The Psychopunk Wingman
You say I look goofy? OK, great. You say it's comedy? Great. Whatever anyone thought, I didn't care. Could be goony, could be sexy, could be stupid, could be cool. I didn't know, but as long as it was something, you know? - Iggy Pop
Iggy Pop is not a mystery. His art is made of one hundred percent performative id, onstage he’s a psycho steamroller. For decades he has used his boldness as both shield and sword to the point that it is arguably impossible to tell where Iggy ends and James Newell Osterberg, Jr. begins - that is, if James even exists at all anymore. He has screamed in our faces, writhed for our pleasure, and massaged his passion into a uniquely serrated form of hedonism, seemingly never giving a thought to what might happen on the other side - he only ever seemed interested in how far he could go.
Wally Cleaver had Eddie Haskell. Ethel had Lucy. Eliot had Mr. Robot. These relationships were built on varying levels of loyalty and trust, and their success was largely due to the fact that the personalities involved contained diametrically opposed aspects that were fundamentally complimentary. One of these friends tended toward a predilection for thinking rationally and analytically, they were the type of person who avoided most risk and would never even consider gambles that weren't situationally necessary; the other friend was most often uninterested in thinking through consequences and this led to a tragic flaw of following all their impulses even if the only goal was to get a reaction that changed the game.
After giving up the Stooge life for the second time, Iggy partnered with David Bowie in Berlin for what was partially designed be a chance for both men to recover from addiction. Out of their time together came both The Idiot and Lust For Life, with both being released about six months apart in 1977. Bowie helped write much of the material, some of which he would later perform himself, and he acted as a producer on both records. Iggy is breathless throughout these LP's, pinballing from idea to idea with an enthusiasm that becomes infectious, and occasionally veering into toxic. Bowie is in the shadows for the most part, but the deftness of the cohesion through each respective opus is evidence that he's no mere spectator. In Iggy, Bowie builds a Frankenstein's monster who is both a friend and a partner-in-crime. Bowie seems to point in any stylistic direction just to watch Iggy run with it, knowing that Iggy would never back down from a dare. Iggy is the Huck to Bowie's Tom Sawyer on these albums, he would run through a brick wall if Bowie asked him to and Bowie is able to use that as a real-world experimental petri dish, he sees what works and follows containment protocol to keep it safely isolated from things that don't work. He also uses Iggy as a mask to hide behind while he unlocks the latches on the cages of his wildest notions. It may have been at this point in his artistic life where Iggy fully committed to incarnating the diabolically brash take-all-comers frontman he would mature into over the next few years.
Bowie's unmatched senses of both songcraft and image cultivation allowed him to use Iggy's talents in ways that allowed him best to shine (see the iconic vocal of "Lust For Life") and in ways that sculpted perfectly imperfect works of art in a larger and more mainstream sense (see "China Girl", which Bowie would later record as his own chart-topping single). Iggy Pop is a scattergun. His strength does not lie in hitting a target, and that is handy because he tends to not bother with target practice. When he goes off without the aid of a steady hand, the only goal is damage and the successful achievement of that goal is decided by how far the damage spreads. This type of gun is an effective weapon, but as with any weapon it works best when operated by an expert. A focused spray of fire is still going to wreak environmental havoc, but it's more likely to hit where it was meant to.
In later years, the trope of the plot-moving friend whose DNA forces them to be ever upping the ante would change in profound ways. The post-modern world would see one of contemporary literature's most inimitable rabble rousers come from an unexpected place: the subconscious. Fight Club's nameless Narrator befriends a man named Tyler Durden and the two cause mass-scale catastrophe together over the course of the novel (or film), only for the Narrator to realize that he created Durden and that they are sharing the same body. The modality of the sun faded buddy comedy is turned inside out in that Durden is created from whole cloth as the most fearless and hard-line version of the Narrator's fantasies.
Similarly, desert rock guru Josh Homme would sign on to produce Iggy's late-career highlight Post Pop Depression, and rather than give him new walls to run through Homme simply conjured a new backdrop for Iggy's histrionics. Iggy is not doing anything that novel here when compared to the rest of his oeuvre, but the sharpness of Homme's playing and production allow for a new kind of laser-guided sensory assault. This Iggy is older and he comes with some baggage, but still he slithers and menaces, he boils and seethes; Homme knows what he has and he doesn't waste a moment of the time he's given, look no further than the closing nihilistic anthem "Paraguay" for the receipts. The objective here isn't to coax something new out of Iggy, it is to use Pop's known strengths to magnify his own legacy in a new crop of biker-bar rock tunes that are sleek but battered stylistically by the sands of Palm Desert.
Iggy Pop's discography can be divvied up into categories across the range of many criteria, such is often the case with a career so long and varied. One of the ways to parse it is by separating compositions where he acts on his own volition or as a mouthpiece for the collective will of a steady cast of bandmates, from those where he becomes the transmuted figurehead for another's artistic beliefs and aims. It's a fool’s errand to judge whether one of these modes is "better" or "more worthwhile" than the other, but there is value in recognizing that the dividing line is there to be seen if it is sought. All of us should be so lucky as to have that friend who will run through a wall for us, sometimes moving genres and scenes forward can get real messy.
