If you’re an Iggy and the Stooges fan, you’ve surely heard their infamous live album, Metallic KO (1976). But did you know that, due to a technical error, the record was issued at the wrong speed and was off pitch? It would be decades before anyone noticed and the blunder was righted, but the tapes of the two shows that were edited down for the LP didn’t receive the same treatment. That’s all changed, and for the first time the full recordings of both gigs, including the Stooges’ tumultuous final show, can be heard in all their speed-corrected glory.

In the spring of 1973, Columbia Records released Raw Power after a long delay. The album justly received critical acclaim, but failed to sell. Also during this period, Iggy and the Stooges were dropped by their management company, Main Man, so things were not looking good. In July, needing money to survive, the guys hit the road, touring heavily, leading to what turned out to be their final show in February. By then, the Stooges’ contract with Columbia had been terminated.
 

Getting near the end: Opening for Slade in Cleveland on January 18th, 1974.

During the February 9th, 1974 gig at the Michigan Palace in Detroit, the crowd threw all sorts of objects at the Stooges, including ice cubes, lit cigarettes, coins, beer bottles, light bulbs, and eggs, all the while egged on by a defiant Iggy. Pop, incidentally, was dressed in a leotard and wearing a shawl fashioned as a skirt. They closed with an X-rated version of “Louie Louie,” leaving the stage as projectiles continued to fly towards them.

A burnt-out Iggy would soon leave the group and the Stooges were no more.

Metallic KO contains two shows that took place at the Michigan Palace. Side A has three songs from an October 6th concert at the venue, with the remaining three on Side B from the riotous February 9th gig. Both were taped on a four-track cassette recorder by Michael Tipton, a fan and friend of bassist Ron Asheton. Ron had a copy of the last show, which guitarist James Williamson borrowed and got to British rock journalist Nick Kent, who in turn put in the hands of Marc Zermati of Skydog Records, a French label. Scott Thurston, who played piano for the Stooges in their waning days, was the source for the October 6th tape. Metallic KO was released by Skydog in September 1976, with Iggy’s nihilistic, taunting banter and the Stooges’ savage songs influencing the burgeoning British punk movement. Lester Bangs famously wrote, “Metallic KO is the only rock album I know where you can actually hear hurled beer bottles breaking against guitar strings.”

Continues after the jump…

 
As we told you last month, Third Man Records is about to unleash the last show ever played by the original lineup of the Stooges. Live at Goose Lake: August 8th, 1970 will be released on LP and CD on August 8th, 50 years to the day the gig took place. Tapes labeled “Goose Lake” were recently discovered in a Michigan farmhouse, and it turns out they contained the legendary Stooges gig, which was a soundboard recording, to boot. Not only that, Live at Goose Lake shatters a widely held myth surrounding the show.

For years, Stooges frontman Iggy Pop has said that bassist Dave Alexander was fired following the Goose Lake Festival gig after he “froze” on stage and didn’t play a note, an account at least one other band member corroborated. As the story goes, Alexander was so nervous before the Stooges’ set—which would be in front a massive crowd of more than 200,000—that he got drunk, smoked a ton of hash, and snorted an unknown substance, rendering him incapacitated by showtime. Circulating video of a two-minute clip of the band playing “1970 (I Feel Alright),” seems to support this, since no bass can be heard, and there aren’t any clear shots of Alexander, as the footage is edited to largely focus on Iggy. Although Alexander is indeed missing in action for a good chunk of “1970,” he can be heard during the song on the Live at Goose Lake recording, and is audible on every track on the disc. Alexander’s instrument does come and go, though, so it’s possible he did stop playing now and then, and that’s what Iggy—himself out of his mind on drugs—noticed during the show.
 

Photo: Charlie Auringer

At the time of the Goose Lake appearance, the Stooges’ second album, the indispensable Fun House, was about to come out. The band’s setlist mirrors the order of the LP, except “Down on the Street” and “Loose” are flipped (the record company suits thought the former was a stronger opener).
 

 
Dangerous Minds is thrilled to present an exclusive preview of Live at Goose Lake: August 8th, 1970, an absolutely incredible, mind-blowing version of “Fun House.” As on the Fun House LP, the group is joined by saxophonist Steve Mackay for the number, which, incidentally, begins with Dave Alexander’s bass line.

Hear the premiere, after the jump…

 
There are many urban legends in rock and roll. One of them is that Stooges bassist Dave Alexander was fired after he showed up totally shitfaced for a gig at the massive Goose Lake rock festival in 1970. Alexander was alleged to have been too fucked up to stand, let alone play his instrument, so Iggy sacked him.

