HONEY COME & BE MY ENEMY I CAN LOVE YOU TOO

HONEY COME & BE MY ENEMY I CAN LOVE YOU TOO

Iggy & the Stooges take America by the Spleen

by

Esther & Lester

The Stooges are back, and I’m happy, and I’m sad. Happy because they’re such a great, great band, a distillation of beautiful fury that could tear your head off. Sad, because I’m sitting in a scumpit called the Michigan Palace waiting through three dogshit bands for them to come on. It’s not just that the environment’s ugly, but that I’ve been sitting in essentially this same place fpr five years now, counting a couple years layoff, waiting for them to break over the edge they always seem to be pushing toward and make it really big.

I have what Iggy calls “optimistic fatalism,” because I believe in the Stooges. I’ve seen Iggy race into an audience and tear out its entrails and make them love it, I’ve seen this band pick up all the negative .energy in the universe and turn it transcendent and human, like “Death '■Trip'”:

Honey come and be my enemy

I can love you too

One of those rare bands with a vision, the Stooges never fail to reach their audience one way Or another. The Stooges are all about participation, and the reason Iggy dives into the audience and wreaks havoc is the same as the reason why, way back when the band was first'cutting their chops in their: house in Ann Arbor, he used to drag every kid he could find in off the street. Especially all the little girls that came to see them. There would be musical instruments of every type strewn all over the floor, and Pop would steer the visitor straight to the nearest one Whether he or she’d ever had a note of schooling or not: •“There, go on, you can play it, good, now you’re a member of the band too!”

See? It was magic, and so is the polished insult they’re parlaying today, except now every member of that audience, loving it or trying to summon the courage to leavei is a member of the band. And that’s one of the finest gifts* I’ve ever heard of any rocker giving his fans.

Growing Up With 'The Stooges, Part One: Suicide

But good intentions ain’t enough. The Stooges have moved in fits and

starts all their lives, and the present myth takes off with the fatal crash pf the Early Original Stooges, who were founded in Ann Arbor back in 1968 about two weeks after they all started trying to learn their instruments for the first time, and a year or so before the release of their first album. Which surris up a big part of their message: you can do it. Start frofn less than nothing arid; snap the world in two.

But that was another story about another band, although the personnel’s pretty much the same. After two albums and Cult success they broke up in a welter of legal, chemical and personality problems. Suffice that Jim Osterberg, aka iggy Stooge, aka The Mighty Pop, thought that* James Williamson (aka The Skull) was the greatest guitarist he had ever heard, and there were clashes with lead guitarist Ron Asheton. James was, a better guitarist than Ron. But in spite of that and in spite of what James calls that period of “general apathy,” there was a feelingVa cohesion,

a mystical sense of family to the Stooges that died hard. Ron’s brother Scott (aka Rock Action) was the perfect drummer for this band in terms of attitude, and even though bassists seemed to come and go there was even at the nadir of dissolution a feeling that out of this shambles some dark phoenixlike entity might yet* rise.

“The disintegration of the Stooges at/ that point,” says Iggy today, “was also at/least in my mind a reflection of the germinal growth of what I wanted to do with James. Because wfe knew that we could do something better. But I was involved in kicking a very vicious junk habit, and James and I saw very little of each other for a long time. But I finally got back into working hard, going out and trying to hustle up a gig.

Finally I went to New York City with no money, no prospects, sleepin’ in the streets, rough and tumble, really out of yoiir mind, no body, yet still somehow an active and aggressive man. Y’know whar I mean? I was sleeping with friends," then I was sleeping in Elektra’s offices [the band’s old label]. I had a friend there who gave me a key, so I’d sneak in and hide in the executive washroom, then come out after hours. There was usually something around, I’d have a big bottle of champagne to take with me when I’d leave in the morning. ... so I ate tori... I’d order out for big dinners and charge it to Elektra’s tab. . ." they had a Watts line and I’d sit up all/night making long distance tele* phone calls to all over the world... and I’d finally crash on the floor, get up about ten, and of course nobody important ever .comes in on time, and I’d leave.”

