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

Surely Jack White unveiling a 10,000-square-foot vinyl pressing plant for his hometown on Feb. 25 represents simply the first stage of his rebuilding Detroit brick by brick. In accord, the Books division of White’s Third Man Records carves into the granite of its own future library The Odyssey according to Iggy Pop. “I found the first Stooges album when I was 16, in a dumpster in the alley behind my house,” notes the impresario in one of the afterwords to this bedrock history of rock & roll. One-man memorabilia institute Jeff Gold flew in 100 Smithsonian-worthy Stooges artifacts to Pop’s Miami compound and the boutique oral and pictorial history that ensues is worthy of no less than Homer himself. Brainiac Jim Osterberg’s oftentimes photographic memory stacks detail upon detail belonging to only the most epic adventures. “Bozo geniuses” Osterberg, brothers Ron and Scott Asheton, Dave Alexander, and James Williamson somehow extract the wildly unstable core of American atavism and launch it from a high school gymnasium into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Throughout all the tales both tall and banal, the peanut butter-smeared commander-in-Total Chaos riffs reams of platinum deets: primal sexorcism “I Wanna Be Your Dog” began as “Highway Chile” by Jimi Hendrix, for instance. Paired with yearbook mug shots and whole Lester Bang reviews written in Swahili, the overall effect is that of the Stooges’ Fun House box set – brilliance by incremental degrees. And riotous: “I’d say, ‘Well, you know I can move it onstage.’ And then Lou [Reed] would say, ‘I am the universe. I don’t need to move.'”