Sidestepping the matter of “wow, this dude was too messed up even for… the Stooges?”—did it really happen like that? Well, maybe not, according to an exciting new find coming to you soon from the heroic Third Man Records label:

The apocryphal tale of the Stooges performance at the Goose Lake festival has been told countless times over the past five decades. Bassist Dave Alexander, due to nerves or overindulgence or whatever you choose to fill in the blank, absolutely spaces in front of 200,000 attendees. He does not play a single note on stage. He is summarily fired by Iggy Pop immediately following the gig. Here starts the beginning of the end of the Stooges.

But what if that simply…wasn’t the case? What if you could prove otherwise? Well, it’d be the proto-punk equivalent of having an immediate, on-the-scene, man on the street report of all those folkies booing Dylan’s electric set at Newport in ‘65. Irrefutable evidence of what ACTUALLY went down.

Found buried in the basement of a Michigan farmhouse amongst other tasty analog artifacts of the same era, the 1/4” stereo two-track tape of the Stooges complete performance at Goose Lake on August 8th, 1970 is the Rosetta Stone for fans of this seminal band.

Not only is this the last ever performance of the original godhead Stooges line-up, but it is the ONLY known soundboard recording of said line-up. Playing the entirety of their canonical 1970 masterpiece Fun House, the sound, the performance, everything about this record is revelatory.

Would you believe that…Alexander actually DID play bass on this occasion? Or that, despite grievous failures on some songs, Alexander is damn solid on others? Especially on the bass-led songs “Dirt” and “Fun House”? Does Iggy provoke the crowd to tear down festival barriers? Did the powers that be pull the plug on the Stooges? So many questions are answered only to have more arise.

Released to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the performance, Live at Goose Lake: August 8th, 1970, is the rare release that literally rewrites the history of these Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees.

A heavy drinker, Dave Alexander died at the young age of 27 in 1975. He was name-checked a few years later in Iggy’s spoken-word intro to The Idiot’s “Dum Dum Boys”:

“How ‘bout Dave? OD’d on alcohol.”

 

 
The Stooges: Live at Goose Lake: August 8th 1970 will be released on August 7th. Pre-order here from the Third Man online store.
 

Iggy and The Stooges at their most primal prime, taped at the Goose Lake music festival in Michigan in 1970.

 
Last year, we told you about Matt Gimmick, the Detroit punk band that released a killer EP in 1979. The 7-inch is especially notable for containing covers of unreleased songs by the Stooges. We’ve revised and updated our 2018 article, as the Matt Gimmick EP, out of print for decades, is about to be reissued for the first time, and we have the premiere of the remastered audio.

*****

In 1979, Matt Gimmick, a punk rock band out of Detroit that sprang from the ashes of one of the earliest Stooges-inspired groups, put out an EP that included a couple of unusual cover tunes. That they were Stooges compositions wasn’t the extraordinary part, though covering the unit fronted by Iggy Pop was far from common then; recording Stooges songs that virtually no one had ever heard before was most certainly noteworthy.   

The period following the second Stooges album, Fun House (1970), when Ron Asheton and James Williamson both played guitar, is an interesting era of the band, one that, alas, wasn’t well documented. It was a particularly dark time for the Stooges, as Elektra Records had dropped them, and three of the members—including Iggy—were addicted to heroin. This version of the group didn’t venture into the studio, and only very rough audience recordings are in circulation.
 

 
A CD boxed set consisting of four concerts from the Stooges’ spring 1971 outing was released in 2009 by Easy Action as You Don’t Want My Name, You Want My Action. The label did their best to clean up the tapes, but only so much could be done. At the time of the ‘71 tour, the band played the same six-song set of new numbers—all written by Iggy and Williamson—on a nightly basis (of those songs, only “I Got a Right,” recorded in 1972 by a different version of the band, and not released until 1977, is widely known). From the Easy Action collection, here are a couple of those tunes, “Fresh Rag” and “You Don’t Want My Name”:
 

 
Matt Gimmick evolved from the proto-punk band who called themselves—appropriately enough—the Punks. Formed in the Detroit suburb of Waterford in 1973, the Punks were around for a handful of years and did record, though they didn’t put out any material in their lifetime. Since 2003, a few Punks compilations have been issued, including Lost & Found 1973-1977, which came out in 2018. Check out the Punks via their YouTube channel.
 

The Punks, c. 1974.

The future members of the Punks used to go to shows together all the time, and in either late 1970 or the spring of 1971, they caught the Stooges at the Palladium in Birmingham, Michigan. Having snuck a tape recorder into the venue, the guys captured the Stooges’ entire set. Though what the group played was unfamiliar, the recording was nice and clear.
 

Detroit Free Press clipping, December 1970.

