Total Chaos: The Story of the Stooges As Told by Iggy Pop book

Total Chaos: The Story of the Stooges As Told by Iggy Pop book


Tags: · 70s · books · proto-punk · spo-default · spo-disabled
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*The first book to tell the story of The Stooges from Iggy Pop's own words
*Includes hundreds of rare and unseen photos
*Additional contributions from Ben Blackwell, Dave Grohl, Josh Homme, Joan Jett, Johnny Marr, and Jack White
*Rolling Stone ranked The Stooges in their Top 100 Artists of All Time
*The Stooges are a Rock n Roll Hall of Fame inductee.
*Author Jeff Gold wrote the best selling 101 Essential Rock Records
*Editor Jon Savage wrote the best selling book England's Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond.


[The Stooges] took it to a place that no one else ever had. I think that they made such a lasting impression on musicians for decades to come.
—Dave Grohl

Those first three Stooges records are to me perfect rock ‘n’ roll—absolutely perfect. It’s sweet enough for the girls and tough enough for the guys. It doesn’t care about you, you have to care about it.
—Josh Homme

For me, Iggy and The Stooges have to be one of the greatest American rock bands that have ever been.
—Joan Jett

Discovering The Stooges helped to change my life.
—Johnny Marr

The Stooges’ Fun House is to me the very definition of Detroit rock ‘n’ roll, and by proxy the definitive rock album of America.
—Jack White


Our take: I was excited for the release of this new book about the Stooges when I first heard about it, and now that it's actually here I have to say that it demolishes all expectations. If you haven't heard about it, the conceit is that two big-time Stooges collectors sit down with Iggy and show him a bunch of their memorabilia from the band, interviewing him and recording his reactions in the process. The memorabilia is very interesting... concert posters, photographs, and even things like contracts with record companies and show promoters and inter-office memos between the label and the band's management. All of the memorabilia is lavishly reproduced... the book is huge (over 9"x12") and all of the pages are glossy and full-color, and the scans / photographs of the original material are clearly very meticulously done. The interview with Iggy is also great. His recall is amazing, filling in a lot of interesting detail that I'm sure is of high interest to Stooges aficionados, but is interesting enough in its own regard even if you're just a fan of this ear of music in general. I really like the conceit of the book, because it has the casual tone of the Please Kill Me school of oral history books, but much more depth. It always annoyed me that those oral history books change voice so often, preventing any one person from really digging deep, but depth is the entire purpose of this enterprise and they definitely achieve it. My only complaint is that this huge, hard-bound book is kind of heavy to hold up for long stretches, so it's easiest to read sitting at a table. But the only reason that complaint even registers is because this thing was so engrossing that I just wanted to sit down and read it straight through.