Iggy Pop Read online

  Elektra’s deal with the band was concluded on 4 October 1968. John Sinclair wrote in 5th Estate that Elektra signed both the MC5 and the Stooges on 26 September 1968. Surviving Elektra paperwork owned by Jeff Gold reveals the Stooges actually signed on 4 October; it’s likely the MC5 signed on this date, too, and that, as Jimmy Silver agrees, Sinclair ‘jumped the gun’. There are no records of when Holzman and Harvey saw the Stooges at the Fifth Dimension, but given that it was a Saturday night, the only plausible date is 28 September.

  Jimmy Silver wrote updates to Danny Fields, delaying the album sessions until [Iggy] returned to health. Details of Jim’s bouts of asthma are taken from Jimmy Silver’s letters to Danny Fields, now in the collection of Jeff Gold: ‘He’s much healthier than when I left him but still very flippy from being so sick and it’s going to be a while before he’s in top shape. He says he can put out a good performance [at the sessions] next week, though, and I have faith in him.’

  The Fun House. Exact details of what posters were on the wall of the Fun House come from Natalie Schlossman’s Stooges newsletter, Popped. Details of the house’s internal geography come from Jimmy Silver and Bill Cheatham.

  Fields was investigating a producer for the Stooges’ first album. Jim Peterman has been cited as a suggested producer for Fun House; Jimmy Silver maintains he was actually suggested for the first album. This makes sense; Peterman also worked in promotion for Elektra, and the review copy of the album he gave to Rolling Stone magazine’s Ed Ward was ‘defaced’, says Ward, ‘because [Peterman] hated the record so much.’ It’s doubtful he would have entertained producing Fun House when Peterman had by now apparently decided he hated the Stooges.

  Danny Fields introduced [the Stooges] to the city’s cornucopia of delights. It was Per Nilsen who first discovered the Stooges visited New York in mid-November 1968; and in fact this is the only plausible sequence of events, as Nico filmed the ‘Frozen Warnings’ promo in Ann Arbor in the winter of 1968.

  The gossip was that [the song ‘Ann’] was inspired by Anne Opie Wehrer. Anne Wehrer was the wife of the University of Michigan’s Joe Wehrer and was the subject of a memorable Once group performance, which was simply entitled Anne Opie Wehrer and featured multimedia re-enactments of various aspects of her fascinating life, according to Bob Sheff.

  Silver and Bomser went to see Holzman [to renegotiate the Stooges’ contract]. This story totally contradicts Iggy Pop’s accounts, including a 1982 interview with Scott Isler, in which he claimed, ‘I charmed Holzman into giving us $25,000 by making a list . . . he saw the logic.’ Iggy’s meeting might have softened Holzman up; however, I have discounted his version, which is consistent with much of Iggy’s megalomania in that period; at a time when his life was out of control, he clung to the illusion that he was always in control.

  The recording session started on April Fool’s Day. Most Stooges stories date the recording sessions as having happened in June 1969, but Natalie Schlossman’s contemporaneous Popped newsletter dates the sessions as starting on 1 April. The original booking was at the Record Plant, 17-21 March, from 1pm to 7pm, and was probably cancelled either because of Jim’s ill health or because of the contract renegotiations.

  The band returned to the Chelsea Hotel and wrote ‘Little Doll’, ‘Not Right’ and ‘Real Cool Time’. Ron Asheton: ‘We went with “I Wanna Be Your Dog”, “1969”, “No Fun”, so I’m going, oh yeah, we got songs. That was the magic Stooge time, when I could just sit down and come up with the shit. So we went there and we did what we had, along with “We Will Fall” which was Dave’s chant. At the Chelsea I sat down for one hour and came up with “Little Doll”, “Real Cool Time” and “Not Right”, it had to be simple, and Iggy came down [and said], “Okay, yeah,” and we rehearsed it one time and did it the next day, one take for each tune.’