A couple of years later, the Punks learned three or four songs from the tape, which they mixed in with their originals during shows. Matt Gimmick recorded spot on versions of “Fresh Rag” and “You Don’t Want My Name” in late 1978 for their Detroit Renaissance ‘79 EP. Before launching head first into “Rag,” Matt Gimmick vocalist, Frantic, gives an amusing shout out to Iggy, and during the opening moments of “Ya Don’t Want My Name,” the singer is heard saying, “Goodbye Sid,” a nod to fallen Sex Pistols bassist, Sid Vicious, who died in February 1979.
 

The back cover (2019 reissue).

Two dynamite original numbers—the snotty, “Detroit Renaissance ’79,” and the Raw Power-esque ballad, “Cry”—balance out the 7-inch. Approximately 500 copies were released via the band’s own label, Earthbound Records.
 

 
I’ve been corresponding with Alan Webber, guitarist for both the Punks and Matt Gimmick. One of the things Al told me was how the latter group came up with their name.

The Gimmick part came from the fact that a lot of people in the music biz back then would say we needed some kind of gimmick to help the band “go places.” Like pyrotechnics or a fog generator—yeah right! So, we used the word “gimmick.” The Detroit music scene sucked back then.

I believe we got the name Matt from my great-uncle, Matt Flynn. He was the one that would call us a bunch of “punks” when we were first forming the Punks.

 

Matt Gimmick goofing around during a photo session, c. 1979.

Unfortunately, the cassette containing the Stooges’ Palladium show has been lost to the ages. No copies were ever made.

Matt Gimmick called it a day in the early ‘80s.

A documentary, My Time’s Coming: The Story of The Punks, is currently in the works. Follow the film’s progress on Facebook. The Punks first reunited for a show in 2003, and have played sporadically ever since. As for Matt Gimmick, Al says they “could play anytime in the near future.”
 

Matt Gimmick tearing it up at the legendary Detroit club, Bookie’s, c. 1979.

Here’s a preview of the Punks documentary:
 

 
Matt Gimmick photographs courtesy of Alan Webber. Thanks, Al.

*****

HoZac Records is set to reissue Detroit Renaissance ‘79, on vinyl and digital formats, by week’s end. Get it via HoZac’s website or Bandcamp.

As promised, here’s the premiere of Matt Gimmick’s remastered EP:

 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Iggy & The Stooges playing at a high school gym in Michigan, 1970

“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.
 

 
More after the jump…

 
You don’t normally think of Elton John and Iggy Pop together, but the two highly expressive musicians do know each other and did enjoy at least one noteworthy incident, when Elton pranked the Stooges by dressing up as a gorilla and interrupting a gig halfway through, without any prior notice. Remarkably, the prank came about as part of what seems to have been a serious bid to sign the Stooges to Elton’s Rocket label, which ultimately proved unsuccessful.

The year was 1973. The venue, Richard’s Club, in Atlanta, Georgia. According to diehard Stooges fans Per Nilsen and Jim Lahde, in mid-October 1973 the Stooges played Richard’s on several dates over the course of about a week—it’s worth noting that the energetic Stooges were playing two shows a day during this stretch! Elton was in the middle of his own rather more remunerative U.S. tour at the same time. On October 19 Elton John played the Georgia Coliseum in Athens, Georgia, but that show actually occurred a few days after the Stooges were done in Atlanta. It seems likely that Elton flew in on a free day expressly to prank the Stooges.

The legendary Detroit-based magazine Creem seems to have been involved with the prank on some level, and the whole thing appears to have been at least partly motivated by a desire on the part of Elton to sign the Stooges to his label, the Rocket Record Company, the lineup of which featured Cliff Richard, Neil Sedaka, Colin Blunstone of the Zombies, and the Dutch band Solution.

There’s been plenty written about this so I’ll turn the topic over to the more accredited chroniclers.

Let’s start with Paul Trynka, whose Iggy Pop: Open Up and Bleed tells the story as follows:
 

Several of the band’s fans, including Ben Edmonds of Creem, conspired to raise their morale with endorsement by Elton John. Elton was sweeping across United States on a hugely successful stadium tour that significantly outgrossed the performances by his friend and rival David Bowie, with whom Elton was engaged in semi-friendly sniping. Elton decided to signal his support for the Stooges, plus his own general zaniness, by renting a gorilla suit and planning a one-ape stage invasion during the Stooges’ stint.

Creem had prepared a photographer for the stunt. Unfortunately no one had prepared Iggy. Indeed, the previous night he had disappeared off with the usual local “Rich Bitch,” to use the Stooges’ term of endearment. Early in the morning she brought him back to the band’s hotel unconscious; she’d gobbled down her entire supply of Quaaludes. Scott Asheton and a friend of the band, Doug Currie, were called to lift his dead weight out of her Corvette; carrying him into the hotel, they dropped him and were overcome with a giggling fit, seeing him peacefully sleeping, sprawled over a spiky Mediterranean bush.

