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Iggy Pop & The Stooges (USA)
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August 05, 21:00
James Newell Osterberg, Jr. (born April 21, 1947), better known as Iggy Pop, is an American rock singer, songwriter, and occasional actor. Iggy Pop is considered to be one of the most important innovators of punk and related styles. He is sometimes referred to by the nicknames "the Godfather of Punk" and "the Rock Iguana", and is widely acknowledged as one of the most dynamic stage performers of rock. Iggy Pop was the lead singer of The Stooges, a late 1960s/early 1970s garage rock band who were influential in the development of the nascent heavy metal and punk rock. The band’s history’s is as complicated as Iggy’s own – they had worked together, they worked apart, and they work together again touring to support their new album The Weirdness (released in March 2007).
Iggy Pop began his music career as a drummer in different high school bands in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Eventually he dropped out of the University of Michigan and moved to Chicago to learn more about blues. Inspired by Chicago blues as well as bands like The Sonics and The MC5, he formed the psychedelic Stooges and called himself Iggy Pop. He got the name Pop because he once shaved his eyebrows for a show, after which he looked like a friend with the last name Popp who had recently undergone chemotherapy and had no eyebrows himself. One year after their debut, and now dubbed the Stooges, were signed to Elektra Records in 1968. The Stooges' first two albums, The Stooges, was sold poorly. Shortly after the new members have joined, the group disbanded because of Iggy Pop's growing heroin addiction. He nearly replaced the deceased Jim Morrison in The Doors and even dyed his hair black in preparation, but the remaining trio decided against adding a new lead vocalist.
David Bowie salvaged Iggy Pop's career by producing an album with him in England. However, since neither Pop nor Bowie were satisfied with any players in England, they decided to re-unite The Stooges. But it would not be a true reunion. The recording sessions were produced by punk rock landmark Raw Power, in 1973. After its release Scott Thurston was added to the band on keyboards/electric piano and Bowie continued his support, but Iggy Pop's drug problem persisted. Drug addiction put his career on hold for a couple of years.
After the second breakup of the Stooges, Iggy Pop made some recordings with James Williamson, but these weren't released until 1977 (as Kill City, credited jointly to Iggy Pop and Williamson). Iggy was unable to control his various drug habits, however, and went to a mental institution to clean up.
Bowie and Iggy Pop relocated to West Berlin to fight their addictions. Iggy Pop signed with RCA and Bowie helped to write and produce The Idiot and Lust for Life (both 1977), Pop's two most acclaimed albums as a solo artist, the latter with another team of brothers, Hunt and Tony Sales. In 1982, Iggy Pop released what would be his final album for some time, Zombie Birdhouse, on Chris Stein's Animal label, with Stein himself producing.
 After the release of Zombie Birdhouse, Pop took some time off, reappearing four years later with the Bowie-produced Blah-Blah-Blah; the record became his highest-charting album since The Idiot. He followed it in 1989 with Instinct, another return to basic hard rock. Released the following year on Virgin Records, the Don Was-produced Brick By Brick was his most accessible and commercially successful album, producing his first Top 40 hit, "Candy." Pop began an acting career during the next few years, appearing in John Waters' Cry Baby. Pop's first album since Brick By Brick was American Caesar (1993), which was yet another return to punky hard rock. American Caesar sold relatively well, but it wasn't a hit. Neither was Naughty Little Doggy, which disappeared upon its spring 1996 release. Another decade was again motley like a patchwork blanket. Pop supplied vocals for the 1999 Death in Vegas UK Top 10 hit single Aisha. He also supplied vocals on the song "Rolodex Propaganda" by At the Drive-In in 2000. In 2003 he released collaborations with Sum 41, Green Day, Peaches, and The Trolls, as well as the Asheton brothers, reuniting the two surviving fouding members of Stooges for the first time since 1974.
Having enjoyed working with Ron and Scott Asheton on Skull Ring, Pop reformed the Stooges with bassist Mike Watt and saxophonist Steve MacKay rejoining the lineup. They have been touring regularly since 2004. He opened Madonna's Reinvention World Tour in Dublin, played at Bam Margera's wedding, played in Australia and New Zealand for the Big Day Out, performed at the Lowlands pop festival in the Netherlands, Hodokvas in Slovakia and in the Sziget festival in Budapest… Well, it’s easier to say what he didn’t do – he never stopped.
"25 years I been sittin' in my bedroom, thinkin' stuff up, and thinkin' how I feel. You tell how you really feel, you get burned. I'm ready to go down in flames, but I don't want to. In normal life I bottle things up and smile. Only in this world, the music world, can I deliver something worth living for to my life” – Iggy says. And it’s impossible not to believe.
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