All right, so it's January 2026, and if you scan
the cultural landscape, there's this one figure
who just, I mean, he refuses to go away. And
by all logical and medical accounts, should have
gone away, what, 50 years ago? Exactly. A guy
who was supposed to be a casualty by 1974 tops.
We were talking about James Newell Osterberg
Jr. But nobody calls him that. Nobody calls him
that. To the world he is and always will be Iggy
Pop. And the reason we're doing this deep dive
is... It's not just that he's a rock star. It's
that he is a walking breathing paradox completely.
I mean think about it This is the man who basically
invented the stage dive who rolled around in
broken glass as part of the show. And now, here
in 2026, he's a respected scholar of Roman history.
And get this, he's the face of a Dom Perignon
champagne campaign. It's a pretty jarring image,
isn't it? The guy who wrote I Want to Be Your
Dog is now selling you luxury bubbles. It is.
But when you dig into the stack of notes we have
here, I mean, biographies, discographies, session
notes, even academic journals, you start to realize
it's not a contradiction. It's a survival strategy.
That's it. That's the whole story. And that's
our mission for this. Deep dives. We want to
get past the cartoon version of Iggy Pop, the
wild animal. The shirtless maniac. Right. And
understand the brain behind the chest. We're
going to look at his musical evolution, the absolute
truth about his crucial friendship with David
Bowie, and just the sheer biological miracle
of his survival. And we also have to touch on
the cost of that survival. Because, you know,
you don't live a life like that without leaving
some wreckage behind you. Absolutely. So let's
get into it. And I think to understand the godfather
of punk, you have to go right back to the beginning
because the mythology, it says he crawled out
of a sewer in Detroit, fully formed and furious.
But the reality is he crawled out of a master
bedroom in a trailer park in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
And I want to pause on that because trailer park
is usually shorthand in rock bios for like. Poverty
and neglect. Right. You picture the broken down
cars, the desperation, the wrong side of the
tracks kind of thing. But for Jim Osterberg,
and let's call him Jim for a bit, it was the
complete opposite. He was born in Mustagin in
47, but he grew up in the Coachville trailer
court. His dad, James Sr., was an English teacher
and a baseball coach. His mom, Luella, was this
very proper woman of Danish and Norwegian descent.
So it's a tiny space, but it's intellectually
rich. And more than that, it was incredibly supportive.
Oh, massively supportive. And there's this one
story in the notes, the story about the drum
kit, that I think explains almost everything
about his later success. It totally flips the
script on that whole neglected rock star cliche.
It's the Rosebud moment of his life, honestly.
So Jim gets interested in drums in the fifth
grade. At first, you know, he's just banging
on rubber pads he glued to a piece of plywood.
As you do. But he gets good. He needs a real
kit. Now, you've been in a trailer. You know
space is at a premium. There is literally no
room for a full drum set. Right. Most parents
would say, hey, great hobby. Why don't you take
up the harmonica or go play in the shed? Not
James and Luella. They evacuated their own bedroom.
They gave the master bedroom, the biggest room
in the trailer, to their teenage son so he could
set up his drums. They moved themselves into
the tiny guest nook. That's... That's incredible.
I mean, that's a massive signal to send to a
kid. It's basically saying your creative noise
is more important than our comfort. Your dream
is the most important thing in this house. He
knew it. He said in interviews that he went to
school with kids whose dads were like Ford executives,
you know, rich kids from the country club. But
he said he felt richer than them. He had this
arrogance because he knew his parents were all
in on his potential in a way those other parents
weren't. So you have this bedrock of unconditional
support. Which, again, creates this weird dynamic
in high school. Yeah. Because we expect the future
godfather of punk to be a juvenile delinquent,
right? Slashing tires, getting into fights. Not
even close. In high school, Jim Osterberg was,
well, he was kind of preppy. Yeah. He wore chinos
and cashmere sweaters. He was on the student
council. He hung out with the popular kids. He
didn't smoke. He didn't drink. He didn't do drugs.
It's almost disappointing. You want to hear that
he was a rebel from day one? Well, the rebellion
was internal. He was watching. He was observing.
