N THE COVER of his new
album, Free, Iggy Pop is
pictured naked, walking
away into the ocean in
the half-light of a Miami
Beach dawn. This turn of events can’t
be considered entirely surprising,
given that Pop has spent a lifetime—he
is 72, at least in human years—finding
various ways to be less dressed than
most of us, just one part of the ongoing
Iggy Pop master class in doing things
your own way.
Told through the soft gauze of
nostalgia, Iggy Pop’s story is one of the
great ones: In the late 1960s, James
Osterberg, a small Michigan youth
with big ideas, takes a new name and
forms a group, the Stooges, in which he
lays down one of the no-nonsense pro-
pulsive templates for punk rock, years
ahead of time, and recklessly extends
the possibilities of how one’s body might
be used and abused on a stage—for
just one aspect of this, he is often now
credited as the inventor of the stage
dive. Then, in the 1970s, with acolyte
David Bowie alongside him, he makes
two remarkable classic-packed solo
albums, The Idiot and Lust for Life...
and on it has gone ever since. As others
around him have withered and fallen,
he has persevered and triumphed.
That’s the way pop-culture history
is generally written, where you know
that every oddball and pioneer and
O
long shot at the beginning of the story
is always going to be acclaimed and
get their due before the story’s end. It
ignores the fact that once the outcasts
have been cast out, most of them never
find their way back in, and that long
shots are long shots because most of
them will never see their number come
up. In truth, Iggy Pop’s story was messy
and uncertain for a long time, and it
ending well was no sure thing.
These days he rebu≠s the inevitable
invitations to write his autobiography,
but a scrappy memoir with his name
on it, I Need More, did come out in
1982, long before the ground beneath
his feet stabilized. It has a brief fore-
word by Andy Warhol, including the
lines: “I don’t know why he hasn’t
made it really big. He is so good,”
and a text that o≠ers plenty of clues
to clear up the mystery for Warhol.opening page
Coat, $3,950, Celine
by Hedi Slimane.
Pants (price upon
request) by Givenchy.
Sunglasses, stylist’s
own. Necklace,
$19,600, and ring,
$2,500, by Eli Halili.
this page, right
Jacket, $2,430, and
pants, $995, by
Alexander McQueen.
Necklace, $225,
by David Yurman.Jacket (price
upon request)
by Givenchy.
Sunglasses,
$895, by Jacques
Marie Mage.
Necklace, $225,
by David Yurman.T h e
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