Jim was still hardly conscious that evening when Doug and Scotty carried him into the club (“God knows what the poor club owner thought!” laughs Currie), and after a quick discussion of what to do, Doug announced that he had some speed. James Williamson managed to find a syringe, and they duly shot their singer full of methamphetamine sulphate in order to get him onto his feet.

Unsurprisingly, during the performance for which Elton had planned his jolly jape, Iggy was “unusually stoned to the point of being barely ambulatory, so it scared the hell out of me,” he says. For a couple of seconds, as Elton emerged from the wings in his gorilla suit, Iggy thought he was hallucinating, or else a real gorilla was raiding the stage. The Creem photograph documenting the event is hilarious, showing James Williamson transfixing the uppity ape with a malevolent glare that signals, he says, his intent to “take him out. He lucked out, because he was smart enough to take his head off to let people know who he was, just in time.”

Once Elton had discarded the ape mask and revealed his cheery face, Iggy realized what was happening, and he danced around with the fur-clad Elton for a song or so. The event was duly plugged in Creem, with Iggy telling the magazine “Elton’s a swell guy.” (Off the record, he would tell people that Elton only pulled the stunt because he wanted to get in tough-guy guitarist James Williamson’s pants.) Yet, although there would be ongoing discussions with Elton’s manager John Reid, and his record imprint, Rocket, the encounter failed to lift the Stooges’ spirits, and soon the band was becoming more obviously frazzled.

 
Here’s the picture of the moment, as it appeared in Creem just a few weeks later:

This next bit comes from Gimme Danger: The Story of Iggy Pop, by Joe Ambrose:

At a Stooges show in Atlanta, Elton John showed up with his pop star retinue, commandeered The Stooges dressing room, and walked on stage wearing a gorilla suit. Iggy was in pretty bad shape when Elton chose to join him. He’d spent the previous night taking a mountain of downers and sleeping in the shrubbery. When he woke up in the bushes he couldn’t speak a word. “A doctor had to shoot me full of methedrine just so I could talk,” he said. “I was seeing triple and had to hold on to the microphone stand to support myself. Suddenly this gorilla walks out from backstage and holds me up in the air while I’m still singing. I was out of my mind with fear. I thought it was a real gorilla.”

Chris Ehring: “I went back to the dressing room when someone tried to physically stop me. I said, ‘This is our dressing room!’ Someone from the club said, ‘Elton John is in there.’ ‘Big fucking deal! What’s he doing in there?’ I go in and there’s Elton John getting into a gorilla outfit. ‘He’s going to go up on stage and sing with Iggy.’ I just laughed. ‘Fine. Maybe I should warn the boys?’ ‘Oh, no, she wants it to be a surprise. He wants to come out during ‘Search and Destroy’. He was supposed to scare Iggy! Scare Iggy in this gorilla suit? ‘You don’t seem to understand what these guys are about. They are from Detroit. They’re not going to let you up on the stage!’ Moments later, out of the dressing room comes Elton dressed as a gorilla, and he goes up on the stage. The band all look at him. ‘Who is this?’ James looks at me and shrugs his shoulders. Iggy looks over and walks away. The gorilla starts chasing him, pushing him away. It’s really bad.”

“Elton’s a swell guy,” gushed Iggy after the incident. “Be nice to see this mutual admiration turn into something more concrete,” said Creem.

After the performance out and told Creem: “I simply can’t understand why he’s not a huge star.”

Continues after the jump…

 
On April 27th, 2003, a reunited Stooges played at Coachella, marking the first time in nearly 30 years Iggy Pop had performed with the Asheton brothers. It went so well that what was supposed to be a one-off gig turned out to be just the beginning. For the next five-plus years, the Stooges toured the world over, playing in front of adoring crowds—for the most part. Six months after the Coachella date, the band had another festival appearance, but instead of encountering their usual audience—fans thrilled to be seeing the Stooges—the group was met with indifference and hostility. This REALLY pissed off Iggy, and brought out the fighting spirit in him. The Stooges’ set that evening recalled the confrontational shows of the past, and turned out to be one of the most memorable gigs this version of the band ever did.

In 2003, the annual Voodoo Music Experience festival was held at City Park in New Orleans from October 31st-November 2nd. The lineup was a mix of jam bands, rap acts, and groups that were popular on mainstream rock radio at the time. Plus, the Stooges.
 

