“Iggy Pop 1970”
 
A new company called Wax Face Toys is launching with a remarkable figurine of Iggy Pop. Wax Face make licensed figures in resin and vinyl featuring cult heroes from the world of music and film. The Iggy figurine was sculpted in London by former Madame Tussauds artists and measures 15.7 inches (40 centimeters). It is based on the well-known photograph taken by Thomas Copi of the Stooges performing at the Cincinnati Summer Pop Festival of 1970. There was a previous Iggy sculpt that was sold via the now defunct Toys ‘R Us website, and although it was done well, it depicted Iggy in his 60s, not his youthful, out-of-his-mind prime. The Iggy depicted here is 23 and obviously full of piss, vinegar and other assorted psychoactive snacks.

There’s an interesting history behind Iggy’s iconic pose:

The Cincinnati music festival—which also included Alice Cooper, Traffic, Mountain, Grand Funk Railroad, Mott the Hoople, Ten Years After, Bob Seger, Tommy Bolin’s band Zephyr and several other acts—took place on June 13th, 1970 at Crosley Field the soon-to-be former home of the Cincinnati Reds. (The Reds would play just a few more games there before moving on to Riverfront Stadium, probably the only reason why the promoters were allowed to hold the event there.)

The leaflet for the event read:

‘Bring blankets, pillows, watermelon, incense, ozone rice, your old lady, babies, and other assorted goodies and do your own thing’

Hippie-flippy and trippy, my finger-poppin’ daddio, but unfortunately a small number of the audience decided to get drunk and break shit, causing over $6000 of damages to the baseball diamond. It was Cincinnati after all!

The festival was shot with three video cameras and cut live like a sporting event with play-by-play commentary. It was later edited down to a 90-minute program titled Midsummer Rock that was broadcast on local television station WLWT and syndicated elsewhere. The producers felt they could tap into the same sort of counterculture youth market as the Woodstock film (which was actually playing in Cincinnati movie theaters the week of the festival) except for television, so they brought in 58-year-old Jack Lescoulie, a square announcer from The Today Show, to make it all seem a little less scary for TV audiences.
 

 
I’m not altogether sure how successful they were with that. Iggy—in what is perhaps the only extant sync-sound footage of the original Stooges—was clearly pumped full of drugs. LOTS of drugs. He paces the stage shirtless, seething, frantic, with silver gloves and a leather collar, like a big cat on meth. He jumps into the audience several times before convincing audience members to hold him aloft as he walks across their hands like he’s Jesus Christ walking on water. You can actually see the moment when Copi got his shot when a bright flash goes off precisely at the right moment. Then all of a sudden Iggy has a large tub of peanut butter that he smears all over himself and gleefully throws into the audience. It’s one of the great rock and roll moments.

Years later Stiv Bators of the Dead Boys took credit for bringing the tub of peanut butter from his parents’ house in nearby Dayton and putting it directly into the Iggster’s hands, knowing fully well what he would do with it. You can hear Jack Lescoulie’s startled reaction to what’s going: “That’s… peanut butter!” he says.

The black resin Iggy figure will be available to purchase from 11AM EST on Tuesday, April 2nd, 2019 online at www.waxface.com. The price is $199 + postage and handling. Orders will ship in June.
 

 

 

 

Above, the Stooges perform “T.V. Eye” and “1970” as Iggy invents crowd-surfing.