michigan, he first became musically involved in high school, playing in a local band, the Iguanas. He left them for a rival band, the Prime Movers, before he took off to Chicago to play blues drums. Upon moving back to the Ann Arbor area, he switched his name to Iggy Pop and formed The Psychedelic Stooges. With Dave Alexander on bass and brothers Ron and Scott Ashton on guitar and drums respectively, Iggy held down the vocals and insanity positions. They played their first gig on March 3, 1968, opening for Blood Sweat & Tears at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom.

The music in Michigan at that time was quite different from what was popular on the national scene. The Motown sound was dying down but bands like the MC5, Frost, and the Amboy Dukes were highpowered and revolutionary. By 1969 Elektra records realized the potential and signed both the Stooges and MC5 to contracts. Former Velvet Underground member John Cale produced their first album, The Stooges. With songs like “No Fun” and “I Wanna Be Your Dog” it was obvious the band was about as far from flower-power as one could get.

The Stooges continued to play around the Midwest, and in 1970 they entered the studio to record their follow-up LP, Funhouse. Robert Christgau’s review in his Record Guide noted: “Now I regret all the times I’ve used words like ‘power’ and ‘energy’ to describe rock and roll, because this is what such rhetoric should have been saved for. Shall I compare it to an atom bomb? a wrecker’s ball? a hydro electric plant? Language wasn’t designed for the job.”

The live show was beyond pathetic by now; later, in 1979, Iggy would reflect in Rolling Stone, “I hated the audience, at times, for things they made you do. Why did they come see me?” A band cannot survive for long playing with such abandon and, sure enough, the Stooges collapsed shortly after. Their last performance

For the Record…

Born James Jewel Osterberg, 1947, in Ypsilanti, Mich.; son of James (a schoolteacher) and Louella (a schoolteacher) Osterberg; married; wife’s name, Paulette; children: Eric. Education: Attended University of Michigan.

Played in various high school bands in the Ypslanti/Ann Arbor, Mich., area, including the Iguanas and the Prime Movers, c. 1964-65; played drums in blues bands in Chicago, 111., c. 1966-67; assumed stage name Iggy Pop and formed the Psychedelic Stooges, 1968, lead singer in Psychedelic Stooges, 1968-70, and 1972-76; solo featured artist 1976—.

Awards: Won Rolling Stone Critics’ Poll “Comeback of the Year Award (’But Back From Where?’),” 1977.

Address: c/o 250 W. 57th. St. #603, New York, NY 10107

was at the Goose Lake [Michigan] Festival before 100, 000 fans. Iggy took a year off to kick a heroin habit, enduring three weeks of cold turkey in the process. “Iggy’s power and Iggy’s curse,” wrote Chris Holdenfield in Rolling Stone, “is that he has always lived out his show, unlike those who make a production out of the pose, Alice Cooper, Kiss … or Bowie.”

In 1972 British pop star David Bowie regrouped the Stooges, with James Williamson now on guitar and Ron Ashton moving to bass. Bowie took the band to London to produce, or overproduce, their third LP, Raw Power. Even with Bowie mixing the sound as thin as possible, “It’s a toss-up as to whether this disc or the earlier Funhouse takes the throne as Highest Energy Album Ever Made,” wrote the editors of Rock Revolution, “but there’s absolutely no competition. All other Heavy Metal was and is farina next to them.”

Again the band burnt out, this time for good. A posthumously released album (recorded on a cassette), Metallic K.O., captured the Stooges last performance ever (at the Michigan Palace). It’s obvious from listening that Iggy was completely losing it by that time. The back of the album jacket blatantly states in hugh quotes “OPEN UP AND BLEED.” Iggy badgers the audience with the foulest language and songs like “Cock in My Pocket”.

Iggy spent the next two years wandering around the streets of Los Angeles. Under his mother’s insurance he was checked into the UCLA mental hospital for treatment. He was visited by Bowie, the only member of the music community to do so. Bowie made a deal with Iggy to clean up his act so he could join him on his upcoming tour, Station To Station.”I saw David entertaining and running his life,” Iggy told Charles Young in Rolling Stone. “I thought, ‘Now there’s a man. I can do it too.’” He moved to Berlin in the spring of 1976, shortly after Bowie.

The two collaborated on Iggy’s comeback effort, 1977’s The Idiot. Bowie co-wrote the songs and played keyboards on the ensuing tour (along with Hunt Sales-drums, Tony Sales-bass and Ricky Gardiner-guitar). The sound was a far cry from the Stooges’. It was stripped down and hauntingly different from anything else. “The Idiot is the most savage indictment of rock posturing ever recorded,” John Swenson wrote, reflecting on Iggy winning the 1977 Rolling Stone Critics’ Poll Comeback of the Year Award (”But back from where?”).

With basically the same band (with the addition of Carlos Alomar) Iggy quickly followed up with Lust For Life, again recorded in Berlin and styled after The Idiot. The live performances showed a healthier Iggy, more in control, but “like Lou Reed,” wrote Billy Altman, “Iggy is most likely headed on a course just left of center, bizarre enough to attract those inclined toward something different but safe enough not to scare them away.”

Iggy has released six more solo albums, all with his trademark deadpan vocals, moans, and shrieks, but nothing as powerful as the Stooges. He continues to provide entertaining concerts and to influence younger musicians, but as Sid Vicious might have testified, the Ig was a hard act to follow. He’s a “willful, bratty child, a cruelly shrewd man and a total ham—in short, a classic American hero,” according to Kristine McKenna in Rolling Stone, “… right up there with Abraham Lincoin.” High praise for a man who used to wear his Skippy.