 
The Stooges’ November 1st performance was scheduled between nu metal band Staind and the headlining act, Marilyn Manson. At the conclusion of Staind’s set, a good chunk of the young crowd—who we have to presume had never heard of the Stooges—left to check out another one of the fest’s stages, while most of those that remained were there to hold their ground for Marilyn Manson. When an MC came out and hyped the upcoming Stooges set, there was faint applause, but the kids went crazy when he mentioned Marilyn Manson.

The Stooges hit the stage at 8:15 pm.
 

A photo taken by one of the few Stooges fans in attendance.

The first song is their usual set opener, “Loose,” from the second Stooges album, Fun House—one of the greatest records EVER MADE—and the crowd just stands and stares. Iggy immediately recognizes that the audience doesn’t care, and he becomes combative. Throughout the show, Pop hurls a range of insults at the apathetic kids—including a guy he can clearly see is yawning. The best put-down of the night: “You suck like the bands you like.” But there are moments when Iggy’s doing his best to stay positive; at one point, he invites the audience to come on stage, though just one dude takes him up on it. Other times, as he unleashes on the dum dums in attendance, the Ig’s rage is palpable.
 

 
It turned out to be a fantastic performance, despite—no, scratch that—*because* of the aloof crowd, which spurred the band on. It’s the closest a reunited Stooges would ever get to the days of Metallic KO.
 
Continues after the jump…

 
To learn that John Mellencamp was not only in a glam rock band in the early 1970s, but also covered David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold the World,” as well as the Iggy and the Stooges’ number, “I Need Somebody”—and did so long before those songs were revered—is one of those, “Wait, what?!?” moments. It goes against everything we think we know about a conventional performer with an established image.

At the tail end of 1972, Mellencamp formed the Bowie-inspired glam group, Trash. Around this time, he wrote his first two songs: “Loser,” purportedly a tribute to Lou Reed (despite its title), and “One Way Driver,” which Mellencamp says was influenced by the Stooges. Trash never went anywhere, and a year later Mellencamp recorded a solo demo. He subsequently took the tape to New York, where he shopped it around to various record companies. Rejected by them all, he figured he’d next try Bowie’s management, so he could get turned down by his hero’s handler. Instead, Tony Defries, the man behind MainMan—an organization that had also represented Iggy and the Stooges—signed him.

Mellencamp’s first record, Chestnut Street Incident, came out in 1976 on MCA Records. He didn’t realize his name had been changed to “Johnny Cougar” until he saw a mock-up of the album cover. When Mellencamp objected, Defries told him the LP would be released that way or not at all.
 

 
His 1977 follow-up , The Kid Inside, was rejected by MCA, and Mellencamp was dropped. He would soon part ways with MainMan, but after he became successful in the early 1980s, Defries released The Kid Inside.
 

 
It’s unclear when “I Need Somebody” and “The Man Who Sold the World” were recorded, exactly. Neither were on the original LPs. The Stooges cover is often included as a bonus track on CD reissues of Chestnut Street Incident, while the Bowie song is usually paired with The Kid Inside (though this edition of the first album has the two). It’s very possible Mick Ronson is the guitarist on one or both of the tracks, as Bowie’s former right-hand man played on Chestnut.

When I first heard these covers, I was surprised to find that Mellencamp’s versions ain’t half bad. I was so tickled by them that I checked out his first two LPs, hoping to find other unusual, pre-fame gems, though I soon realized that I was probably wasting my time (and indeed I was).

Anyway, it’s fascinating to hear a guy we think of as a heartland rocker seriously take on Bowie and the Stooges. It’s like finding out Robert Palmer covered Hüsker Dü.

Wait, what?!?!?
 
Listen to the Cougar cover versions, after the jump…

 
A few days prior to their run of shows at Max’s Kansas City in July/August 1973, the Stooges arrived in Manhattan to rehearse. The band’s label provided a practice space in midtown, and tapes were made so Iggy and the boys could hear themselves. Years later, recordings were released, and they were a revelation—Iggy was absolutely on fire during these rehearsals. There are moments when his vocals are even more violent and unhinged than anything heard on the band’s studio LPs or their infamous live album, Metallic KO. Though the practice tapes lack the fidelity of those seminal releases, the intensity comes through all the same.

After a long delay, the Stooges third album, Raw Power was finally released in May 1973. The previous March, after clashes with management came to head, James Williamson was forced out of the group, but after the company dropped Iggy and the Stooges, he was welcomed back into the fold. The band also added a new member, Scott Thurston, to play piano and harmonica.

A number of friends attended the Max’s rehearsals, which were held at a studio owned by CBS Records. Natalie Schlossman, former head of the Stooges fan club, was there, as was original bassist, Dave Alexander, amongst others. With the impending high-profile dates, and as so many were watching, the Stooges gave it their all. At one point, Iggy got on top of the studio’s grand piano to cut a rug.
 