He was learning how to be a chameleon. And he
started playing in bands, of course. He was a
drummer. One of his first bands was a group called
The Iguanas. And there it is. The origin of the
name. Part of it. That's where Iggy comes from.
But it wasn't a cool nickname at first. It wasn't
like the boss or the king. No, it was actually
meant to be mocking. When he later joined a blues
band called the Prime Movers, the older, more
serious blues guys would call him Iggy to remind
him of his, you know, bubblegum pop past with
the iguanas. It was meant to belittle him like,
oh, here comes Iggy, the kid from the pop band.
So he took an insult and made it his brand. And
what about the pop part? That came a little later.
He shaved off his eyebrows, which was probably
the first real sign of the wild man to come.
And apparently people started saying he looked
like this local character in town named Jim Pop.
So Iggy Pop. Yeah. It was just this accidental
collision of a high school band and a guy with
no eyebrows. It's amazing how these iconic names
just sort of happen. OK, so we have the supportive
parents, the cashmere sweaters, the accidental
name. How do we get from that guy to the guy
cutting his chest open with a broken bottle?
There has to be a catalyst. There was a huge
one. It's 1967. He's at the University of Michigan
and he goes to see a concert. He goes to see.
The Doors? Jim Morrison. The Lizard King himself.
Now, you have to put yourself in that moment.
In 1967, a rock performance was usually about
being good, you know, playing the songs correctly,
singing in tune, being professional. What do
you mean entertaining? Morrison comes out on
stage and he is a complete disaster. He's very
likely tripping on acid. He's probably drunk.
He's not singing the song so much as screaming
bits of them. He's antagonizing the crowd, yelling
obscenities. He's lurching around like he's about
to be sick. I mean, most people in that audience
probably wanted their money back. They thought
they were seeing a train wreck. But Iggy saw
something completely different. He had a genuine
revelation. He's watching Morrison. He's thinking,
this guy is treating the audience like dirt.
He can't even perform properly tonight. And yet
he has the number one record in the country.
It was permission. It was total permission. It
was the realization that a performance didn't
have to be about technical perfection or pleasing
people. It could be about confrontation. It could
be about theater. It could be about danger. And
that right there, that's the seed that grows
into the Stooges. So let's talk about the Stooges,
because musically, this is where we need to define
some terms. We throw the word punk around a lot,
but the Stooges are what we call proto -punk.
What does that actually mean in terms of the
sound? That's a great question. So again, think
about what was happening in the late 60s. You
had the Summer of Love. You had these really
complex psychedelic arrangements. The Beatles
were doing Screek Pepper. It was very flowery,
very produced, very clever music. Right. Lots
of layers. Protopunk, and especially what the
Stooges were doing, was a violent rejection of
all of that complexity. It was a deliberate return
to the primitive. Three chords and the truth.
Or maybe just the three chords. Or maybe just
one chord played over and over again with a really
bad attitude. It was raw. It was hypnotic. If
you listen to a song like I Want to Be Your Dog,
it's just this relentless, grinding, simple riff.
It doesn't sound happy. It sounds like boredom
and aggression and raw electricity all mixed
together. And the lineup was crucial to that
sound. You had Iggy on vocals, Dave Alexander
on bass, and then the Ashton Brothers, Ron on
guitar and Scott on drums. And the hiring policy
for Ron Ashton tells you everything you need
to know about the band's vibe. Iggy didn't pick
Ron because he was a virtuoso guitarist. He said
he picked him because he thought Ron looked ill
and dirty. He was casting a movie, basically.
You look like you need a shower and possibly
a doctor. You're in. That's exactly it. He was
building a gang, not an orchestra. And even the
name The Stooges was this act of anti -cool.
I mean, nobody in 1968 thought the Three Stooges
were cool. No, they were old -timey comedians.
It's like naming your band the Marx Brothers
or something. Exactly. And the story behind it
is fantastic. Ron Asheton actually tracked down
Moe Howard from the actual Three Stooges and
called him on the phone to ask for permission
to use the name. I love this. He called a real
Three Stooges. He did. And Moe Howard, who was
probably just completely confused as to why some
long -haired kid from a rock band was calling
him, basically said, I don't care what you call
yourselves as long as you're not three stooges.
