Detroit Rock City (10 page)

Ron Asheton:
We went on later in the day on Saturday. The band was hot, and when we were hot, kids would get worked up. But the time we got to “Down in the Street” in our set, Iggy had those kids pretty damned worked up. There was a trench in front of the stage, four feet deep and four feet wide and running the length of the stage. It was secured by two police officers on horseback on the stage side and a wooden fence and Cyclone fence six feet high extended on the audience side of the trench. It was a wall of security to diffuse the crowd. As the song hit its groove, where the band holds the groove, Iggy raised his arm and beckoned to the crowd that was now smashing against the fence. When we got to the chorus where Iggy wails, “the wall,” those kids must have thought we were talking to them because they pushed the fence down and rushed the stage, which pretty much ended the festival.

Iggy Pop:
The other three guys grew up within. Ron and Scott were brothers, for Christ's sake, and even spent more time together than most brothers because they didn't go to school. Dave was their buddy from one block down in the subdivision who also didn't go to school, so they had a bond forged many years before I met them. I tried to join as much as I could, and I could only get so far. Once the group got going I started getting a lot of attention. It never bothered Scott, but Ron and Dave would scribble on the walls, “See Iggy. See Iggy puke.” It was funny, but on the other hand, there was something going on, and I was the guy who was forced to be the nag to get it. There wasn't going to be a rehearsal unless I asked eighteen times. So as the group went on, there were a couple of camps. More like three or four camps. You know, like Scotty was pretty much his own guy. Ron and Dave liked to hang out all night and watch TV together and smoke marijuana, and then there was me. So it was kinda like that, but at times there was the illusion and convenience of being part of a pack of guys that could help you go somewhere and do something cool that involves some intoxicating art and getting enough money in your pocket to score a little weed and meeting some cool chicks, and some things you do in America that you do when you're young and don't know any better. We had all that in common.

Ron Asheton:
At Olympic Studio in London, it was rehearsals for
Raw Power
in July 1972. That was pretty much the beginning. Iggy and James had gotten some material worked up, and this was the kickoff so they could hear and we could hear,
and things developed while we were there. Some great tunes came out of that: “I Got a Right,” and, of course, the classic “Good Bye Betsy.” Those guys were all clean, no one was taking any drugs—that was the deal. It was a good chance for him; he was working with Tony DeFries and he's got a record deal with CBS, so you don't want to screw up—he'd already screwed his life up and he pulled himself out of that hole, and it was a totally work-oriented situation. There was no fooling around; we had schedules for rehearsals—all we did was rehearse every day up until the recording of the record, and then even when we were done and Jim took off with Bowie for the states to mix and stuff, we still had to rehearse. It was like “Ehhh? Oh, you're kidding right?” So Jim was quite the taskmaster.

Bob Sheff:
Iggy called me up—it was 1973, I was in California to work at the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College—and he said, “Would you come and do a tour with us?” I had played with Iggy in the Prime Movers; he was a good drummer. He'd just gotten out of high school, whatever that age is. He was the first guy to dye his hair silver at that age. That was the midsixties. So I said, “Yeah, that'd be great to see you” and all that. I got to Los Angeles and we were staying on Mulholland Drive, and he had this house—he was right in front of this mansion and it was very strange. Then we went to Detroit to do a show at Ford Auditorium.

Ron Asheton:
My only disappointment was with how MainMan ran their operation. They had a really nice spread when we got done playing Ford. It was “Oh wow, look down in the dressing room.” They had luncheon tables full of food and champagne and a bar with all this food and stuff, and we just got finished playing and we were told we can't be at this party—it was for press. It's not really a party; Tony DeFries is holding his press conference, so we came off the stage, and I remember my brother going “What?” and my brother and I making a sandwich and stuffing it in our pocket and grabbing a couple of beers like some hobos on the run and then shuttled right out to the Book Cadillac, which was kind of funky at that time. It was Tony DeFries doing his big manager showcase dealio with the big cigar and his bravado, so it was the little guys gotta go along with it. He was only Jim's manager; we were just hirelings. We weren't considered—James, Scottie, and I.