 
Recordings of the Max’s rehearsals appear on a number of archival releases, beginning with Rubber Legs (1987), the first in a string of quasi-legal albums comprised of previously unreleased Stooges tapes that flooded the market in the late ‘80s. In 2005, Easy Action Records put out the Stooges-approved boxed set of outtakes and such, Heavy Liquid (an abridged version was produced for Record Store Day last April). One of the six discs contains a Max’s show, as well as seven recordings from the Max’s rehearsals. All of the songs pulled from the practice tape were, at the time, newly worked-up tunes that, in the end, wouldn’t be formally recorded by the Stooges.
 

 
“Johanna” (later documented for the Kill City project) is particularly powerful. Said to be about a former girlfriend that got her kicks by playing mind games on the Stooges singer, the tape captures Iggy totally tortured, screaming his head off over a love he knows is toxic, but can’t quit.
 
Continues after the jump…

 
In 1979, Matt Gimmick, a punk rock band out of Detroit that sprang from the ashes of one of the earliest Stooges-inspired groups, put out an EP that included a couple of unusual cover tunes. That they were Stooges compositions wasn’t the extraordinary part, though covering the unit fronted by Iggy Pop was far from common then; recording Stooges songs that virtually no one had ever heard before was most certainly noteworthy.   

The period following the second Stooges album, Fun House (1970), when Ron Asheton and James Williamson both played guitar, is an interesting era of the band, one that, alas, wasn’t well documented. It was a particularly dark time for the Stooges, as Elektra Records had dropped them, and three of the members—including Iggy—were addicted to heroin. This version of the group didn’t venture into the studio, and only very rough audience recordings are in circulation.
 

 
A CD boxed set consisting of four concerts from the Stooges’ spring 1971 outing was released in 2009 by Easy Action as You Don’t Want My Name, You Want My Action. The label did their best to clean up the tapes, but only so much could be done. At the time of the ‘71 tour, the band played the same six-song set of new numbers—all written by Iggy and Williamson—on a nightly basis.

Keep reading after the jump…

 
One of the most striking and iconic pieces of rock and roll clothing has to be the leopard head jacket worn by Iggy Pop on the back cover of 1973’s Raw Power, in the classic shot taken by photographer Mick Rock (above). The jacket was made by John Dove and Molly White in 1971 and appeared in L’Uomo Vogue. They only ever made five of them. Iggy bought one. Zoot Money bought another. One was a gift to their agent in Paris, Dove kept one and an unknown guy bought the other.

From their Wonder Workshop website:

The saga of IGGY POP’S JACKET returns 18 years later when Iggy’s Jacket turns up on the back of Stan Lee, lead guitarist of the Dickies in the pages of Rolling Stone. Ruby Ray’s picture shows Stan half-heartedly assuming the Raw Power stance. The interview starts with Vale’s recognition, “The jacket looks like the one Iggy wore on Raw Power!”

“It IS Iggy’s jacket - I got it in a dope deal a few years ago. He didn’t have the bucks so I took that for collateral. For a while, he couldn’t afford it back, and now he’s a rich bitchin’ Iggy, he tried to buy it back and I said NO!...”

The same story is recounted in We Got the Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of L.A. Punk by Marc Spitz and Brendan Mullen.

Andy Seven: “I remember seeing Iggy at Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco after the Stooges broke up when he still had the platinum rinse, with Michael Des Barres, the singer for Silverhead. Stan Lee, who later started the Dickies, used to go there. He was this short, pushy little puffed-out guy with a Marc Bolan poodle shag, and he claimed he had the leopard jacket that Iggy wore on the back cover of Raw Power, he told me he got it from Iggy for dope collateral.”

Ron Asheton: “Oh, yeah, Iggy would trade his possessions all the time for drugs. That’s how he lost some of those great clothes, like that plastic jacket on the back of Raw Power with the Leopard’s head ... that got traded to somebody for drugs or whatever.”

Stan Lee: “When I was sixteen I used to hang out with Iggy. I got his Raw Power jacket in a drug deal that went down in The Whisky parking lot. It was used as collateral, and thankfully I
kept it.”