David Cassidy Joins the Stooges

“I had a lot of friends who bent over backwards to keep me goirig. But finally one day I was oveT at Danny Fields’, and just about ready to give up. I wasn’t able to get up anything concrete, there’d been offers to turn me into David Cassidy and like that: ‘If you’re willing to change this particular song. ..’ etc. Got an offer from Elektra, another one from Steve Paul about joining a band with Rick Derringer: ‘You will be allowed to write the words. Everything else will be strictly. . .’ I felt like a puppet even listening to shit like that, so I wasn’t buyin’ any of it.”

Jimmy Stewart vs. David Bowie

“So anyway I was sittin’ around Danny Fields’ one night watching Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, and I was deep into it when Danny calls from Max’s. Says, ‘You remember this guy David Bowie?’ A year ago in' Melody Maker he’d listed me as his favorite singer or something. So Danny says, ‘Grab a cab down to Max’s, he wants to meet you.’ So 11 said okay, but I couldn’t tear myself away from the movie, cause Jimmy Stewart was so sincere. Fields kept calling me, saying ‘Listen, man, do yourself a f^vor.’ Cause Fields was kinda like my second mind. So finally after about a hundred Calls I made it down there, just as they were about to close. It was ridiculous, here’s all these people with money and everything, all waiting for this little scumbag that’s got nothin’. [AND WALKING AROUND NEW YORK CITY IN HIS PAJAMAS. — ED.] So I finally stroll in, yTcnow, and there’s Bowie and Tony DeFries [captain of the Mainman industry] and a couple of the company freaks. So I hit it off with David and Tony...”

NOT LIKE THE OTHER TIME LATER IN LONDON WHEN BOWIE SHOWED UP FOR A PRESS CONFERENCE DRUNK AND TRIED TO DISPLAY THE PLAY POWER OF HIS NEW EMPIRE TO THE WORLD BY GRABBING THE MIGHTY POP FOR A SLOPPY KISS, WHICH WAS MET WITH A FIST STRAIGHT IN THE FACE.

“... They said ‘Are you hungry?’ and I said *U|i-huh!’ I hadn’t eaten in about four days, so they took me out and I ordered two dinners. This was the exact same time that I wanted to approach Tony about managing me, so we talked about it, and I signed my sold. He talked me into it, and we were gonna go to London pretty soon and put something together. So I called James in Detroit and said, ‘Well, I think we’ve got something going.’ ”

IGGY ALWAYS WANTED TO BE THE DARLING OF THE BACK ROOM AT MAX’S WHATEVER HE SAYS', BUT THE ONLY OTHER GOOD IGGY AT MAX’S STORY ASIDE FROM THE HISTORIC BROKEN GLASS WALLOW WAS UTTER FACT THAT IN SELFSAME RECENT ENGAGEMENT THE STOOiSES LOST ALL THEIR MONEY FOR THE WHOLE GIG BE-, CAUSE EVERY NIGHT ONE MEM. BER OF THE BAND WOULD SIGN THE TAB FOR THE WHOLE BACK ROOM, DRINKS AND DINNER. TALK ABOUT GLADHANDING, WHAT POLITICIANS!

Stuck in Chelsea with the A-Square Blues Again ^

“But when we got over-to London' they started trying to slide us into this big superstar trip, ridin’ in a limousine, just to go to the drugstore and all that, and I said ‘We don’t want , any of this shit, this airi*t where we’re at...’ Then he sent us back to Detroit for a few months. Nothing was accomplished.”

Clive Davis’ Last Prefrontal Hemorrhage

“But Iggy had gone to New York,” interjects James, “up to CBS to get the contract.”