  Iggy would claim, ‘John Cale had little or nothing to do with the sound. He shouldn’t have been there.’ Iggy’s rivalry with Cale has been mapped by his pronouncements: ‘[He was] someone more adult, more worldly, from a band I respected . . . Someone with weight and sensitivity that would tolerate us! And therefore it helped give me confidence.’ (To the author, 1992.) Or, ‘ John Cale had little or nothing to do with the sound. He shouldn’t have been there!’ (To Scott Isler, 1982.) But he has always maintained he performed the remix with Jac Holzman, an account that must surely be confused by the fog of war - or hashish, in this instance. To be fair, Jac Holzman remembers few details of the Stooges’ time on Elektra, so his lack of memory of a remix is not conclusive. But as Lewis Merenstein points out, ‘Cale’s version is correct. I don’t know why [it should hurt Iggy to admit that], he was an amazing performer and led the band throughout. ’ And when Fields described Iggy’s dismissal of Cale as ‘unworthy’ he goes on to point out, ‘Look, mister, in the fall of 1968 who on earth would have touched you? Much less one of the most distinguished avant-garde and far-seeing people in the musical universe!’

  ‘[Wendy] was a virgin. I just had to have her.’ This quote is from I Need More. I’ve trusted Jim’s account of meeting Wendy in I Need More, although as elsewhere his recollections are suspect. For instance, he suggests she fell in love with him because she’d been impressed by hearing his debut album, despite the fact they married a month before it was released. He also claims Wendy turned him on to the Velvet Underground, when he’d actually seen the band back in 1966. Louis Weisberg biographical details taken from Louis’s 2004 obituary in Cleveland Jewish News. Iggy writes in I Need More that he left Wendy for Betsy Mickelsen; in fact, he embarked on a brief affair with Kathy Asheton before he got together with Betsy.

  Louis Weisberg pressured for annulment . . . ‘It was all done on the pretext that [Jim] was a homosexual.’ Although papers were filed at Washtenau County for Jim and Wendy’s wedding, which gave details used here, I haven’t been able to locate the paperwork for the annulment to confirm Ron’s memories.

  The Rolling Stone review. For years, Rolling Stone’s review of the Stooges’ debut has been cited as ‘stoned sloths making music for boring, repressed people’, thanks to Lester Bangs quoting this phrase in Creem’s epic review of Fun House. However, the original Rolling Stone album review, written by Ed Ward, was supportive. The Rolling Stone review has often been credited to one Chris Hodenfield - who, however, reviewed it for Go, and did describe it as a dud, except for one standout track - ‘We Will Fall!’

  The album sold a just about respectable 32,000 copies. Sales figure mentioned by JO to Zig Zag, 1983.

  Ron Asheton’s guitar playing . . . was unique. Jim Osterberg once claimed, ‘If someone told us we had to play Chuck Berry or die, we would have to die.’ Ron Asheton’s guitar style, unlike that of successor and nemesis, James Williamson, is indeed devoid of conventional blues stylings, although there are corners of northern Mississippi where his ‘modal’ approach might sound familiar. Most blues styles revolve around the I, IV and V chords (the three chords used in ‘Louie Louie’); ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’, ‘Real Cool Time’, ‘Not Right’, ‘Dance of Romance’ and even ‘1970’ from Fun House, all revolve round an entirely different structure of the I and flattened III - nowadays, a classic stoner rock change.

  CHAPTER 5: FUN HOUSE PART I: I FEEL ALRIGHT

  The sources are as for the preceding chapter, plus Leo Beattie, Dave Dunlap, Steve Mackay, Esther Korinsky (EK), Don Gallucci, Leee ‘Black’ Childers, CK, Dave Marsh, Rumi Missabu, Tina Fantusi and Ed Caraeff. Many crucial dates, for instance when the band flew to LA, are taken from Popped.

  Iggy was the most beautiful thing many women had seen. Tina Fantusi saw Iggy play at the Fillmore in May. ‘He was the first guy I had ever been attracted to, a guy with a beautiful body. It was the first time a man’s appearance hit me on a physical level. I definitely found myself appreciating the male form, that beautiful muscle definition.’

  ‘I know I’m at the beginning . . .’ From John Mendelssohn’s interview in Entertainment World, May 1970.

  It wou
ld be six years or more before he stopped falling. The Stooges’ zenith was at Cincinnati Summer Pop Festival, 13 June 1970. On 8 August, Iggy sacked Dave Alexander, and around 18 August he set out to score heroin in New York. This marked the beginning of a slide in his fortunes that continued until at least 1976 and the recording of The Idiot.

