Iggy Pop Read online

  Iggy, in fact, was investigating many potential new partnerships. Earlier in March, Tony Defries had chatted with Kim Fowley, record producer, Lurch lookalike and celebrated denizen of Rodney’s English Disco, and there had been vague talk of Fowley working on an Iggy solo album. For a time, Fowley became Iggy’s confidant, and they worked on a set of songs that would have been Iggy’s second album for MainMan, including a new composition called ‘She Creatures Of The Hollywood Hills’. Fowley was asked to cast around for a replacement for Williamson. The lanky, droll-faced producer picked on Warren Klein, who’d attracted a modest amount of attention on the LA scene with Fraternity of Man, a psychedelic blues outfit in the vein of Moby Grape; their biggest claim to fame was getting one song on the best-selling Easy Rider soundtrack. Klein was a ‘Tony Curtis-looking guy with a shoe salesman personality’, according to Fowley; the guitarist kept quiet but laughed in all the right places when the lead singer spoke. This, together with his rootsy blues style, apparently qualified him for a job in the Stooges. To give him a little more glam cachet, Warren was renamed Tornado Turner, and he was hurriedly enlisted into the Stooges. But if it was Tony Defries’ belief that eliminating James Williamson would make Iggy and the Stooges behave, he was soon disabused of that notion. Early in April, Defries had joined Tony Zanetta in Japan for Bowie’s tour there. The bad news that by now flowed in a steady stream from the Torreyson Drive house became a constant preoccupation. Zanetta heard reports of a robbery, which they assumed was a put-up job to score money for drugs, and demands for money for an abortion for one of Iggy’s teenage girlfriends (which was almost certainly a fiction, although it’s impossible to know who made up the story). ‘And every phone call there was another disaster to sort out.’

  Tony Defries had reached the end of the road with Iggy Pop, the all-American boy who had once charmed him. As Childers points out, ‘Tony always fell a little in love with the people he worked with. Until, like a love affair, it starts to go sour - and then it really goes south fast. Then it was fury like a manager scorned.’ In Detroit, there had been little Defries could do about Iggy’s behaviour; he’d signed him at Bowie’s behest, and he couldn’t drop him without David’s assent. Now, just a few days into his first, tumultuous Japanese tour, David was forced to sit and listen as his manager explained why MainMan would have to drop his friend. ‘Defries was talking and talking to David about it,’ says Zanetta. ‘And David felt bad, because he really didn’t want to let him go. But he was on the brink in Japan, and preoccupied - there really wasn’t anything he could do. So, reluctantly, he agreed that they should let them loose.’

  Back in LA, Leee Childers informed the Stooges that they had been dropped. He expected a scene. But like naughty children who know they’ve been rumbled, there were no complaints. Leee jumped into the pool and paddled around forlornly as he watched them gather their clothes and leave.

  CHAPTER 9

  Beating a Dead Horse

  Ron Asheton: ‘The whole thing was never-ending torture. Hanging on, somehow in the hope it will turn better . . . really, it was just beating a dead horse until it was dust.’

  Jim Osterberg: ‘There was some perverse pride in showing ourselves, but no. There were no good shows. It took a big person to manage the Stooges, and once we lost Defries, then . . . that was it.’

  Scott Asheton: ‘They threw all kinds of things. Cameras, bags of pot, pills, money, they’d throw all kinds of shit . . . not just bottles.’

  Scott Thurston: ‘Everyone knew it was doomed. But it was a pretty potent band, and a pretty potent thing to stand there and go through it. There wasn’t really any bullshit about it.’

  James Williamson: ‘They say the definition of insanity is trying to do the same thing over and over thinking you’re going to get a different result.’

  The slow, painful, heroic death of the Stooges started with humiliation, and ended in a hail of bottles. The humiliation hurt more.

  In early 1973, there were still a few Iggy fans scattered around Hollywood, and one of them was Danny Sugerman. Jim Morrison’s death in July 1971 had left a void in Sugerman’s life, Iggy looked to be the man to fill it, and after the MainMan axe fell, Danny was keen to start hustling on behalf of the Stooges. The band also lucked into a heavy-duty manager in the five-foot-six, pugnacious form of Jeff Wald, who had been turned on to Iggy by rock critic Lillian Roxon. Wald was husband and manager to singer Helen Reddy, who, like her friend Lillian, was an Australian expat and committed feminist. Her husband Jeff was, in contrast, a coked-up tough guy from the Bronx, whose typical opening line in a business negotiation might go: ‘Don’t fuck with me or I will hurt you.’