 

 
A few years later, art, record and toy collector extraordinaire, Long Gone John, boss of the mighty Sympathy for the Record Industry label (where the White Stripes, Hole and many others got their start) bought the jacket from Stan Lee. He picks up the story now in an email sent to John Dove and Molly White:

John and Molly

I wrote this for you while flying home from no. California… let me know if you need anything else ... want an updated photo of the jacket ?? all the best as ever…like that, john xx

“I remember Stan Lee from the Dickies wearing the Iggy jacket every time I saw him and remember thinking he’s gonna wear it till it falls apart…he was obviously really really proud of owning it…when you see photos of him wearing it you can see it was still in very good condition at the time…about 5 years before I bought it from Stan, a friend of mine, Tim Warren who ran the label Crypt Records who was living in Germany came to LA. and apart from whatever else he had to do he had intentions of buying the jacket from Stan for his cute french girlfriend ...Tim offered Stan $5000.00 which seemed an enormous amount of money…seems Stan was pretty flush at the time or at least he didn’t currently have a severe drug habit which he often did have throughout the years…anyway, Tim’s offer was turned down and his girlfriend was considerably heartbroken, but still very cute…

I didn’t think about the jacket for a long time until one day a friend called and said Stan wanted to sell the jacket and asked if I was interested…he said he thought Stan wanted $3000.00…I thought that the jacket was so important and would one day belong in a museum and figured it was well worth the money…I drove out to the Valley to meet him at the converted garage he lived in…the jacket was pretty worn, but it was also obvious it was made out of really cheap fake leather material to begin with…the cheetah head on the back was a bit rubbed off, but to me that was inevitable with age and gave it an air of authenticity considering it was at least 25 years old at the time…best as I can remember this was about 1998…being the bargaining fool that I am I offered Stan $2000.00 and after considerable haggling he finally agreed to accept it…the jacket was tiny Iggy is 5’ 1” as documented in the song with the same name Stan was also short, but not that short…i’m 5’ 11” so of course it didn’t fit me, but my interest in it wasn’t to wear it anyway…to me that jacket was so iconic I thought of it as The Shroud of Turin of Rock ‘n’ Roll…

I was about 21 yrs old when Raw Power came out and very impressionable…it was one of my favorite albums and I was completely mesmerized by both the front and back cover photos…that record was amazing and I never got tired of listening to it and never got the image of the jacket out of my mind…I have always felt extremely honored to own the jacket and will protect it’s legacy until the next caretaker happens along…”

Last year Lewis Leathers in London, working with John Dove and Molly White, recreated the classic jacket.

The soundtrack to Gimme Danger, the new feature-length Stooges documentary from director Jim Jarmusch is already out on CD and digital with a vinyl version hitting stores on April 7th.
 

Iggy Pop and Jim Jarmusch discuss their new documentary film ‘Gimme Danger’ with VICE’s Kim Taylor Bennett.

 
If you’ve got room for more 1970 Detroit so soon after yesterday’s John Lee Hooker post, then feast your eyes on these wonderful snapshots of Iggy Pop, shirtless (does he even own any shirts?) and becollared (because you know what he wants to be) for a Stooges performance at suburban Detroit’s Farmington High School (GO FALCONS!) in December of 1970, which was historically noteworthy as James Williamson’s first gig with the band. I found them on the wonderful blog Black Coffee Bonus Cup, but they first made their way to the web via Detroit rock lifer Jim Edwards of the Rockets, who posted them to Facebook. (I can no longer find that album, so I presume it’s either deleted or set to friends-only, now):

I got these slides from a guy at work. He walks up to me and says, ‘You’re a musician, right? I got these old slides from a show at my high school, Wanna see ‘em?’ I held the first one up to the light and nearly shit myself!

Black Coffee Bonus Cup offered this info about the gig:

The gig was late due to Iggy being arrested earlier that evening and The Stooges played only four songs but I bet it was the end of innocence for all the unsuspecting teen students attending this show when the 23-year-old Iggy appeared shirtless, wearing a dog collar and jeans with cut-out crotch, revealing his red briefs, and performed his legendary on-and-off stage stunts…

 

 

 

 

 
More after the jump…

 
James Newell Osterberg, Jr. was raised on a trailer park in Michigan, Carpenter Rd, just off old U.S. Route 23. His parents were low-wage, lower middle class, but as Iggy Pop later said, the people in the trailer park were “nicer than some of the more accomplished members of our society.”

Osterberg was friends with a family from Tennessee who killed a chicken once a week for Sunday dinner by asphyxiating it on a tail pipe. The family had a son who played Duane Eddy-type rock on a guitar. It was the young James’ first taste of inspirational “working class music”—the grip and thrill of those goosebump chords gave him a sense of ambition and a growing awareness of the chip on his shoulder.

At thirteen Osterberg attended school in Ann Arbor, where he met kids who had guitars, amplifiers and albums by Ray Charles, Duane Eddy and Elvis—that was when he got “seriously corrupted.”