  Preparatory rehearsals at SIR. Few of my interviewees remembered that the Stooges had rehearsed with Gallucci before the Elektra sessions. However, Ben Edmonds established that they worked there, for his superlative sleeve notes to the Rhino Handmade Fun House box set.

  Gallucci dictated the band should record one song per day, in the order of the band’s live set. It’s likely there were a couple of adjustments from the band’s normal set list, notably ‘Down On The Street’ - the most ‘com mercial’ song was recorded first, rather than the normal set-opener, ‘Loose’. The band also attempted one take of ‘Lost In The Future’, which had appeared in their live set, but they rejected it. A version appears on the Rhino Fun House 2-CD reissue.

  ‘We all took a whole bunch of cocaine.’ Ed Caraeff: ‘I think that was someone else [who gave the band cocaine]. I am 99 per cent sure I had never done cocaine at that point, it was later.’ Although no blame can attach to Ed, for the Stooges would surely have sampled cocaine a week or so later and Jim was also turned on to the drug by Danny Fields, both Jim Osterberg and Steve Mackay specifically remember sampling cocaine in the Fun House sleeve photo session.

  On 13 June in Cincinnati. Most fan sites and books name the televised show as being from Cincinnati Pop, which actually took place at Cincinnati Garden on 26 March. Summer Pop took place at Crosley Field on Saturday 13 June. Dead Boys singer Stiv Bators claimed to have been the fan who gave Iggy the jar of peanut butter, but there’s no supporting evidence, and when I contacted fans who claimed to have been with him for the show, they all became remarkably evasive. It was Cub Koda who witnessed Iggy being lifted by the crowd in the March Cincinnati performance.

  CHAPTER 6: FUN HOUSE PART II: THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED

  Sources: as for the preceding chapter plus Bill Williams, Nick Kent, Dan Carlisle, Wayne Kramer, James Williamson (JW), Michael Tipton, Hiawatha Bailey, Steve Paul, Rick Derringer, Liz Derringer, Gerard Malanga, John Mendelssohn and Lisa Robinson.

  Iggy was a guest on Dan Carlisle’s WKNR radio show. Carlisle’s interview with Iggy can be found at http://www.keener13.com/wknrfm1970.htm.

  In the grim heroin roll call, Adams and Mackay went first. Most of the finer details of the band’s involvement with heroin come from Steve Mackay and Bill Cheatham.

  Doc, the incontinent parakeet. Doc’s name first emerged in Brian J. Bowe’s interview with Iggy, printed in the excellent Heavy Liquid box set.

  Jim Osterberg: I really have to talk to you. Transcript courtesy of Danny Fields.

  By now they had developed a set of all-new material. At this time, the Stooges’ set included the songs ‘I Got A Right’, ‘You Don’t Want My Name’, ‘Fresh Rag’, ‘Do You Want My Love’ and ‘Big Time Bum’. In late 1970 the band announced in Motor City Rock and Roll News that ‘Big Time Bum’ would be their next single. It’s possible their set list included the song ‘Dog Food’, too. There is an unimpressive bootleg CD of the band’s performance at the Factory, St Charles on 27 May 1971; however, I have heard an as-yet-unreleased tape of their Chicago show that is far more brutal and impressive.

  Jac Holzman wrote to Danny Fields recommending a rehab clinic . . . Elektra demanded the return of $10,825. My special thanks go to Jeff Gold of Record Mecca, who gave me access to Danny Fields’ files. These contain much intriguing information, including Jac Holzman’s suggestion of rehab for Iggy, and Elektra’s demands that the Stooges’ performance income should go directly to the label. Also intriguing is a letter dated 29 September 1971 from Bill Harvey to Jim Osterberg, care of Danny Fields, which informed him: ‘We are pleased to advise you that . . . pursuant to our agreement with you of 4 October 1968 we are exercising our option to enter into a contract with you for your individual services as a recording artist.’ By late September 1971 this letter was irrelevant, as Iggy had already committed himself to MainMan, but the singer was unaware that Elektra had tried to retain him until Jeff informed him of this letter in 2005. The news, I am told, ‘blew his mind!’

  Jac Holzman was apologetic . . . and gave Jim a Nikon camera. This was mentioned in Iggy’s 1982 interview with Trouser Press. By now, although Jac Holzman still presided over Elektra, he had sold the company to what became the Warner Communications Group for a reported $10 million.

