Iggy Pop Read Free

the perfect American icon, warm, alive, acute and playful. Impressively lithe, he inhabits his body gracefully, like a cat. The conversation ranges from Bertolt Brecht to Greek mythology, the avant garde to t’ai chi, the difference between the Apollonian and the Dionysian ideal. He fixes his clear blue eyes upon you, staring into your own eyes in almost disconcertingly rapt attention, but occasionally looks away in a coy, boyish kind of way, or breaks into a broad, seductive smile when he gets to the end of a harrowing anecdote. His voice is rich and elegant; he listens intently to questions, laughing at the ridiculous nature of his own life, wittily describing the many ludicrous predicaments in which he’s placed himself, caricaturing the self-destructive voices he’d hear in his head. For someone celebrated as perhaps the most committed, forceful performer ever to take a stage, he is shockingly and consistently self-deprecating. But never, even for one moment, does he suggest that his commitment to his music is anything but unyielding and absolute.
    As you walk away from an encounter with Jim Osterberg, your head will probably be spinning, quite possibly with love and adoration, almost certainly with profound respect and a feeling of empathy. Fellow rock stars, casual members of the public, lords and media magnates, countless thousands of people will talk of their encounter with this driven, talented, indomitable creature, a man who has plumbed the depths of depravity, yet emerged with an indisputable nobility. Each of them will share an admiration and appreciation of the contradictions and ironies of his incredible life. Even so, they are unlikely to fully comprehend both the heights and the depths of his experience, for the extremes are simply beyond the realms of most people’s understanding.
    Many musicians have doubtless suffered similar mockery and violence, countless others have demonstrated a similar capacity for self-harm and drug abuse, and more than a few have been taken up as heroes, decades later, by new legions of disciples. Yet no other figure seems to speak, like Iggy Pop, to generation after generation of musicians at such an intimate, personal level, nor inspire wave after wave of music that pervades the mainstream. Just as the Damned’s Brian James treasured his own copy of the Stooges’ Fun House in the early 1970s, so would Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain play the same band’s Raw Power over and over, nearly two decades later, confiding to his journal that it was his favourite album of all time, even writing a song for his hero. Later still, in a new century, Iggy would finally appear at festivals alongside other celebrated fans, like the White Stripes or the Red Hot Chili Peppers, skipping, spinning and screaming before tens of thousands of 23-year-olds. Meanwhile, the musicians who topped the bill over him all those years ago, who threw lightbulbs at him or publicly dismissed him as a loser, play to shrinking crowds of ageing fans.
    Every aspect of Iggy Pop that attracted outrage or incomprehension in the past - his appearance, his breaking down of the barriers between performer and audience, the eloquent simplicity of his music or the truculent anomie of his lyrics - has become an integral element of today’s rock and alternative music. This is a turnaround that seems almost without historical parallel, yet it cannot be considered a simple fairytale ending. Not when one considers the physical and mental depredations, the disasters and the rejections, that went on for decade after decade, even when by all accounts Iggy Pop was happily rehabilitated and reconciled with his creator, Jim Osterberg.
    The legend and the music of Iggy Pop is today celebrated. Yet behind it there are endless confused stories and mysteries. How could one musician be so revered, yet so reviled? And how could one man be so clever, and so stupid?

CHAPTER 1
    Most Likely To
    It was a beautiful drive up to Silver Lake, a resort