Iggy Pop/The Stooges

Any idea what Iggy Pop’s real name is? Jim Osterberg. Which kinda makes us wonder: at what point, exacty, did young Jim first look in the mirror and see a bare-chested madman staring back at him. Wait a minute — we know when that happened. It was right around the time that he first stepped onstage with the Stooges, doing battle with broken glass, vicious crowds, and the band itself. After all, they weren’t exactly pushovers. No, the Stooges matched Pop’s every move with ravenous, in-the-red riffs (“Search And Destroy,” “Raw Power”) and a bloodthirsty backbeat (“1970,” “I Wanna Be Your Dog”).

No wonder why punk rock’s leading preying mantis had such a “Lust for Life” by the time he started his solo career in the late ‘70s, a turn we explore along with more Stooges material in our Next Steps.

Leave it to Iggy Pop to shed his shirt within seconds at Carnegie Hall, a place usually reserved for suit-and-tie classical shows. If only we’d caught the carnage in person, as Pop decimated a Tibet House benefit more than four decades after the Stooges’ self-titled debut. Here’s the next-best thing, then — a caterwauling look at Pop’s entire career, from the knuckle-dragging power chords of “Dirt” and the poker-hot licks of “Loose” to the Stooges’ long-awaited reunion on such tense Skull Ring tracks as “Little Electric Chair.”

And who’s that backing Pop on “Play It Safe”? David Bowie and Simple Minds? Indeed. As you’re about to see in our Deep Cuts, the Iguana really should have been called the Chameleon.

One thing people forget about Iggy Pop — thanks to such speaker-shattering Stooges songs as “Death Trip” and “Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell” — is just how prolific he was as a solo artist during the ’80s and ’90s. “Shades” is a shimmering standout from yet another David Bowie collab; “Look Away” is a tenderized tribute to the New York Dolls’ dearly departed guitarist Johnny Thunders; Soldier features the wobbly basslines and teeth-gritting backup vocals of the Sex Pistols’ Glen Matlock; and “Louie Louie” is basically a bar brawl waiting to happen. Or at the very least, a crucial cover of Richard Berry’s timeless rock ’n’ roll-all-night anthem.

Forget everything you’ve ever heard about punk rock starting with the Ramones in the mid-’70s. The Stooges had them beat by years, as they kicked out the jams like a more destructive version of their Detroit Rock City housemates the MC5. And by that we mean the Asheton brothers whipping up a windstorm of buzz-saw riffs and sucker-punch beats while doing their best to stay out of Iggy Pop’s way. Which might explain the 34-year gap between Raw Power and The Weirdness — a period of time Pop filled with the piston-powered grooves of “The Passenger,” the twisted Top 40 turns of “Candy” and “Real Wild Child (Wild One),” and the robo-funk experiments of The Idiot — an absolutely essential album that’s influenced by both James Brown and Kraftwerk. And, hey, did we mention that Henry Rollins has “Search and Destroy” plastered across his shoulder blades? Well, he does — and you might feel the need to have similar bodywork done after hearing our Iggy Pop/The Stooges Essentials.