Where These Iconic Rock Stars Got Their Stage Names

Few who saw Iggy Pop — aka Jim Osterberg Jr. — in the excessive days when he was the frontman of proto-punk pioneers The Stooges, in the late '60s and early '70s, could ever have guessed that he would emerge as rock 'n' roll's greatest survivor. Yet here he is, still making records and attracting an audience well into his eighth decade on earth, as of 2023.

Though Iggy only emerged as a solo star after The Stooges disintegrated, his music career goes further back in time than the influential band that made him a counterculture hero ... and his stage name prefigures his time as a Stooge, too.

As described in a 2019 New Yorker profile, Mr. Pop first formed a band way back in 1963, a group that played the surf rock and British invasion tunes that the teenage music nut loved. That band was called The Iguanas, and though the band fell apart after releasing just a couple of obscure recordings, his place in the band made him a known face on the Michigan music scene. Even after he left The Iguanas for another band called The Prime Movers, his role in the previous band stuck with him, so much that acquaintances would yell, "Iguana alert!" when Iggy entered a room. Eventually, Iguana was shortened to Iggy, the name he has gone by ever since.

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