In his revealing and detailed biography Open Up and Bleed, Paul Trynka examines the life of Jim Osterberg, better known to music fans as Iggy Pop. Trynka, formerly the reviews editor of Mojo magazine from 1999 to 2003, uses both previously available information and new interviews he conducted to create an exhaustive, informative, and sometimes startling character study of one of music’s most celebrated and notorious personas. In the following interview, Trynka discusses a variety of Iggy-related topics, including the nature of this persona and the toll it took on the musician’s mental state, the musician’s intense ambition and lasting musical legacy, and why an Iggy Pop tune just might be the single worst song of the 1980s.

Blogcritics (BC): A central theme of the book is the contrast between Jim Osterberg as a person and Iggy Pop as a musical persona. In many ways it’s hard to reconcile the polite, articulate, and almost genteel Jim Osterberg vs. the wild madman of Iggy Pop. Do you think it reached a point where the person was indistinguishable from the persona? 

Paul Trynka (PT): The classic moment when Jim Osterberg lost control of Iggy Pop was, I think, when he was hospitalized in 1974. Although he was diagnosed with hypomania, a bipolar condition, the psychiatrist who treated him now thinks his problems were simply a product of his extravagant drug intake – and his out of control personae. Of course, it was gratifying to have a clinician confirm what others had suspected, and justify what became a central premise of the book.

BC: What do you think the biggest influences were in shaping this persona? Various people quoted in the book offer up a host of reasons for the musician’s behavior.

PT: Quite simply, it was audience hostility. Jim Osterberg took his ‘art’ very seriously – and when the early audiences rejected him, or mocked him, the Iggy character became a kind of psychic armor. It helped a lot – for a while. But, just as in the best, and worst, horror movies, the creation began to take on a life of its own.

BC: You suggest that maintaining this persona eventually began to take its toll on Osterberg’s mental state. 

PT: Well, eventually the man had what was essentially a mental breakdown, and became a forlorn, pathetic figure. But I think it wasn’t so much maintaining the persona that caused the breakdown, as coping with his own apparent failure. Because Jim Osterberg was a very ambitious guy.

BC: This persona is one of the most infamous in music history. In the various interviews and research you conducted for the book, how difficult was it to sort the facts from the myths?