Below, Iggy smears himself in peannut butter at the Cincinnati Summer Pop Festival of 1970. Scroll in about two minutes for the Stooges mayhem to start:
The late great Stooge Larry Fine meets the late great Stooge Ron Asheton as photographed by either Michael Tipton or Jimmy Recca at the MGM country retirement home in Calabasas,California circa early 70’s. That’s Larry’s granddaughter in the photo also. The story of this unlikely, but poetically perfect friendship is documented in the excellent book Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk (An Evergreen book).
Collection of Rich Dorris, much thanks to Heather Harris and Kim Retro Kimmer Maki !
As is (tragically) the case with the Velvet Underground, there is precious little sync-sound footage of Iggy Pop and the Stooges in their heyday, although there was a fair amount of silent Super-8 film that was shot. (A guy I know purchased an old film projector at a flea market that came with silent footage of Iggy onstage circa 1973, believe it or not. He later sold it to Vh1).
This incredible footage of the Stooges comes from the Cincinnati Summer Pop Festival of 1970 (AKA Midsummer Rock Festival). Appearing on a bill with Grand Funk Railroad, Alice Cooper, Mountain and Traffic, the group performs “T.V. Eye” and “1970” as Iggy leaps into the crowd—probably inventing crowd-surfing in the process—smearing peanut butter all over his chest. It’s one of the greatest rock and roll moments of all time and resulted in the iconic photograph above. Thank the gods that this footage exists, too.
Note the square announcer’s reaction: “That’s… peanut butter!” Years later Stiv Bators of the Dead Boys took credit for bringing the tub of peanut butter from his home in Dayton, OH and putting it into the Iggster’s hands.
It’s hard to believe, but the then-controversial, Iggy-tweaked version of Raw Power that set the original David Bowie mix to 11 was released over thirteen years ago. These days, that’s a long time for anything to go un-reissued, so Legacy‘s come out with an expanded edition that pairs a remastered version of the Bowie mix with a ‘73 live set from Atlanta (but not, as Pitchfork notes, the more logical choice: a remastered version of the Iggy mix).
However you slice it—or mix it—Raw Power still packs a wallop. I’ll always prefer the primitive thump of Funhouse, but, as the below short attests (featuring, among others, Henry Rollins, James Williamson and Chrissie Hynde), there’s no denying Raw Power was more the shape of things to come.
