With all apologies to David Byrne, who is an extremely close second, the coolest, most punk rock act at Coachella this year has got to be James Newell Osterberg Jr., who will be celebrating his 79th birthday on April 21, 2026.

More commonly known as Iggy Pop, the bare-chested, scrawny Detroiter is exactly why rock music was created and why it will never die.

He is the epitome of everything great about the genre: he gives all of his heart and soul, he looks and acts the part without trying, no matter who he is standing next to he outshines them without even opening his mouth, and when it is time to perform he does it so naturally you wonder why no one else can do what he does.

In high school he was in a band called the Iguanas which is how he got his nickname.

At 20, he formed The Stooges with brothers Ron Asheton (guitar) and Scott Asheton (drums), along with Dave Alexander (bass). They made two incredible albums in two years and broke up.

Probably from the magic they had just created.

Henry Rollins, who has the title of one of their songs tattooed enormously across his entire back, once wrote after seeing the band, “The Stooges are a pack of hyenas on the Serengeti Plains, hungry and omnivorous.”

Their first two albums on Elektra Records were The Stooges (1969) and Fun House (1970).

The debut, produced by the Velvet Underground guitarist John Cale, features the classic “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” which has been covered numerous times by Guns N’ Roses, Joan Jett, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jack White, and David Bowie.

Earlier, for Spin magaine, Rollins wrote that before hearing Fun House, “I had never heard a record more raw, sexual, and powerful before in my life.”

“To me a record must have a start, a finish, and a song-to-song follow-through in mood and intensity. An album with 10 good songs thrown on it can be good, but the effect is like 10 little waves bouncing your boat around as opposed to one big tidal wave that sinks you. Fun House is a monsoon,” he wrote, noting it is his favorite album of all.

The Stooges’ breakup did not last long. In ’72 they reunited and renamed themselves Iggy and The Stooges and recorded the almighty Raw Power, which came out the following year.

While some argue if it holds up to the first two, this is the LP with “Search and Destroy” on it. And from the first line you can see why Rollins adores it.

I'm a street-walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm
I'm a runaway son of the nuclear A-bomb
I am a world's forgotten boy
The one who searches and destroys

Later Iggy warns, "Look out, honey, 'cause I'm using technology..." and there is no longer a discussion about its greatness.

It was around this time Iggy started hanging out with David Bowie, who would end up remixing Raw Power. A few years later they became closer, and Bowie co-wrote and co-produced Iggy’s first two solo albums, The Idiot and Lust for Life, which both dropped in 1977, the year many consider the dawn of punk.

So when people talk about 1977, punk, who started it, and when they leave Iggy out, remind them that by that point he had already released three LPs with the Stooges, broken up with them twice, and dropped two solo albums.

Lust for Life gave us tunes most don't realize were Iggy's, like the peppy title track, and "The Passenger."

The Idiot spawned “China Girl,” which, when Bowie put it on his Let’s Dance album in 1983, went to #10 on the singles chart.

Iggy had success in the ’80s as well.

Bowie wrote the majority of Pop’s seventh solo album, Blah-Blah-Blah (1986), and produced it, but it was the cover of “Real Wild Child (Wild One)” that became a hit, climbing to #27 on the Billboard Hot 100.

A few years later, his duet with the B-52s’ Kate Pierson on “Candy” from Brick by Brick (1990) went to #28. Not too shabby for the antithesis of what MTV often trotted out.

His most recent hit was a long time coming. It started in 2000, when the song “Punkrocker” first appeared on Rock ’n’ Roll Highschool by Teddybears.

Six years later they redid it with Iggy and put it on a new album, Soft Machine. The next year Cadillac, of all companies, put it in an ad.

Even more surprising, the most recent Superman movie used it in its final scene, in part because director James Gunn has a strong track record for music in his films.

It sent the song to #23 on Billboard’s Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart and #1 on both Rock Digital Song Sales and Alternative Digital Song Sales, 25 years after its original release.

So yes, he might be older than everyone else on the bill, but he rocks harder, and is still finding his name on the charts.

After Coachella he only had two other dates on his calendar. The Mosswood Meltdown in Oakland, and at Comerica Park in August. Get tix on his website.