And then he just hung up. So green light from
Mo. They have the name. They have the look. They
have the sound. What they didn't have. Oh, absolutely
not. Their first two albums, the self -titled
The Stooges, which was produced by John Cale
from The Velvet Underground, by the way. Another
proto -punk legend. Right. So that album and
their second one, Funhouse, are now considered
sacred texts. They're on every greatest albums
of all time list. But at the time, they were
commercial poison. Nobody got it. The world was
not ready for a guy smearing peanut butter all
over his chest and diving into the crowd. We
almost take it for granted now. You go to a festival,
someone is crowd surfing. But Iggy is widely
credited with inventing it. He was one of the
very first. And he did it differently. He was
breaking the fourth wall physically. Before Iggy,
the stage was this pedestal. You know, the rock
god stood up there and the audience stood down
there and worshipped. And Iggy said, no, I'm
coming out there to you. But it wasn't a hug.
It wasn't a we're all in this together thing.
It was an assault. He would just hurl himself
at people. He would cut himself with glass. He
would expose himself. He would challenge the
audience. It was performance art. It was dangerous.
It was. It was asking the question, how much
of this can you handle? But you can only sustain
that level of intensity and self -destruction
for so long. The band imploded. The drugs took
over. Specifically, heroin really took hold of
Iggy. And this brings us to the low point. it's
the early 70s the stooges are done iggy's broke
he's addicted he's basically sleeping on couches
he's essentially washed up before he's even 25
years old and this is really where the story
should have ended he should have been a footnote
you know oh yeah that crazy guy from that band
that made a couple of weird records but then
A certain star man enters the picture. David
Bowie. David Bowie. And the relationship between
Bowie and Iggy Pop is one of the most fascinating
and I think important dynamics in all of music
history. I've always viewed it as this really
symbiotic thing. Like Bowie needed Iggy's raw,
authentic danger to ground himself. And Iggy
desperately needed Bowie's discipline and his
production genius just to survive. That's a perfect
way to put it. They met at Max's Kansas City
in New York in 1971. Bowie was on the rise. He
was this calculated, polished, brilliant artist.
And he saw Iggy as this raw, untapped resource,
a force of nature that needed to be harnessed.
So he decides to save him? Pretty much. He gets
Iggy a record deal, takes him to England, and
produces the album Raw Power in 1973. They even
reformed the Stooges for it. But even that wasn't
enough to keep the demons away. After the album,
Iggy crashed again, harder than ever. And this
is when he checks himself into a mental institution.
Yeah. The UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. He
was trying to save his own brain. He knew he
was losing it. And the notes mention something
really poignant here. While he was in there,
visitors were very, very scarce. The whole cool
rock and roll crowd, they weren't exactly lining
up to visit the guy in the psych ward. But Bowie
did. Bowie came. And not only did he visit, but
in 1976, he basically busted him out and took
Iggy on his station to station tour. Not as an
opening act, really, just as a companion to keep
an eye on him, to get him out of the L .A. drug
scene. Which leads them to move to West Berlin.
The famous Berlin era. This whole period is so
mythologized. We imagine them in like black leather
coats standing by the Berlin Wall looking gloomy
and artistic while synthesizing the future of
music. And I mean, they were doing that. But
the domestic reality of it is so much funnier
and more human. Yeah. They moved to West Berlin
specifically to get clean. They were trying to
escape the drug dealers of L .A. and London.
So they got an apartment together. And Iggy has
gone on record saying that the highlight of their
week, their big wild night out was Thursday.
OK. What happened on Thursday? I would sit on
the sofa, maybe make some dinner and watch Starsky
and Hutch on German television. You're kidding.
David Bowie and Iggy Pop just sitting there watching
a cop show. It's incredible, isn't it? It humanizes
them completely. But creatively, this period
of sort of quiet domesticity worked. It was unbelievably
productive. In 1977 alone, they produced two
of Iggy's greatest solo albums back to back,
The Idiot and Lester Life. OK, can we talk about
the sound of The Idiot? Because it is. so, so
different from the Stooges. It's not punk rock.
