Iggy Pop biography

There's a reason why many consider Iggy Pop the godfather of punk. Every punk band of the past and present has knowingly or unknowingly borrowed a thing or two from The Stooges (1969), Fun House (1970), and Raw Power (1973), the catalyzing first three albums Pop recorded with the Stooges. Moreover, years before punk musicians became known for antagonistic on-stage behavior, Pop mastered an unhinged approach to performance that sometimes endangered himself and spectators alike.

Born on April 21, 1947, in Muskegon, Michigan, James Newell Osterberg was raised by his parents in a trailer park close to Ann Arbor, in neighboring Ypsilanti. Intrigued by rock & roll Osterberg began playing drums and formed his first band, the Iguanas, in the early '60s. Via the Rolling Stones, he discovered the blues and formed a similarly styled outfit called the Prime Movers upon graduating from high school in 1965. When a brief stint at the University of Michigan didn't work out, he moved to Chicago instead, where he played drums alongside the city's bluesmen.

His heart remained with rock & roll, however, and shortly after returning to Ann Arbor, Osterberg decided to form a rock band. This time, he would leave the drums behind and be the frontman, taking inspiration from the likes of the Velvet Underground's Lou Reed and the Doors' Jim Morrison. He tried to find musicians who shared his musical vision: to create a band whose music would be primordial, sexually charged, aggressive, and repetitive. In 1967, he hooked up with an old acquaintance from his high school days, guitarist Ron Asheton, who also brought along his brother, drummer Scott, and bassist Dave Alexander, thus forming the Psychedelic Stooges.

It was around this time that the group shortened its name to the Stooges, and Osterberg changed his own stage name to Iggy Pop. With the name change, Pop became a man possessed on-stage, going into the crowd nightly to confront members of the audience and working himself into such a frenzy that he would be bleeding by the end of the night from various nicks and scratches. Elektra Records signed the quartet in 1968, issuing their self-titled debut a year later and a follow-up effort, Fun House, in 1970. Although both records sold poorly upon release, they've since become rock classics, and can be pointed to as the official catalysts for what later became punk rock.

The Stooges were dropped from their record company in 1971 due to the public's disinterest and the group's growing addictions to hard drugs. Pop's continuous death-defying acts also worried the label, whose decision to drop the band led to the Stooges' breakup the same year. One of the band's more celebrated fans, David Bowie, tracked Pop down and convinced the newly clean and sober singer to restart his career. 

Signed by Columbia Records and hoping to follow in Bowie's footsteps toward a major commercial breakthrough, the Stooges penned another punk classic, the brutally explosive Raw Power. Pop's plan for the Stooges' third release was equally brutal; he wanted to create a record that would be so powerful, so sonically over the top, that it would physically hurt the listener, but it also sank without a trace. By 1974, Pop and most of the Stooges had fallen back into the world of heavy drugs, and with their star fading, the band called it quits for a second (and final) time.

After spending a brief spell homeless on the streets of Hollywood, Pop checked himself into the Neuropsychiatric Institute in Los Angeles.

During his hospital stay, an old friend came to visit him: David Bowie, whose career was still in high gear. Bowie offered to take Pop on the road with him during his tour in support of Station to Station, and the pair got along so well that they both moved to Berlin in late 1976, during which time Bowie helped Pop secure a solo record deal with RCA. Bowie had become interested in European electronic rock (Kraftwerk, Can, etc.) and later admitted that he used Pop as a musical guinea pig on such releases as The Idiot and Lust for Life (both issued in 1977 and produced/co-written by Bowie). Both albums sold better than the singer's previous efforts with the Stooges (particularly in the U.K., where Pop was looked upon as an icon by the burgeoning punk rock movement).

In 1982, Pop penned his autobiography, I Need More, a fascinating book of rock & roll excess that chronicled his early years straight up to the then-present day. Despite the flurry of activity, Pop began succumbing to his vices once again and stepped out of the spotlight for a long stretch to sort his life out, during which time Bowie scored a massive hit with a remake of the Pop/Bowie nugget "China Girl" (recorded earlier on Pop's The Idiot). It wasn't until 1986 that Pop resurfaced, signing a new contract with A&M and issuing the Bowie-produced Blah Blah Blah, which featured his first U.S. hit single (albeit a moderate one), a cover of "Real Wild Child." Released in 1988, Instinct saw Pop try his hand at hard rock/heavy metal, joined by ex-Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones. Its "Cold Metal" was nominated for a Grammy in the category of Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance. Pop's first album for Virgin, 1990's Brick by Brick, resulted in his first U.S. gold-certified album and Top 20 hit single "Candy," a tuneful duet with the B-52s' Kate Pierson.

Just as in the mid-'70s when Pop was looked up to by a slew of up-and-coming punk bands, history repeated itself in the early '90s with the emergence of such Stooges disciples from Seattle as Nirvana, Mudhoney, Soundgarden, etc. Around the same time, a wide variety of bands covered Pop and/or Stooges tracks - Slayer, Duran Duran, Guns N' Roses, R.E.M., and Tom Jones - while Pop issued another fine solo set, 1993's American Caesar. Throughout the decade, Pop also tried his hand at acting in movies, scoring bit parts in such flicks as Cry Baby, Dead Man, and The Crow II: City of Angels, plus a recurring role on the TV show The Adventures of Pete & Pete.

With just about every new rock band listing the Stooges as a major influence by the late '90s, Iggy tentatively began looking back to the band's legacy. He personally remixed a newly remastered version of Raw Power in 1997, after the long-lost original master tapes were rediscovered and Pop moved the album closer to his original vision of a total sonic onslaught. Also released around this time was another Pop/Stooges-related book, the must-read Please Kill Me: The Oral History of Punk, which recounted the Stooges' career in great detail.

After abandoning a promised Stooges reunion in the late '90s, Pop finally made good on his pledge in 2003, bringing Ron Asheton and Scott Asheton aboard to write and record four songs with him for his album Skull Ring, and taking the reconstituted Stooges on the road for a short but riotously received tour.

In 2010, Pop and the rest of the Stooges were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Iggy continued to tour with the Stooges (now featuring James Williamson on guitar) throughout 2010 and into 2011, taking time to pursue a couple of solo side projects.

In January 2016, a surprise announcement from Pop revealed that the pair had written an album together with the help of Dean Fertita. Recorded secretly and funded entirely independently, Post Pop Depression (Loma Vista) featured the single "Gardenia".

Iggy's next solo project found him stepping back from rock & roll; 2019's Free was dominated by trumpet and atmospheric guitar patters.