Iggy Pop is rock’n’roll’s most notorious outlaw. Born James Jewel Osterberg in the industrial rust pile of Detroit in 1947, wired like a Frankenstein creature Iggy burst onto the stages of Motor City in the late 60s spray-painted like a killer robot, trussed up like a psychotic hussy, a mad bag of screaming skin ’n’ bones leading the scuzziest, loudest, most violent gang of hard-core stooges the world had ever recoiled from.
Iggy virtually invented every stock punk rock move in the book, all while stumbling through a fiery narco buzz in the searing summer of 1969. The early years of The Stooges will cement his legend forever, as Iggy took rock away from the squares and turned it into a dangerous, knife-wielding satanic sex orgy filled with criminals and thugs. And it was awesome.
An important part of longevity in rock’n’roll is adaptability and reinvention. When the monster kid routine dried up, Iggy met Ziggy and the two made beautiful music together, with David Bowie producing Pop’s seminal late 70s downtown-troubadour albums. Later on, as the 80s took hold with all of that decade’s dumb flash and hopeless excess, Iggy strapped on some chain-mail, hauled ex-Pistols guitarist Steve Jones out of the gutter, and re-emerged once again as a fried-haired hard rock howler, snapping up a whole new generation of Pop disciples along the way.
In the 1990s, Iggy Pop finally accepted his role as the elder statesman of true, uncut, unfiltered rock’n’roll, and spent less time bleeding to death on stage and more time writing introspective albums, acting in manic, violent B-movies (Sid And Nancy, Wayne County Ramblin’, The Brave) and soaking up his well-deserved accolades. But you cannot tame the wild beast throb, and in 2002 The Stooges reunited, bringing some much needed vintage mayhem back into rock’n’roll.
Now barrelling head-first through his eighth decade, Iggy Pop continues to shake some action, with no signs of slowing down. He is the greatest rock performer to ever walk on the hands of his people, open up and bleed, and openly goad biker gangs into violence. He is the man without fear, without conscience, without remorse. Through it all he has remained compelling, provocative, wildly irresponsible, and skinny as a corpse. He is Iggy Pop, grand daddy of all rock’n’roll bad-asses, and we owe him everything.
...and one to avoid
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