Bob Sheff:
One of the MainMan people backstage was this arrogant, obviously Mafioso guy, very insulting like the guy who shakes your hand but he's staring the wrong way. Just before the show in Detroit and Iggy sent me on stage by myself.
He said, “Just go on out there and play.” I started playing off some of the simple rock licks of primitive, rock licks and a couple of little gospel things before they came out, and then they gradually came onstage, and people were getting more and more excited and screaming and hollering.

Robert Matheu (
photographer
):
I had tickets for the Stooges at Ford Auditorium, but I had been playing hockey without a cup on, and I got nailed in my right nut. I was living with my older brother, who's ten years older, and my sister-in-law, who's six years older. That was excruciating trying to tell her why she needed to take me to the hospital. I was due to get out of the hospital the next day, but I could not convince them to let me out. So I kind of snuck out the back door and went to the show at Ford Auditorium, shot photos, and then I went back to my hospital bed.

Nikki Corvette (
Nikki and the Corvettes, vocalist
):
It was a Detroit thing to do. I saw the Stooges so much that the guys in the band used me to get rid of the girls they didn't like. They'd call me over and, like, “Nikki, come here.” They'd put their arm around me and introduce me as their girlfriend. Then when the girl would leave they'd be like, “Thanks.”

Bob Sheff:
After Ford we did the Whiskey-a-Go-Go in LA. I was doing some clothing things—I was dressing like a punk before it was punk. I had these clothing pieces and I put LEDs in my hair, and nobody knew what they were, and basically my hair was . . . I had little spots of light, electric light, and everybody thought it was cigarette ash and trying to put out my hair, and I was yelling, “Stop, stop,” and as I was playing I was sweating also, and so that started making contact with the batteries for the thing, and I was getting these little shocks, sort of like Frankenstein. Before the show, that week, Iggy took me, we went to the driveway basically in the back of the house in LA and talked for several hours about, you know, things he'd been through and he wanted to talk to somebody he'd known before and felt more down to earth, because it had been a really wild number of years for him, and he felt he really wanted to get back in touch with friends.

Ron Asheton:
We just did that one show in Detroit, and I think DeFries dumped us after that, so we were just on to another manager, Jeff Wald, and he just put us on the road, and literally we were on the road for three or four months nonstop.

Bob Sheff:
The money situation was very weird, and I wasn't getting paid. Iggy was getting paid because they had to keep him happy, but no, the rest of us weren't
getting paid. The young manager that we had—I don't remember his name—he went to get money out of the bank, and he had a gun in his pocket, and we walked into the bank and he said, “This is for protection.” And we said, “Oh man, you brought a gun into the bank,” and he hid it of course, and he got out, $10,000 or something like that, and we walked out. It wasn't Iggy's fault. The manager was MainMan, and I told Iggy, “Look, Iggy, I'm running out of money, I don't have any money, I have to catch a plane back to Berkeley” and he said, “Well,” and I just packed up and I left.

Ron Asheton:
Max's was great fun times. We loved Max's Kansas City, the original studio's pre-James times, which I call the real Stooges—used to go to Max's all the time when we were in town, so we were quite comfortable. “Alright you boys, you've got a credit line at the restaurant, and at the end of your week of playing, we'll tally up your sums, pay your bill downstairs.” So every night after we played, we'd go downstairs and hang out and have our dinner and our drinks. We'd see a lot of our friends; a lot of people from Michigan came to the shows. One time Iggy came in pretty stoned. He was getting back into getting stoned in New York—people want to give him stuff; they want to make him a little monster, people were always shoving things into his face, into his hand. I'm sitting in the restaurant, and here comes Jim—Iggy—walking into the restaurant, and he's wearing like a turn-of-the-century nightgown—you know the big flowing, white thing that goes from the neck to the floor, has no shape, you look like a ghost—so I'm going, “Oh Jesus Christ,” and we're all kind of like, “Oh don't look at him.” It's not terribly embarrassing, but I know something's gonna happen. So there were these yuppie types who were not your normal Max's Kansas City musician-type people—high-end younger couples, two couples. So Jim's just walking around the restaurant, seeing who's there. So when he gets to their table, they had just gotten their wine and salads and stuff, and he falls and he grabs on to their table cloth, and the stuff comes pouring down on him; a couple of us just got up and split. I remember the guy swearing at him. Now it's funny, but then it was “Oh no.”

