An Obligatory and Pointless Debate About Iggy Pop’s Soul

For years, Iggy Pop’s soul has been one of the most-discussed items in the world. Has he sold it? If he has, who owns it? Did it ever exist, and—if it didn’t—were the first 30 years of his life just a big, cynical con?

Our Global Editor Andy Capper was sashaying through the Parisian metro system last week, when he turned a corner and this jumped out at him: a poster of Iggy, showing his lust for festive cheer at the behest of a French department store called Galeries Lafayette. When we contacted them, they tried to explain the ad with the assertion that “Father Christmas is a rock star!”

“Iggy Pop is the ultimate rock icon,” they continued. “Now aged 64, he still personifies the rock and roll attitude. Bare-chested with leather trousers and an electric guitar, Galeries Lafayette’s 2011 Father Christmas will rock France over the festive season with a striking image that leaps off the paper.”

So what the fuck’s going on? We invented two journalists to add their insignificant voices to an insignificant argument about something that, in the long run, probably doesn’t really matter.

IGGY THE PIGGY’S PRETTY FACE IS GOING TO HELL
by Tony Kent

What’s next? The Raw Power Shower? The Virgin First Class Passenger? Sky TV Eye? You may laugh, and I grant you many of these suggestions are intentionally comical. But by the same token, there is a fine line between hilarity and tragedy when it comes to Iggy Pop—a man I shall refer to as “Jim Osterberg” from here on in, because, frankly, he’s lost the right to wear the name that made him famous. With his latest payday, Iggy has retroactively ruined my childhood and the childhoods of millions of others more effectively than a pedophile with a time machine.

It pains me to think back to the first time I saw him perform, given that he has effectively anthraxed everything I felt that day. But I first remember watching Mr. Osterberg play at the Chatham Tap ‘n Tin in 1973. Of course, he was completely unheralded at the time, despite having made a record with David Bowie. In fact he was practically the most unknown artist on the planet, despite being signed to Columbia Records. In fact, there was literally no one there—just me and the band and the bar staff, and even they were going around saying this sort of thing would never catch on and he’d be better off packing it in for a quiet life back home on the reservation.

But I saw further. It was a truly incendiary performance: Osterberg, in his black leather trousers, writhing on the floor like a set of abs that had developed a primitive consciousness of its own. I immediately went to a payphone and told everyone I knew that this was the future. “Hey. How you doing?” I anounced, leafing through my address book. “Listen, I’m about to run out of coins, but there’s this thing called punk rock that’s gonna come along in a few years. It’s going to largely involve leather trousers and spitting, and effectively postmodernize the distribution and presentation of rock music, and then there will be Sigue Sigue Sputnik, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves…”

Obviously, no one believed me, so we had to spend several years listening to The Eagles in-between, but when it did roll around, I was not only vindicated, I was exhilarated. Here, finally, was an artform that could be entirely free from filthy commerce. I immediately went out and bought all the punk records in the Woolworths round the corner, plus some badges, posters and an “I Love Punk” lampshade, which was on sale.

I have been a follower ever since, so imagine my horror when I first saw Osterberg’s Swiftcover ads. My hero—prangling and dangling and using his luscious rubbery lips to talk about car insurance. These lamentable spots incensed me so much that I’ve steadfastly refused to buy any car insurance whatsoever for the past three years, and if I prang a fellow road user, it will be Osterberg’s fault, and they can send him the bill.

In fact, perhaps the greatest irony in all of this is that by talking about these products now, in the name of debate, we are effectively just giving them the oxygen of free publicity. Like O2 with their Millenium Dome, Emirates with their football stadium, Barclays with their bikes—damn, I’m doing it again now. I mean how ironic is that? It’s exactly what they intended, and in order to voice our dissent, we have to do what they intended. You just can’t bloody win. Aaargh!

Upset and disappointed that this view of Iggy Pop’s soul doesn’t tally with your own? Never mind! Reinforce your own pre-existing opinions and boost our page views in the process by clicking onto page two. Everybody’s right on the internet.

IGGY’S GOT A RIGHT – A RIGHT TO SELL STUFF
by Nick Parsons

I don’t need to tell you that in our postmodern techno-consumerist society, selling out is an increasingly outmoded concept. The truth is, these days no one can “sell out” anymore because there’s nothing left to rebel against.

Society just isn’t cleaved into a simple Kids vs The Man dichotomy anymore. You like stuff, don’t you? You like to buy stuff? So you need someone to sell you stuff. Well I’ve got news for you, brother: that means you’re effectively contracting companies to make stuff and then market it to you. Take a deep, long look in the mirror at the face peering back at you. The hollow eyes. The grizzled laugh-lines. That’s the face of The Man. You ARE The Man.

The truth is that we all secretly love products. Especially ones marketed to us by the people we love, so why not? Personally, I’d rather affirm my fandom for Iggy Pop by buying a car insurance policy that he’d sold me, than buy one from, say, Michael Winner.

I mean, would we think any less of Beethoven if he advertized car insurance in a series of knockabout early afternoon TV slots? Would we think any less of Kafka if his gurning, jiggling mug appeared under a luminous green flashing tagline every time you inadvertently moved your mouse onto a rollover? No. Would we think any less of Nelson Mandela if he dressed up as a leprechaun and ran around screaming, “Ryanair’s Christmas prices have gone CRACKERS!!!”? Of course not. So why are we singling out chart stars for special punishment duties?

Which is why I say “good on Iggy” for finally getting it together to make some dough. After all, everyone knows he made next to no money from The Stooges the first time round. And he can’t have made hardly anything since then from three heavily sold out global reunion tours, thirty years of “Lust For Life” or “Nightclubbing” blaring off of every commercial and film, his last four advertising campaigns, the reissue of the entire Stooges back catalogue, an autobiography, and his pricey personal appearance fees.

Indeed, you might even say that Iggy is a real life rebel, who has decided that the best way to rebel against these corporations is to take their money in exchange for merely selling rights to his face, body, voice and opinions to them in perpetuity. I wouldn’t put it past him—Iggy is just the sort of next-level rebellion pioneer who would do that sort of thing. He became The Man in order to destroy The Man—that’s our Iggy.