  Ron, Scott and Jimmy Recca played one last show with Steve Richards in place of Iggy. ‘I taped the show,’ says Michael Tipton, who also taped Metallic KO. ‘It was Jimmy Recca on bass, Ron on guitar and Scott on drums, of course. And a guy named Steve Richards, from River View, Michigan, hopped up and did about six or seven songs.’ It is Tipton’s tape of this three-piece band, without Iggy, which I believe is featured on various bootlegs, playing the songs ‘Ron’s Jam’ and ‘What’s You Gonna Do’.

  Iggy was making plans with a junkie’s deviousness. This might sound ungenerous, but Iggy was behaving as all junkies do. As Wayne Kramer points out, ‘All dope fiends betray one another all the time. In the rock world it might sound exciting or romantic. But it’s not. This stuff is utterly mundane, deadly boring and completely predictable.’

  David wanted to meet Iggy. Recollections of that evening, where Bowie went with the Robinsons to Max’s Kansas City and the Ginger Man are, Lisa Robinson told me, ‘like Rashomon. All seven different people remember it seven different ways.’ Lisa believes that Jim had turned up at the Ginger Man dinner earlier in the evening. However Danny, Jim and Tony Zanetta all agree that David met Jim at Max’s and, as Fields points out, ‘We were too lazy to walk all the way to the Ginger Man.’ Although in the end I didn’t follow Lisa’s sequence of events, I would like to thank her for her patience in discussing that evening, a long conversation that also involved husband Richard and Danny Fields.

  CHAPTER 7: STREET-WALKING CHEETAH

  Sources: Tony Zanetta, Lisa Robinson, JO, RA, SA, JW, Hugh Attwooll, Nick Kent, Michael Des Barres, John Newey, John ‘Twink’ Alder, Mick Farren, Dave Marsh, Richard Ogden, Wayne County, Angie Bowie, Cherry Vanilla and Leee ‘Black’ Childers.

  There was an innocence about the encounter between the two 24-year-olds [Iggy and Bowie]. Tony Zanetta: ‘David was very passionate about music and also the theater. He was excited about his career. But he was more innocent than portrayed these days.’

  [Iggy’s] performance was as classic in its way as anything seen at Ungano’s or the Electric Circus. ‘It was like a lightbulb went on and Jim could see that [Bowie and Defries] were good for him,’ says Zanetta. ‘He was American and they were English and fascinated by everything American. That morning, about living in the trailer, he played that up pretty big.’

  The notion that Clive Davis could succeed where Jac Holzman had failed appealed to the Columbia boss’s ego. Steve Harris [head of marketing at Columbia]: ‘I tried to explain [to Clive Davis] that you have to market this guy very differently. He didn’t understand. He just saw the chance of taking an act that didn’t make it and after it went on CBS and made a hit he would say, “See what I could do and they couldn’t!”’

  Will you do Simon and Garfunkel? Taken from Iggy’s 1974 interview with Lester Bangs for Creem magazine.

  The Columbia advance was widely touted as being $100,000 but this was typical Defries grandstanding. I am hoping that more details will surface on this deal in the near future. Zanetta believes the advance was either $25,000 or $37,500 for one album. Peter and Leni Gilman, who apparently had access to Gem paperwork, put the figure at $25,000.

  No English rhythm section was aggressive enough. David Bowie did call Twink, of the Pink Fairies, to ask him to audition with Iggy and James. Twink called, and they told him they were going back to America and didn’t need a drummer. Bowie had also suggeste
d calling the Pink Fairies’ other drummer, Russell Hunter, who tells me, ‘I can say with absolute confidence neither Sandy nor I were ever contacted about doing anything with him or his prospective band.’ (Russell did, by coincidence, audition for Johnny Thunders a few years later.) Jim Avery, World War Three’s bassist, also confirms that neither he nor drummer Paul Olsen auditioned for the Stooges.

  ‘The full-on quality of the Stooges was great, like flame-throwers.’ Quote from John Robb’s Punk Rock: An Oral History.

  ‘My insanity bar was raised so high . . . nothing sounded bent enough - ever.’ Taken from Jim’s comments to Brian J. Bowe, for the sleeve notes to the Easy Action box set, which contains the Olympic versions of ‘I Got A Right’.