Iggy Pop: The Importance of Being Iggy

JAMES NEWELL OSTERBERG, a.k.a. Iggy Pop, once billed himself as the "world's forgotten boy," but that is no longer the case. From fronting the proto-punk Stooges – the most despised band of the peace and love Sixties – Pop has gradually attained a position of veneration, and permanence, in the rock pantheon. But the fifty-four-year-old wild child is hardly content to rest on his historic haunches – his blistering new CD, Beat 'Em Up, is his finest work since 1978's New Values.