Mitey Pop: “What happened is DeFries was in New York at that time and gave me a hundred bucks, said ‘Here, go out and buy yourself something presentable and see that you show up tomorrow afternoon at 2:30 in Clive Davis’ office.’ So I threw together what I could, went up there and walked out fifteen minutes later with a six-figure contract. I sang ‘The Shadow of Your Smile’ for him, arid did a little softshoe. .. And totally, just whatever he asked, he asked me if I’d do this or that or the other thing, I’d say no.

“ ‘Will you do Simon and Garfunkle?’ ‘No, I won’t’

“ ‘Will you be more melodic?’ ‘No, I won’t,’

“ ‘Will you do what anybody asks you to?’ ‘No, I won’t.,. but I can sing, ya wanna hear it?* And I just sang that, and he said, ‘Okay, enough, enough!’ And just picked up the phone and said, ‘Yeah, call the legal department.’ And that was it.”

See how easy it is to get a pieces of the continent? All you gotta doLis Bojangle and tip your hat.

Down & Out in London on $800 a Day

James: “There was a couple of'days in New York then when we weren’t sure they were gonna allow us into England. We hadda wait, because they couldn’t believe us because we weren’t tourists. jVe were coming into the country, not as total burns but... not a penny in our pocket, but we’d just signed a several hundred thousand dollars contract. And* so we got into London and we Were put into the Royal Garden Hotel for a day for a tremendous amount of money.”

“In the bridal suite!” laughs Iggy. “We were embarrassed — there was this hidden bed in the wall, but we couldn’t find it, so we thought we had to sleep in the same bed. So we slept together for like a week before we realized it... we’re straight guys [laughs], so it was weird for us, sleeping in this pink bed with ruffled sheets/’

I’ll bet Bowie and all them cats lovfd that.

“They weren’t even up there at this point; we were in a strange country and we didn’t know anybody....

“‘We 'Started growing as people too, y’know, James’d try and get me outa the house a little bit and I wouldn’t be goin’ for it. .

LIVING QUARTERS FOR POP & WILLIAMSON IN LONDON: FOUR STORY HOUSE IN CHELSEA, BEAUTIFUL DIGS @ $600 A MONTH PAID FOR BY COLUMBIA W. MACROBIOTIC MAID.

But even as new. surroundings tightened them up as a personal song unit, the historically endemic blandness of the whole British trip, combined with frictions sarcastically yassuhbossing in and out of the Mainman hives, pushed the Stooges off acculturation back into the O-mind. “We were learning how their scheme at Mainman was run. And we were looking for musicians, trying to get something together. And the morewe got to know England, the more we felt that there wasn’t anybody over there we wanted to play with. Because We knew what we wanted, but like Mick Ronson was trying to get involved with us, and different people were trying to

put their finger in it, and we were just really disappointed with' the whole thing.” /

Rock Action Saves The Day

“So we said, what the fuck, man, we know a good drummer that we can depend on, and we called Scott and Ron and they wanted to come over. Of course everybody at Mainman slowed it up, but we finely got ’em over there, started writing, Pop and I were turning out all kinds of material...” -

Ig Pop: “We wrote a hundred tunes before we got ready to cut Raw Power, and then we wrote half the album in the studio.” -

ALL DUE ADMIRATION FOR THEIR PROLIFICACY ASIDE - and I would’ve given all my teeth just to have, that beast be a double album — IT STILL MUST BE NOTED" THAT THE ACCREDITATION OF ALL COMPOSITIONS TO THE TEAM OF “POPWILLIAMSON” ON tHE BACK OF THE RECORD IS NO MORE STRICTLY TRUE THAN “MIXED BY DAVID BOWIE.” ALL STOOGE MATERIAL HAS ALWAYS BEEN CREATED BY THE COOPERATIVE EFFORTS OF THE ENTIRE BAND. THESE AIN’T HAROLD ARLEN SONGS, F’R CHRISSAKE, IT TAKES FOUR TURBINES TO MAKE THIS CHURN, AND THIS SORT OF THING IS ALMOST ENOUGH TO MAKE THE DISPASSIONATE OBSERVER (WHO AFTER ALL GOTTA SHIV SOME SKEPTICISM TO THIS LEGEND SOMEWHERE) WONDER WHETHER THE SOCIAL STRATIFICATION OF THE STOOGE UTOPIA MIGHT NOT BREAK DOWN TO THE SAME OLD FEUDAL ARRANGEMENT OF MASTER-STOOGES AND STOOGESTOOGES. IN ANY CASE, FINAL . ANSWER WILL HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL ANY OF THEM HAVE ANY MONEY.

