Iggy: “I had a dream”

NEW YORK. The Stooges been here and gone. Three incredible nights at Ungano’s. Opening night, celebritydrenched. Kind of wierd show-offy audience, many there to be seen more than to see, hear and feel Stooges. But the band was on, of course. They always are. They’re never bad, just different sometimes than others, sometimes better than others depending on how you feel about them, about their music.

The new bass player, Zeke Zettner, was with them as was horn player, Steve MacKay. There was a lot of electricity in the air, waiting for the time for the set to start (midnight, of course). Why must there be these long dry runs between visits of the Stooges? New York City is right up .their alley—Bill Graham, do ya hear me?

They came onstage, Iggy walked up to the mike, smiled. Someone called, “Welcome back, Iggy!” The tension built some and then it began.

It was the three nights. Not just three separate sets, ending with jamming till closing on the last night. What started on Tuesday night carried over, grew, developed on Wednesday night, climaxed on Thursday night, easing off, relaxing with the jam session. Most of the numbers played were the same each night, but emotionally and artistically it felt like one unit, one performance. The main selections were from Funhouse. of course.

Some images. Ungano’s is a small club, with a raised platform rather than a formal stage. There are some tables on the side, rows of chairs in the center from the middle of the room to the rear, people sitting on the floor in front of the platform. I was standing to the left of the platform, watching the band, Iggy from the back, as he moved into the audience. He approached one young man sitting on the floor. The guy looked back at Iggy as Iggy sat on the floor and stared at him. Iggy leaned forward, resting against the guy. The young man looked down at Iggy, smiled, and put his arms around him. The young man looked up and I was directly in his line of vision. I was smiling too. He looked at me and laughed with a kind of joy, shaking his head, and then looked back down at Iggy, back up. I was laughing too. It all had to do with love, you know, and the energy the Stooges create. The audience, the people in the audience can do with it what they will. The Stooges are raw-edged, but artists. You can sit and get hostile to thier music, to what they’re trying to do. Iggy is the focal point, providing the jump to the audience. You can respond and feed back what you want to. They’re ever-changing.

What continues to impress about the Stooges again and again, is their willingness to deal with pain, with the terror that can sometimes be felt in trying to be human. Iggy exposes bare cores for all of us; we can recognize it or turn away in embarrassment, keep the defenses up and say we don’t know what he and the Stooges are getting at. It’s a little scary to get a handle on it.

The second night the band walks out. Iggy walks over to the same young ^nan who had responded the night before and gives him one of his old silver-lame gloves (he’s not wearing them now). It’s not noblesse oblige, it’s just a nice thing to do. The band starts up again. It has a different flavor this night, more developed. The audience seems more thoughtful. At the end, Iggy, hunched on all fours, repeats over and over into the mike,

/ once had a dream But now my dream is dead.

/ used to be a boy But now I am a head, (ox ahead?) It’s pronounced like an incantation, it’s hypnotic. But Iggy is not playing obvious tricks, it just works.

By the third night, everything that had been good became better. The whole set was stunning, everything built beautifully. The band’s music amazing-everything, everyone, is tied together: Ron, Zeke, Steve, Scott, with Iggy having a field day. The feeling has become even more immediate and close by the third night. At the end of the set, Iggy hunches again, then sits, saying over and over.

Here / am, on the floor Here I am, at your door Here / am, ready to beg Here I am, with an arm and a leg. At another point:

Open up, let me in...

It was so good, it couldn’t get better. Most of us were limp, but up too. So was the band. So they came back out and jammed. “Way Back In Egypt” it •was. A beautiful jam, the band great, Iggy on the floor, improvising words, phrases, taking us to Egypt, to hell, to wherever. They played and played until the dub owner Nick Ungano said no more, it’s past dosing. We were stoned and emotionally exhausted by the catharsis of the three nights. The Stooges are light years ahead. They’re dangerous because you have to let your defenses down to let them in. They’re about the gamut of feelings of being alive. They’re primordial and sophisticated all at once.

Footnotes to this, which somehow tie in. Some of us saw a viewing of the film of the Cincinnati rock festival while the Stooges were here. In the viewing room were the bigwigs, the money men, Mike Goldstein. This all took place at Metromedia studios-the film is for television, an hour and a half of rock showing on MM stations and other outlets, some 15 at last count. Money, money all around. I was struck by the irony that I had been in this room once before after viewing a taping of a David Susskind show on which a good friend of mine, Eric Mann, had appeared. Eric had been warmly treated by bigwigs and money people in that room because he had been very, very good on the show-he has an excellent mind, and is articulate. It’s also immediately obvious to anyone meeting him that Eric is a good person, one of the best I know. But now he’s serving two years in a Boston prison, ostensibly on assault, but we all know it’s really because he was the leader of Boston Weatherman. E’re fuck Metromedia could give.

Well, so we watched this 90 minutes of boredom, narrated by Jack Lescoulie. If you look at it as a farce, you may be able to get off on it. I knew it was trouble when I heard Mike Quatro, one of the producers, refer to home plate in Crosley Field as “home base.” Quatro is saying they offered him “home base” as the site for the stage, but he opted for second base. Dumb move, characteristic of others. I am running this down only because at this date the show has not been sold to Detroit, and though the film editors tried to savage them (they’re the only group interrupted by commercials) the Stooges are the high point of the show. The Stooges and Danny Fields were at the viewing and urged that the show be sold to Detroit so that hometown friends could see, but there was some apparent hostility to the request. Good luck, Detroit.

Additional footnote: Richard Robinson, filling in for Night Bird Allison on WNEW-FM (MM again) got one in one night with the opening of the show: “This next hour is dedicated to John Sinclair.” The next hour was great: The Velvet Underground, early MC5, Stooges, Stones, Up, and Flaming Groovies.

So the spirit of John Sinclair and what he helped to create in Detroit has been testing in New York City for the past few weeks. He may be in prison, but he sure gets around.