Iggy Pop's name came from a failed band and a shaved-eyebrow lookalike
James Osterberg grew up in a Michigan trailer park, where his parents surrendered the master bedroom because only it could hold his drum kit. Two nicknames later, one from a teenage band called the Iguanas and one from a local oddball named Jim Popp, he became the unpredictable frontman now called the Godfather of Punk.
Born on April 21, 1947, in Muskegon, the son of an English teacher and baseball coach, Osterberg traced his musical instincts to the clang of Michigan's factories, especially a visit to Ford's River Rouge Plant at nine. He started drumming in fifth grade on rubber pads glued to plywood. Ron Asheton remembered him as a strikingly conventional teenager who wore chinos and loafers and did not drink or smoke. Drumming in the Iguanas, then the blues-minded Prime Movers, earned him the name Iggy.
After dropping out of the University of Michigan he drummed in Chicago blues clubs, helped by Sam Lay, then went home to front the Psychedelic Stooges with Ron and Scott Asheton and Dave Alexander. Their debut gig was a Halloween house party in Detroit. Watching Jim Morrison goad a crowd at a 1967 Doors show convinced him that a singer with a hit could still be confrontational, and that he had no excuse not to try. He became one of the first performers to stage-dive and helped make it a concert ritual.
The Stooges sold few records at first, yet Raw Power, made in 1973 with David Bowie's involvement, later shaped the Sex Pistols, the Smiths and Nirvana. Pop and Bowie moved to West Berlin to break their drug habits and produced two 1977 albums, The Idiot and Lust for Life, with Pop mostly writing lyrics. The Idiot fed straight into Joy Division, Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails, and Siouxsie Sioux called it proof that the man was a genius.
Commercial success stayed modest. Bowie's version of China Girl, on Let's Dance in 1983, reached far more ears than Pop's own, and his only American Top 40 hit was Candy, a 1990 duet with Kate Pierson. Recognition arrived anyway: in 2010 the Stooges were inducted into rock's hall of fame, and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award followed in 2020.
Source: Iggy Pop