No, it's the sound of Bowie's influence crashing
head -on with Iggy's raw energy. It's heavy.
It's industrial. It's almost robotic in places.
You listen to a track like Night Clubbing with
that lurching electronic drum beat. It's almost
gothic. It's dark and unsettling. And Lust for
Life comes out the same year, and it's so much
brighter. It's more of a rock and roll record.
It is. They co -wrote all these classic songs
together. The Passenger, Lust for Life, China
Girl Tonight, Sister... midnight. It was this
incredible burst of creativity. But here's the
part of the friendship story that I think really
matters. It's the financial part. Yes, this is
crucial. So we get to the early 80s and Iggy
is still struggling. The albums were critically
acclaimed, but the money just wasn't there. He
was still basically broke. Meanwhile. Bowie is
about to record Let's Dance, an album that was
specifically designed to be a massive global
commercial hit. And it was. It was absolutely
huge. So Bowie makes a choice. He decides to
cover China Girl on that album, a song he co
-wrote with Iggy. He didn't have to do that.
He could have written a brand new song by himself.
But he did it specifically so that the songwriting
royalties, which would be enormous, would go
to Iggy. That's not just a favor. That's a pension
plan. It was a lifeline. And then he did it again
on his next album, Tonight. Bowie basically ensured
that Iggy Pop would never starve again. He set
him up for life. That's real friendship. It really
is. So, OK, Iggy is finally financially secure.
But the 80s as a decade were, I don't know, there
were a weird time for him. I feel like every
original punk rocker had a bit of a midlife crisis
in the 80s, trying to figure out where they fit
in with all the synthesizers and big hair. It
was a total roller coaster. He released these
albums like Soldier and Party that were, you
know, kind of hit or miss. He was trying to fit
into the new wave sound. But that self -destructive
impulse, it hadn't fully left the building. There's
a famous incident in 1981 at a show where he
just smashes a microphone into his own face.
Accidentally. No, completely on purpose. In the
heat of the performance, he snapped a front tooth
right off at the root. Boom, gone. It was like
he needed to feel something real in the middle
of all that 80s gloss. Wow. But he also found
some real commercial success on his own terms.
In 1986, he releases the album Blah Blah Blah,
again produced by Bowie, and it had the song
Real Wild Child, Wild One. Which sounds very
80s. You can hear the production. Lots of reverb.
Very produced. But it was a legitimate hit in
the UK and Australia. And then in 1990, he has
his only U .S. top 40 hit, The Duet Candy with
Kate Pearson from the B -52s. It's just such
a great song. It's a sweet pop song. It proved
he could actually sing, you know, not just scream
and snarl. Exactly. But the real cultural reset.
The moment Iggy became truly cool again for a
whole new generation was 1996. Trainspotting.
Danny Boyle's movie. That opening scene, you
see Ewan McGregor just running full tilt from
the cops, the freeze frame, and then that iconic
drumbeat kicks in. Thump, thump, thump, thump.
Lust for life. And suddenly Iggy Pop wasn't this
relic from the 70s anymore. He was the sound
of adrenaline. He was the sound of youthful rebellion
for the entire Britpop generation. It just opened
the door for everything that came after. And
he walked right through that door and into Hollywood.
Yeah, he kind of did. He became this really interesting
character actor. He showed up in John Waters'
Cry Baby with Johnny Depp in Jim Jarmusch's Dead
Man the Crow, City of Angels. He was just popping
up in these cool indie movies. But my absolute
favorite fun fact from the notes has to be...
his appearance on Star Trek Deep Space Nine.
Iggy Pop in space. I mean, you can't make this
stuff up. It was 1998. He played a Vorda, which
is this alien race named Yelgrun in an episode
called The Magnificent Ferengi. And he's in the
full prosthetics, the spacesuit, the whole deal.
And he played it completely straight. It just
shows you he wasn't trapped by his own persona.