He'd see somebody or maybe people, or they would say, “Hey Iggy” and he would just sit down at people's tables and start eating their food, and no one was pissed or anything, but he would sit down and partake a bit of that, then he'd talk and then get up and just move on to another table. So at the end of the week, when it was time to pay up the bill—I think only I perhaps got paid for the week—I know Scottie, James, and Iggy had spent all of their paychecks downstairs in the restaurant, which I think was their [Max's] secret plan anyway. They're going, “They're playing upstairs and all the money will be spent downstairs.”

I remember Jim being very generous. He was signing his name; he would sit down at a table and have a couple bites and sign their check, so I think he actually ended up owing money. And that was the classic time he got cut, he had those bad slices—you see those pictures—and after one of the shows we went to Alice Cooper's penthouse to hang out after the show, and when I looked at his chest, I'm going “stitches.” So Alice actually got on the phone and woke up his personal physician and had a cab take Iggy to the doctor's to get stitched up, you know, like, at what, two or three in the morning?

Stirling Silver:
I was in New York that summer and went to Max's Kansas City every single night. I would go to Arthur Kane's apartment, pick him up in my car—of course everybody took taxis or subways, nobody had a car in New York—and park it by South Park Avenue. Max's was right there, and there was this little playground in Gramercy Park with, like, a tree fort made of metal. No one could see you in there, and we could sit in there and drink a couple of 40s of Old English 800—we didn't have that in Detroit and I loved that stuff. Iggy was there for that week, but it was sold out. Everyone was there—Alice Cooper, Todd Rundgren, Wayne County.

Art Lyzak (
Mutants, vocalist, manager Lili's bar
):
In 1972 the Mutants were fourth on the bill in St. Clair Shores Civic Arena with Iggy and the Stooges. This was like when they were just on their last legs; it was the Stooges, Bob Seger, Catfish Hodge, Mutants. They were just so junked out; they were fucking horrible. The band came out and started playing “
Raw Power
,” and it was about ten or fifteen minutes before Iggy even came out. And right before he came out to the front of the stage he took a dump behind the Marshall amp. I guess that's a junk thing or something. Then he kind of came out with a little skimpy thing on; it was just like fucking horrible. I mean I stood there for like ten or fifteen minutes after he started and thinking, like, just how bad they'd gotten.

Mike Rushlow (
Pigs, Rushlow-King Combo, guitarist
):
It was Catfish Hodge, Bob Seger, and the Stooges. Bob Seger wore this giant hat, and he came out, and the first thing he said was, “Well, I'm not going to play any of my old stuff.” Everyone was like, “Get off the stage! Where's the Stooges?”

Bob Mulrooney, aka Bootsey X (
Ramrods, Coldcock, Bootsey X and the Love-masters, drummer, vocalist
):
I saw 'em at St. Claire Shores Civic Arena, with Seger opening for the Stooges. The Stooges only played five songs, and Iggy was in the
crowd the whole five songs. It was fucking great. This girl I went to high school with liked me, and Iggy liked her, so we got to go to the party afterwards. It was at a motor inn or something, and there was this hippie-ish guy—he probably had one of the first video cameras ever—and he probably, once he got it, he shot every band, because he didn't look like a Stooges fan. But he was showing the concert, and Iggy was there, and this guy's going over all the technical stuff, and Iggy's going, “Shut up man, I'm trying to watch this.'”

Nikki Corvette:
I went to the show in Toledo when they played with Slade. James and Scott were sharing a hotel room, and me and my boyfriend were sleeping on the floor, and because we just went down there—we didn't have a place to stay or whatever. Scott was a little mad that I wouldn't sleep with him, and he was getting a little out of hand, and me and my boyfriend went out and sat in the hall. Slade was out there and everybody was arguing. Iggy walked out of his room totally naked and said, “Hey, want to fuck?” And I went “Me? No.” So he came out a couple of minutes later and said, “Will you wash my hair?” I said, “No.” I left that night because Slade was kind of scary and there was a fight I didn't want to be around. People were out in the halls yelling at each other, and the whole night was crazy. James got a call from cops in the coffee shop saying that he had to come get Iggy because he was trying to get drugs from the cops. But when Iggy went back to LA he sent me this really nice poster with a black-and-white kind of etching of Bowie, and he wrote on the back, “Nikki, we never did fuck, did we? Love Pop.” My boyfriend got mad and tore it up.