  Before he could sign with Wald, though, Jim had to undergo a ritual humiliation at the hands of Abe Somers, the Doors business attorney, who witnessed the contract. ‘You should count yourself lucky that a respected businessman like Mr Wald would even consider representing you,’ Somers told a mute, listless Jim. ‘You’re not worthy even to kiss his feet!’ Faced with such a tirade, Jim’s legendary charm for once deserted him. This was the first time, Sugerman told his friends, that he had seen Jim cry. Others observed the psychic toll of such humiliations and Nick Kent, for one, believed that over the spring of 1973, Jim suffered some kind of nervous breakdown: ‘A lot of bad things had happened to him and his nervous system simply couldn’t take any more.’ The fact that the MainMan money supply had finally dried up did have one positive consequence: Jim no longer had the money to maintain his renewed love affair with heroin. The bad news was that he would eventually become a trashcan drugs user, using whatever was going for free or for cheap, most notably the Quaaludes that seemed to be freely available in Hollywood.

  There was another humiliation to come in the form of a Chicago show, probably booked by MainMan, on 15 June, which featured their new guitarist, Tornado Turner. Those who attended retain vague memories of a performance that was utterly professional and unbelievably tedious. Ben Edmonds, then an editor at Creem, was a Stooges fan and had driven all the way to the Aragon, a faded ballroom rather like the Grande. The performance was so dull that the only standout memory was of Tornado Turner’s moustache: ‘There was nothing there. It was like watching a bad covers band.’ Both for the cash, and for their self-esteem, the Stooges needed to work; Jim threw himself into fevered activity, acknowledging that with Turner, the Stooges’ magic was gone. As Jeff Wald hit the phones, hustling for live shows and calling Clive Davis to ensure the Columbia boss maintained his commitment to the Stooges, Jim swallowed his pride and called James Williamson, who was staying with Evita and her mom. James still believed in the music, but knew their relationship as friends was over. ‘He doesn’t apologise, he just goes on with things. So did I. But from now on I was watching my back.’

  When Bob Sheff got the message that the Stooges were playing again, he sensed the change in their circumstances without needing to be told. Meeting Jim a few days later, he noticed that his old friend looked tired. The beautiful house was gone, most of the 15-year-old heroin molls had disappeared, there were rumblings about record-company debts and the road manager made a habit of going into the bank to cash cheques with a gun in his jacket pocket. And accommodation for the hired help now consisted of a crummy room at the Tropicana and, later, even sleazier accommodation with garish wallpaper at the Riviera motel, a rundown joint full of hookers and other shady characters where James and Evita had their wallets stolen one night as they slept. Still, considering what he’d been through, James Williamson seemed to be keeping things together. The guitarist and his girlfriend Evita treated Bob to a meal, talked about astrology, and discussed the progress of their rehearsals at SIR and an imminent live tour that would start with a residency at the Whisky-a-Go-Go on Sunset. Where Iggy seemed to be running the show back at the Ford Auditorium, this time round James was taking charge.

  The band’s run of shows at the Whisky started on 20 June, two shows a night. In the three years since the band had last played the West Coas
t, it seemed like they’d picked up a huge new following, and the opening night was packed with younger kids who’d later form the backbone of LA’s punk scene. Many of them were dumbstruck by the spectacle of this band, who were now living on the edge, but whose power was undiminished.

  On the opening night, Bob Sheff had decided to unveil his own alter ego, the avant-garde creation called ‘Blue’ Gene Tyranny. He wore ripped clothing, and a string of red lightbulbs in his hair that twinkled brightly; backstage a couple of observers who were high became paranoid that he was on fire and attempted to pat out the flames. Sheff hit the stage first, pounding out the opening chords of ‘Raw Power’ on a decrepit piano stuck up in a corner above the Whisky stage. Then Williamson, the Ashetons and Iggy walked down across a gangway, behind a movie screen showing a silent loop of Lee Marvin assassinating Ronald Reagan from The Killers, and strolled onto the stage. The guitarists and drummer joined Sheff beating out the monstrous, repetitive riff. Iggy stood at the front of the stage, glaring at the audience as a couple of girls crouched in front of him with their hands down his bikini briefs, fondling his genitals. When he got bored of their attentions, he simply kicked one of them out of the way before picking up the microphone and launching into ‘Raw Power’. Life was imitating art. He’d written about being doomed but for a driving rock ’n’ roll beat, and now he was living out that message.