He was willing to be a working actor and just,
you know, do the job. I want to pivot now to
something that I think is the most surprising
part of this whole deep dive. We see the body,
right? We see the veins, the sweat, the leather
skin. And we assume he's just pure instinct,
a primal force. Right. All -eyed, no ego. But
Iggy Pop is a serious intellectual. This is the
part that people always miss. Jim Osterberg is
incredibly well -read. And I don't mean he reads,
you know, rock biographies. I mean, he reads
the classics. The notes mention Edward Gibbon's
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. That's
not light reading. He doesn't just read it. He
analyzes it and writes about it. In 1995, he
actually published an article in a proper academic
journal called Classics Ireland. Wait, for real?
A peer -reviewed journal? Yes. The article was
titled Caesar Lives. and in it he wrote about
reading gibbon's masterpiece while he was on
tour in the american south and he draws these
incredible brilliant parallels between the bread
and circuses of the roman empire and the united
states in the 20th century he compared the brutality
of the roman polyseum to the mosh pits at his
own shows that's profound so he sees the mosh
pit not just as chaos but as a modern form of
a very ancient ritual precisely He argues that
humanity hasn't really changed that much. We've
just changed the costumes and the soundtrack.
He sees himself as part of this long, unbroken
lineage of public spectacle and decline. It's
really brilliant stuff. And you can hear that
eclectic taste on his radio show, too. Absolutely.
Iggy Confidential on BBC Six Music. If you're
listening and you haven't heard it. You have
to check it out. He'll play free jazz, then some
old French chanson, then some extreme Norwegian
black metal. He has the ears of a musicologist.
He's always championing new young bands. He's
not some old man yelling at clouds. He's an old
man who is actively listening to everything.
And he's done voice acting as well, which requires
a totally different kind of discipline. Yeah,
he was a voice in the Rugrats movie, he's been
on American Dad, and he voiced the character
of the uncle in the English language. So speaking
of the old man aspect, we have to talk about
the physical reality of him. He's famous for
performing shirtless. We've literally watched
his body age in public for 50 years. But there's
a medical reason behind the way he moves. Scoliosis.
I had no idea about this. Yeah. He has a significant
curvature of the spine, and as a result, one
of his legs is about an inch and a half shorter
than the other one. So you know that signature
walk of his, that sort of lurching, twisting,
hip -thrusting thing he does? Yeah, it looks
like a panther stalking something. It's actually
him compensating for his spine. He's built his
entire physical vocabulary on stage around a
disability. He turned a medical condition into
a dance move. It explains why he's always contorted
and twisted on stage. He's working with his body's
limitations and pain. That adds such a layer
of grit to the whole performance. But look, we
can't do a proper deep dive without looking at
the dark side. We've talked about the drugs,
but there are other controversies in his personal
life that we need to address if we're being honest
about the full biography. We do. You can't sanitize
the 70s rock scene, and Iggy was right in the
middle of it. The most significant controversy,
and one that's been reexamined a lot recently,
involves a woman named Sable Starr. She was a
very prominent figure in the L .A. groupie scene
of that era. She was. And the historical record,
including his own evisions, shows that when Iggy
was 23 years old, he began a sexual relationship
with her. She was 13 years old. And just seeing
those numbers out loud like that. It's stark.
And in the context of the 1970s baby groupie
culture, it was unfortunately common and often
romanticized or overlooked by the music press
at the time. But looking back on it now, especially
through the lens of the hashtag MeToo era, it's
viewed very, very differently. And there's a
recent documentary that deals with this, right?
Yes, a documentary called Look Away. which is
ironically named after an Iggy Pop song that's
about her. And it frames these relationships
not as rock and roll excess, but as what they
were, statutory rape. And it's important for
us as we look at the whole legacy to acknowledge
that that is part of the history. It's the complexity
of these figures. And there have been other more
recent stumbles, too. Right. In 2007, during
a BBC interview at the Glastonbury Festival,
he used a racist slur pocky shop to describe
a convenience store. I remember that making headlines
at the time. Oh, yeah. It caused a big stir.
