Pop, Iggy (1947—)

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Pop, Iggy (1947—)

As the vocalist and leader of the rock band The Stooges, Iggy Pop helped to popularize a new style of music that was loud, raw, and deceptively simple. It dealt with subjects such as boredom, drugs, and violence. Songs such as "Death Trip" and "Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell" served as a counterblast to flower power idealism of the 1960s, and their stripped down, primal sound worked against the prevailing trends toward longer songs and complex instrumentation. As a result, Iggy and the Stooges were an important influence on the punk and grunge movements.

Pop, born James Osterberg, originally planned to be a blues drummer and moved from his home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to Chicago, Illinois, to learn the music first hand. Although he sometimes sat in with established musicians, Osterberg came to realize that the best he could do was to parrot their riffs, which he believed was exactly what most prominent white blues bands were doing. Deciding to create a type of simple yet powerful music based on his own experiences, he contacted Ron and Scott Asheton whom he knew from high school, and their neighbor Dave Alexander. They formed a band, first known as the Psychedelic Stooges

Shortly afterward, Osterberg began calling himself Iggy Pop and established an on-stage persona that was designed to shock audiences. Pop would sometimes perform with his head and eyebrows shaved and wearing a maternity dress, but as his reputation emerged and his drug problems worsened, his antics escalated accordingly. Pop lacerated himself on stage, picked fights with members of motorcycle gangs who had come to heckle the band, and routinely dove from the stage to crawl at the feet of audience members. On one infamous occasion, he even vomited into the crowd before a show. Although the Stooges never achieved commercial success, their music and performances set the stage for the punk movement of the late 1970s and 1980s, and a number of groups explicitly acknowledged a debt to Iggy and the Stooges. The Ramones cited the band as one of their favorites, and The Sex Pistols released a version of "No Fun."

While Iggy Pop may have to some cultivated the persona of an idiot, that was far from the truth. He had been class valedictorian in high school, and The Stooges soon collected a number of intelligent and musically savvy supporters. Jazz trumpeter Miles Davis counted himself as a fan, and, although David Bowie was moving toward a heavily produced, complex form of rock that seemed the antithesis of the Stooges, he also praised them. John Cale, then with The Velvet Underground and formerly with La Monte Young's avant garde ensemble The Dream Syndicate, produced their first release in 1969.

That self-titled album drew no shortage of detractors, who claimed that the band was little more than a bunch of amateurs whose popularity rested entirely on Iggy Pop's antics. Although the music seemed basic, its vigor attracted a following. A number of bands attempted to imitate The Stooges' seemingly elementary sound, but few came anywhere near the power and intensity of songs like "I Wanna Be Your Dog." After releasing Funhouse in 1970, the band took a four -year hiatus from the studio that was due in part to their increasing drug abuse and, later, to Pop's departure for England to work with David Bowie. Pop would dissolve the band in favor of a solo career, only to reform it when he was unable to find musicians who met his standards. Bowie produced the band's final album, Raw Power, in 1974. Songs such as "Gimme Danger" and "Search and Destroy" showed that The Stooges had lost none of their edge, although critics complained that Bowie's production effectively sanitized the band's sound. The Stooges broke up shortly afterward.

Pop's solo work for the rest of the 1970s was more restrained. Still, songs such as "Lust for Life" (later featured in the soundtracks to the films Trainspotting and Basquiat) and "The Passenger" also garnered some praise, and David Bowie enjoyed a hit single with "China Girl," a song he had co-written with Pop. Turning to acting, Pop appeared in John Waters' Cry Baby (1990) and Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man (1995).

—Bill Freind