  But those pile-driving chords couldn’t sustain Iggy for ever. The main act was expected to play two sets a night at the Whisky, and within a day or so Iggy was simply too exhausted to complete the second performance. By the second night, Bob Sheff realised he had lent so much money to the other Stooges that he had only just enough cash left for his plane fare back to Berkeley. Sheff told road manager John Myers that he needed his pay for the show, or he’d have to quit and fly home before he was stranded with the Stooges for eternity. Myers’ response was to offer him a lift to the airport. Sheff fled, and never spoke to Iggy again; the Stooges played without a pianist for the next three nights.

  Reports of the later performances are garbled, like messages from a battlefront, but several images linger. One is of Iggy threading the microphone stand through his bikini briefs and humping it for fifteen minutes without singing a note, as the crowd dwindled to twenty frazzled onlookers. Another is of Iggy being passed around by an ecstatic audience, in a joyful reminder of the Stooges’ legendary Cincinnati performance. Still another was a backstage glimpse of Iggy passed out in the dressing room, his head cradled in Sable Starr ’s lap, as each Stooge sat mute in his own corner, long after they were supposed to hit the stage. ‘We went backstage [because] we were so frustrated waiting for the second set,’ remembers Don Waller, a fervent fan who saw practically every Whisky show. ‘We’re scratching our heads and couldn’t work out what was going on. We didn’t understand that they were that fucked up, that Williamson and Iggy were spiking so much.’

  Columbia had finally released Raw Power in May, which was credited to Iggy and the Stooges, but without the prospect of being linked up with a hot management company like MainMan, the record company made little pretence of commitment. Steve Harris, who’d had the job of promoting the Stooges at Elektra, found history repeating itself when he became a vice president at Columbia and again attempted to enthuse a boardroom full of indifferent staff. This time round, it was markedly worse; the reaction was, ‘Ha ha, Iggy - the guy’s a joke.’ Columbia were making more money from the three-years-old Bridge Over Troubled Water than from the Stooges. But Harris persevered, concluding that the only way to make New York radio stations take notice of the Stooges was to underwrite a series of shows that he termed ‘Iggy at Max’s at Midnight’. At first Jeff Wald was suspicious - ‘You expect me to send Iggy to New York?’ he roared. ‘It’s junk city out there!’ Once Harris assured him he would watch the singer’s every move, it was agreed the band would start a four-night residency on 30 July.

  The Max’s dates were strung together with a few Midwest and Canadian shows to make a ramshackle tour, for which the Stooges decided they needed to replace Bob Sheff. James Williamson again took charge, calling up Scott Thurston, a keyboard player he’d met while rehearsing at Capitol studios during his exile from the Stooges, joining him in LA for a brief runthrough of the songs and giving him a copy of Raw Power. A few days later, Thurston was on a plane with road manager John Myers for a show at the Ice Arena on St Clair Lake, just north of Detroit. Scottie’s first meeting with the band was the ride to the arena; that night he shared a stage for the first time with Iggy, who was dressed only in kneeboots and bikini briefs. He was stunned. He remained stunned for some time. That evening was the beginning, according to many Stooge connoisseurs, of an era of unparalleled comedy. Fans could enjoy their chaotic shows as much for Iggy’s ludicrous clothing and bizarre antics as for the intermittently thrilling music. ‘They were funny, hysterically comical,’ remembers Michael Tipton, a friend and fan whose tapes documented many of the band’s final shows. ‘You could fill a thousand pages and still not capture all the insanity.’ Although the Stooges themselves were comparatively oblivious to their leader’s troubles, seeing them as self-inflicted, other close observers, like Tipton and Natalie Schlossman, eventually realised there was a black underbelly to the comedy. ‘It did become obvious Iggy needed professional help,’ says Tipton. ‘It got to the point where people around almost feared him.’