He claimed he wasn't aware of the negative connotation,
that it was just some slang he'd heard, but it
led to a lot of complaints and he had to issue
a formal apology. It's a reminder that even a
cultural icon isn't immune to ignorance or making
really serious mistakes. So we have the genius,
the survivor, the intellectual, and the deeply
flawed human being, all wrapped up in that leathery
skin. Let's bring it up to the present day, the
elder statesman era. The Stooges finally got
their due. They did. They reunited in 2003 with
the surviving Ashton brothers. And then in 2010,
they were finally inducted into the Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame. How did he take it? I feel
like the classic punk rock thing to do would
be to spit on the award or not show up. You would
think so. But by his own account, he cried. He
apparently cried for two hours straight when
he heard the news. Wow. Why do you think he had
such an emotional reaction? Because for 40 years,
he was the outsider. He was the commercial failure.
He was the guy the establishment looked down
on. And to finally be recognized by that same
establishment, I think it validated the entire
struggle. It meant his parents' sacrifice of
giving him their bedroom all those years ago.
It wasn't for nothing. But the band didn't last
long after that induction. No, sadly. Ron Ashton
passed away in 2009, and his brother Scott died
in 2014. Iggy is really the last stooge standing
now. But he didn't stop. In 2016, he released
the album Post -Pop Depression. And I would argue
this is his best, most vital work since the Berlin
era with Bowie. I completely agree. He collaborated
with Josh Holm from Queens of the Stone Age.
And the album is this incredible meditation on
mortality and legacy. He knew his friends were
dying. Bowie passed away just before the album
came out. The album sounds like a man settling
his affairs, but in the most powerful way. And
it became his highest charting album ever in
the U .S. And he's still going. You release free
in 2019. Every loser in 2023. But he did finally
retire one thing. The stage diving. The insurance
premiums must have finally gotten too high. I
think his body's premiums got too high. He finally
admitted around 2022 or 2023 that he was just
too rickety to do it anymore. He said he didn't
want to rely on the audience to catch him, which
is probably a wise medical decision for a man
in his late 70s. But he's not exactly knitting
on the front porch. We mentioned the 2025 and
2026 timeline at the start of this. He's as active
as ever. He is everywhere. In 2025, his song
Punk Rocker, which was a collaboration he did
with the Teddy Bears, was featured prominently
in the new Superman movie. Superman and Iggy
Pop. That is another combination I did not see
coming. And as we said, he headlined the CBGB
Festival in Brooklyn in September of 2025. He
is closing in on 80 years old and he's still
headlining punk festivals named after the club
where it all started. And the champagne. We have
to come back to the champagne. The Dom Perignon
campaign, May 2025. It's the ultimate paradox.
So here is the final provocative question for
you and for you listening. Does doing a champagne
ad undo the entire punk rock legacy? Is it selling
out? I've thought about this a lot. And my answer
is no, I don't think it's selling out. I actually
think it's winning. How so? Explain that. Look,
Iggy Pop's central goal from the very beginning
was freedom. He wanted to be free of convention,
free of poverty, free of expectations. He survived
the heroin addiction that killed so many of his
peers. He survived the years of poverty. He survived
the critics who called his music unlistenable
garbage. He has outlived the entire system that
tried to crush him. So now if he wants to sit
in a beautiful house, sip the most expensive
champagne in the world and get paid a... Fortune
to do it all while still making exactly the uncompromising
music he wants to make. That's not selling out.
That's the ultimate punk rock move. He beat the
house. He didn't just survive the game. He broke
the bank and is drinking their booze. Exactly.
He is 78 years old. He has earned the bubble.
That is a fantastic perspective. He's the last
of the Mohicans and he's enjoying the spoils
of war. And probably reading Roman history while
he does it. Well, on that note, I think I am
going to go listen to The Idiot again tonight.
But this time. I'm going to be listening for
the scoliosis, for the sorrow, and for the sound
of survival. Do it. And really listen to the
production on nightclubbing. It is just, it's
a masterpiece, unparalleled. Will do. And to
you listening right now, thanks for taking this
deep dive with us. Keep exploring. Stay curious.