Opinion: Iggy's adverts are so very, very wrong

The idea of "selling out" has clung to popular music, and indeed most art forms, for a long, long time. In our postmodern techno-consumerist society it's an increasingly outdated and irrelevant concept. The book Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music by Hugh Barker and Yuval Taylor shrewdly takes the whole notion of selling out to pieces, from the blues of the early 20th century to Moby's deconstruction of those blues decades later. Or rather, it simply points out there was never such a thing as a core purity from which anyone could sell out in the first place. Really, Barker and Yuval say, there's no such thing as authenticity and therefore no such thing as selling out.

To quote them more extensively, "When we're young a large part of our original motivation in discovering music comes from trying to find out about our identity - perhaps to fit in, or, in contrast, to differentiate ourselves from the rest. The musical morality we adopt at an early age often becomes enshrined, making it hard to change our views later on."

This perspective seems sensible. We can now nod sagely pondering the incomprehension of the folkies who called Bob Dylan a traitor for going electric almost half a century ago, we can revel in the edgy art-outsider stance of Lady Gaga despite knowing she's merely one cog in a corporate cash-juggernaut, and we can bear long, dry speeches from the man who once sang "Teenage Kicks" and is now a business rep for the British Music Industry. Iggy Pop, however, has crossed the line, he's done the dirty on us, he's sold out good and proper. There. I said it. It's been a long time coming and I've resisted but as his third set of car insurance ads hits our TV screens and plasters the walls of our cities, the game's up for Iggy the artist, the great progenitor of punk, the rock'n'roll hero. So ubiquitous is his presence as a car insurance salesman that it's now difficult to listen to his fantastic back catalogue without the drawled mantra "Get a life" popping into your head.

Much of the offensiveness of Iggy's transformation to insurance salesman is aesthetic. The manner in which pop and rock has often been marketed as rebellious and roguish leaves a chunky philosophical grey area. Grown-up thinking tells us we shouldn't take all that rebellion too seriously - they're just entertainers, after all. Iggy Pop certainly is but he was also a key figure in the catalytic whirl of late-Sixties Detroit, a direct spiritual descendant of beatnik troublemaker John Sinclair, manager of fellow Motor City mavericks The MC5. Sinclair, founder of the White Panther Party, famously had a manifesto that included "rock and roll, dope and fucking in the streets" and was briefly thought so dangerous that police harassment eventually resulted in a substantial prison sentence for two joints of marijuana. The MC5 collapsed just as they should have blown up but Iggy's band, The Stooges, recorded three incendiary albums that did everything Sinclair could have hoped for and provided a core touchstone for punk.

Iggy's stage performances were and are demented. He has something of the shaman about his onstage presence, a fact he acknowledged when interviewed on the South Bank Show a few years ago. At the Glastonbury Festival in 2007, The Stooges' performance, replete with anarchic stage invasion, still stands out as one of my peak gig experiences ever, magnificent chaos and tempestuous distorted noise with Iggy as unstoppable ringleader. It is a shame my children now know him as "the man from those rubbish adverts", and also so unnecessary.

Iggy is, of course, a construct of James Osterberg, the offstage man, an intelligent, witty, cultured individual. There has long been a split personality between Osterberg and Iggy. One plays golf and enjoys fine wine, the other is a flailing psychotic loon. No one minded that disparity when it was between Pop-Osterberg and his psychiatrist. Now, however, in the insurance ads, we have an irritating, shrill little Iggy puppet alongside the man himself. You don't have to be Carl Jung to analyse what's going on. Osterberg seems to be explicitly stating, for car insurance cash, that Iggy is slightly embarrassing, a cartoon id, while he is a wry, mature smarm-case.

Osterberg/Pop has taken dubious corporate pay before - he once went on a US tour sponsored by a tobacco company - but, again, with the insurance ads it's the aesthetics that are so insulting. Iggy was, in his own wild way, a work of art, a creation ongoing over 40 years, mostly untainted (or at least sidestepping major noticeable pitfalls). Public figures have long recorded lucrative adverts to be shown in foreign markets where it won't damage their credibility. Osterberg, who cannot possibly need the cash, seems to regard our market as no longer relevant to perceptions of Iggy. He has sold "the Iggy concept" to the businessmen that our teenage selves were always sure he wouldn't.

"Lighten up and grow up," I hear you say. "It's only a bit of fun and a 63-year-old man feathering the nest for his retirement." Sure, but it's the cumulative effect of all aspects of the ads that make them beyond the pale. Many rockers with heavy reputations have done ads and come out of it intact. Keith Richards, for instance, advertised posh luggage but was beautifully shot by Annie Liebovitz, while Lemmy recently slowed down "The Ace of Spades" for a beer ad. Both came out unscathed. Osterberg seems, on the other hand, to be publicly dismantling the greatness of his life's work in a most banal fashion. The nearest parallel is with Lydon's butter adverts but Lydon has been a pantomime dame for years, acerbic fun but lost in the wilderness, unsure what to do with himself creatively. Iggy, on the other hand, remains a vital, intriguing artist - his last album, Preliminaires was a jazz outing based on a Michel Houellebecq novel. He's doing himself a huge disservice.

Our heroes let us down. It's all a bit ridiculous, juvenile even, getting so involved with pop musicians and investing in them emotionally. But that's also the whole point of being involved in any of it at all. Who wants to sit on the sidelines cerebrally appreciating? The raw thrills are to be found in the high times where music reaches such greatness it pushes almost into another dimension. Or at least it feels that way at the time. Osterberg/Pop was a king in this respect and may yet be again. In the end, it's all about lines drawn in the sand. Where is too far for an artist to involve their art in pure dull commerce? For me, the car insurance ads have crossed that line. They've spoilt my enjoyment. I know that eventually they will be forgotten and all that will be remembered about Iggy Pop will be songs such as "I Wanna Be Your Dog", "The Passenger" and so on. The best we can do is wait for it all to blow over. And remember that he's wrong. Car insurance is not - even faintly - rock'n'roll.

Watch Iggy in his prime, below