  At St Clair Lake, Iggy dressed down for the show in black Soho knickers, a souvenir from his amblings around London’s tourist haunts. It was a baking hot day, and the band had been eating watermelons backstage. As the Stooges, Thurston included, blasted out the opening chords of ‘Raw Power’, Iggy ran out on stage and hurled a watermelon into the crowd; it hit a girl in the audience, who was apparently concussed, causing ructions with the promoter later. A few songs in, Iggy felt an irresistible urge to empty his bowels and ran behind the Stooges’ Marshall stacks to take a dump; Tipton watched Iggy run back on stage and start throwing ‘stuff’ at the crowd. Once he’d exhausted his ammunition, he took a cup of ice and emptied it down his Soho briefs, then fished it out piece by piece, sucking it provocatively or throwing it at the audience.

  Thurston was shellshocked by his debut with the Stooges, transfixed by the power of the band in performance and appalled by the increasingly obvious hopelessness of their predicament once they left the stage. He would hang with James Williamson, the one band member attempting to be positive. ‘He was circling the wagons, like we were under attack in a Western. The kind of Western where everyone gets a bullet, but maybe you can shoot somebody on your way out.’ But no one, not even James, could change the path down which the Stooges were heading. ‘Nobody was in control. It was complete anarchy.’ Eventually Thurston got used to the doomed glamour of his new outlaw life, arriving at venues without any equipment, borrowing amplifiers from the support band, leaving hired Marshall backlines at venues to avoid paying rental fees and skipping out of hotels through the back door.

  Once the band hit New York around 28 July, however, it felt like the good old days were back. Columbia gave the band free run of their rehearsal studios in midtown; a sedate, comfortable building that usually hosted acts like Tony Bennett, it was overseen by a union attendant, who looked on impassively as Iggy danced on the grand piano. One by one old friends came in to meet the band, getting ready for their prestigious engagement at Max’s; Natalie Schlossman and her friend Pat, who had a thing for Ron, turned up, James’s girlfriend Evita flew in from LA, Scotty’s girlfriend Esther Korinsky arrived from Detroit, as did Esther’s ex, Dave Alexander, the lost Dum Dum Boy. Dave looked healthy and slim, and sat in on rehearsals, telling the others how he was making a fortune playing the stock market. Over several days, the band worked on their set, augmenting their Raw Power material with new songs including ‘Heavy Liquid’ and ‘Open Up And Bleed’, to which Thurston added a wailing harmonica part. Jim himself seemed in decent shape, optimistic, working the band through the new material, although the
re were the usual lapses. He’d arranged to meet Coral Shields at Kennedy Airport the afternoon of the Max’s show, but forgot to turn up. Coral was in a panicky state, without the money to get into Manhattan or any idea of where the band were staying; fortunately, a white knight appeared in the form of Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, who’d met her back at Rodney’s English Disco in LA. Page was about to catch a plane back to London, straight after Zep’s triumphant summer tour had concluded with three sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden, and persuaded Coral to come back with him. Once in London, Coral would tell people like Nick Kent that she’d given up on Jim Osterberg, who was more interested in drugs than in other people.

  The opening night at Max’s was packed, with old friends like Danny Fields, Leee Black Childers, Lenny Kaye, Alice Cooper and Lisa Robinson in attendance, and a huge queue outside the club. There were problems with the PA, which meant Iggy’s voice was swamped by the huge wall of sound generated by the rented guitar amplifiers, and James’s guitar was occasionally out of tune. Some Stooges old hands sniggered at the clichéd make-up and at their ludicrous costumes, crafted by Hollywood designer Bill Whitten - James wore a glammy Star Trek outfit, while Iggy appeared at one point in a campily ridiculous gladiator costume. Despite the technical problems, the band was magnificent. Bob Czaykowski - Nite Bob - was hired for the Max’s shows to look after the amplifier backline; his job was to get ‘the clang’: the ringing, physically brutal noise that would help beat the audience into submission. Nite Bob sat in for every Max’s rehearsal and show, and realised that ‘even though everything was really raw, you knew there was something going on. That’s why we wanted to work for them. This wasn’t a bunch of fading groovers who were going to fall into oblivion.’