Iggy Pop

Almost eighty years old, bare-chested, his back arched like a question mark, and still climbing onto a stage to give everything. Iggy Pop is one of those figures who cannot be explained by a song or an album, but by something harder to measure: he invented a way of being on a stage. Every rock singer who has thrown himself onto the crowd, who has writhed on the floor, who has turned his body into the message, is copying, without knowing it, a guy from Michigan called James Osterberg. They call him the godfather of punk, and the title is no exaggeration: almost everything that came afterwards went through him first.

From a trailer in Michigan to the stage

He was born in 1947 and raised in a mobile home in Ypsilanti, Michigan. In 1967 he put together The Stooges, a band that at the time almost nobody cared about and that today is the cornerstone of everything. Their first three albums — raw, savage, noisy years before the word punk existed — were commercial failures that half the world later studied as sacred scripture. In 1969 Iggy was doing what the Sex Pistols would be applauded for in 1977. He arrived too early, which is the curse and the glory of those who invent something.

Berlin, and a friend called David

Here is the heart of his story, and it is a story of friendship. In the mid-seventies, Iggy was sunk, consumed by drugs and without a band. The one who reached out a hand was David Bowie, who also wanted to escape the excess of Los Angeles. The two of them went off to Berlin together, to get clean and to work, and out of that shared life came the best of Iggy's work: the albums "The Idiot" and "Lust for Life", both from 1977, produced and largely co-written by Bowie.

Bowie didn't do it as a business move. He did it for a friend he wanted to see alive. And years later, when Bowie recorded his own version of "China Girl" — a song they had written together — the royalties that generated for Iggy supported him financially for a long time. A friend saved him twice: once in Berlin, and once from a distance, with a song. Few friendships in the history of rock have given so much.

The heartbeat that came out of a television set

Out of that period came "Lust for Life", with one of the most recognisable drum openings there is. And its origin is delicious: Bowie and Iggy took that rhythm from the Morse code that opened the news bulletin of the American armed forces network in Berlin, while they were waiting for a television programme to start. A military drumming from the TV, stolen off the air, turned into the pulse of an anthem about wanting to live. The best thing about art is sometimes knowing what to grab.

The irony came later. "Lust for Life", a song born of chaos and hangover, ended up opening the film "Trainspotting" and, later still, selling cruises in a television advert. The wildest song by the godfather of punk, tamed into a jingle. And Iggy was fine with it: he took the money, laughed, and carried on.

The survivor

And here is what really makes him enormous. Iggy Pop did everything that is supposed to kill a rock musician, and he didn't die. Bowie went in 2016. Almost everyone who shared that era went young. He is still here. He had his late hit with "Candy", a duet with Kate Pierson of the B-52's, he went into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with The Stooges in 2010 after years of being ignored, and in 2023 he put out a new album, "Every Loser", surrounded by musicians who could be his grandchildren.

It isn't just that he lasted. It is that lasting, in his case, is itself the work. The man who seemed doomed to burn fast turned out to be the last one left standing, singing about wanting to live fifty years after writing those words, with the same bare chest and the same abandon.

What to remember

Iggy Pop invented a way of inhabiting a stage that all of rock copied afterwards. With The Stooges he made, far too early, the music that would found punk. In Berlin, with Bowie, he found the friendship that saved him and gave him his best work. He pulled the heartbeat of "Lust for Life" out of Morse code on television. And he survived everything and everyone, when the logical thing would have been the opposite.

Remember it this way: they called him the godfather of punk for what he invented, but his hardest feat was the simplest one to name: staying alive, and still climbing onto the stage to give everything.

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Sources

Iggy Pop, stage name of James Newell Osterberg Jr., born on 21 April 1947 in Muskegon, Michigan, and raised in Ypsilanti; he is alive and still active. He founded The Stooges in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1967; the band released "The Stooges" (1969), "Fun House" (1970) and "Raw Power" (1973), the last mixed with the involvement of David Bowie, without commercial success at the time and with later recognition as forerunners of punk. In the mid-seventies Iggy Pop and Bowie moved to Berlin; there they recorded "The Idiot" and "Lust for Life", both from 1977, produced and partly co-written by Bowie. According to uDiscover Music, the recording of "Lust for Life" took place between April and June 1977 and the album was released on 9 September 1977; the drum pattern of the title track was inspired by the Morse code that opened the American Forces Network news bulletin in Berlin. "The Passenger", from the same album, was co-written by Iggy Pop (lyrics) and Ricky Gardiner (music). "China Girl", co-written by Iggy Pop and Bowie on "The Idiot", was recorded by Bowie on his album "Let's Dance" (1983); the resulting royalties contributed to Iggy Pop's financial stability. "Lust for Life" opened the film "Trainspotting" (1996) and was subsequently used in advertising. "Candy", a 1990 duet with Kate Pierson (The B-52's), is one of his highest entries on the American charts. The Stooges were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010. His album "Every Loser", produced by Andrew Watt, was released in January 2023. David Bowie and the Sex Pistols have their own profiles in this series. Profile compiled for Rebobinados with fact-checking; interpretations of the meaning of the work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Wikipedia, uDiscover Music, Songfacts, AllMusic and other coverage.