School was an annoying “buzz” (or so Iggy has claimed) that he had to get away from—music was a passion which he saw as a way out. Though he was clever at school, well-liked and, according to one old school friend in Paul Trynka’s biography, smart enough to become President of the United States. But nice boy James opted out and became drummer with a high school band The Iguanas—hence his nickname Iggy. Like a lot of drummers, Iggy wanted to get out from round back and up front under the spotlight. He honed his skills playing drums with black R&B bands across the state, as Iggy said in Legs McNeil & Gillian McCain’s Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk:

So I hooked up with Sam Lay. He was playing with Jimmy Cotton and I’d go see them play and learned what I could. And very occasionally, I would get to sit in, I’d get a cheap gig for five or ten bucks. I played for Johnny Young once—he was hired to play for a white church group, and I could play cheap, so he let me play.

It was a thrill, you know? It was a thrill to be really close to some of those guys—they all had attitude, like jive motherfuckers, you know? What I noticed about these black guys was that their music was like honey off their fingers. Real childlike and charming in its simplicity. It was just a very natural mode of expression and life-style. They were drunk all the time and it was sexy-sexy and dudey-dudey, and it was just a bunch of guys that didn’t want to work and who played good.

I realized that these guys were way over my head, and that what they were doing was so natural to them that it was ridiculous for me to make a studious copy of it, which is what most white bands did.

One night Iggy went down to the sewage treatment plant by the Loop to smoke a joint, where he thought:

What you got to do is play your own simple blues. I could describe my experience based on the way those guys explained theirs…

So that’s what I did. I appropriated a lot of their vocal forms, and also their turns of phrase—either heard or misheard or twisted from blues songs. So “I Wanna Be Your Dog” is probably my mishearing of “Baby Please Don’t Go.”

Iggy was creating “white suburban delinquent music.”

In 2004, when Iggy and The Stooges were on a European tour, the then leather-fleshed, diamond-eyed 57-year-old singer was interviewed at length about his life and career by Melvyn Bragg for The South Bank Show.
 

 
Gregg Foreman’s radio program, The Pharmacy, is a music / talk show playing heavy soul, raw funk, 60′s psych, girl groups, Krautrock. French yé-yé, Hammond organ rituals, post-punk transmissions and “ghost on the highway” testimonials and interviews with the most interesting artists and music makers of our times.

This week’s guest is James Williamson of The Stooges. Topics include:

—Iggy nearly choosing to a see movie over meeting David Bowie.

—The final Stooges show that saw a rain of bottles, cans, glass—even cameras—hurled by angry bikers at the band.

—How Raw Power got made while management was preoccupied trying to break David Bowie in the USA.

—Elektra records dropping the band due to drug use and Ron Ashton’s Nazi paraphernalia-filled room.

—When James got fired from the band temporarily and found himself working as a projectionist at a porn theater.

—How The Stooges had no idea what effect their sound would have on future bands.

 
Mr. Pharmacy is a musician and DJ who has played for the likes of Pink Mountaintops, The Delta 72, The Black Ryder, The Meek and more. Since 2012 Gregg Foreman has been the musical director of Cat Power’s band. He started dj’ing 60s Soul and Mod 45’s in 1995 and has spun around the world. Gregg currently lives in Los Angeles, CA and divides his time between playing live music, producing records and dj’ing various clubs and parties from LA to Australia.
 
Setlist

Mr.Pharmacist - The Fall
Ramblin Rose - The MC5
Shake Appeal - The Stooges
Intro 1 / Honky Tonk Popcorn - Rx / Bill Doggett
James Williamson Interview Part One 
I Gotta Move - The Kinks
I Just Wanna Make Love to You - The Rolling Stones
Sonic Reducer - The Dead Boys
Sunshine of Your Love - Spanky Wilson
Intro 2 / Do Your Thang - Rx / Dennis Coffey
James Williamson Interview Part Two
Know Your Product - The Saints
I’m Bored - Iggy Pop
Try It ! - The Standells
Intro 3 / Guess I’m Falling in Love (Rx on Organ) - Rx / Velvet Underground
James Williamson Interview Part Three
Let a Woman Be a Woman , Let a Man Be a Man - Dyke and the Blazers
Gone and Passes By - the Chocolate Watchband
Intro 4 / Twin Stars Of Thence Ra - Rx / Sun Ra
James Williamson Interview Part Four
Gimme Danger - The Stooges
Mr.Pharmacist (Outro) - The Fall
 

 
You can download the entire show here.

 
James Williamson of the Stooges discusses the newly remixed, remastered version of 1977’s Kill City, a little-known album in the Iggy canon, but one that is ripe for rediscovery 34-years after it was first released. James also talks about what it was like to stand on-stage with people throwing beer bottles at the band the night that Metallic K.O. was recorded, his career as a rocker turned SONY executive turned rocker again and the current Stooges tour.

Read Beyond the Law: Brilliant reissue of 1977 Iggy Pop & James Williamson album ‘Kill City’