James: “So we started doing some live gigs over there and the reviews were really good, everybody loved us. We practiced from eleven to four every night, and we were tight... but suddenly we were stopped for mysterious reasons. ”

TURN TO PAGE 72.

IGGY POP

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 41.

L.B.: “Did you go through all those quaaludes?”

IJP.: “Yeah... aww, shit, I didn’t know you, uh...”

James: “See, we didn’t realize until after it was all over what was going down, how much there was to it... but WE WERE GETTING TAKEN FOR A RIDE, MAN.”

Ig: “We sure were. In the sense of not being allowed to buy a $200 car, forced to ride limousines, stuff like that. And it was our money we spent, right? I didn’t go anyplace because I was kept like this: [TIES HIMSELF UP IN HIS OWN ARMS] I was kept on a chain. We started recording this album, at enormous costs before we ever went into the studio. Like just for writing, James and I would go into a four track or eight track and spend ten hours in there just workin’ on writin’ tunes.”

ZEKE Z. ONLY KNOWS HOW MANY GREAT TITLES WERE LOST, BUT AMONG THOSE FROM THIS PERIOD: “FRESH RAG.” LYRICS: “I CAN SMELL YOU WALKIN’ DOWN THE STREET WITH YOUR FRESH RAG ON.” SUNG AS THE WIFE OF A COLUMBIA PRODUCER HAPPENED TO BE PASSING IN THE CORRIDOR OUTSIDE AND TOOK IT, UH, PERSONALLY.

James: “So finally after months of this we had an album. And DeFries was trying to persuade us to stay over there, just to keep us out of the way. But everybody in the band and back home was pushing to come back to America. So we came back with the tapes first, and the tapes were such a mess. We were under pressure, we were already so late on the album that we just handed the tapes to Bowie and said, ‘Here, David,’ and David waited five months to go in and mix IN THREE AND A HALF DAYS an album that was so fuckin’ complicated — ”

Pop: “Half the time the good p&rts were mixed out by that fuckin’ carrottop. .. sabotaged. I think he tried to bury parts so you’d hear them faintly, rather than a straight mix... He did a good job on .‘Search and Destrov.’ ”

“I was in there with Bowie when he was mixing that thing,” cuts in James heatedly, “and the tracks were really complicated because this was our first shot-at production. But even though he understood what this meant, he was sayin’, ‘Well, listen, this is the track that goes here,’ just trying to rearrange all kinds of shit, man;”

Iguano: “And I at that point had been cowed by the whole thing, I was at a weak point personally, and didn’t have the personal strength and confidence to fight back, so I decided not to.”

Well, it’s a sad story, but ain’t exactly new either. And just like Frank Zappa could probably tell you just about as many sad stories about Captain Beefheart as vice versa, so Bowie could undoubtedly marshall sufficient proof that these guys did nothing but come in and spend up ransoms in studio time while Mainman was coddling their “genius,” only to slap outthis piece of dogshit so dense you couldn’t seep treacle through it. Bowie’s pretty much an MOR straight-shooter, really, a secret swinger when all is said and done. His albums all sound like they were produced and mixed by somebody who served his apprenticeship assembling ships in bottles with elongated Q-Tips, so it’d hardly be surprising if he really couldn't hear the monolith of the age. On the other hand, he’s noted for eliminating the competition by .buying them up, and his earlier quoted comments on the Stooges album, like his statements about Lou Reed, reveal how essential it must be to keep the delicate condescension-masking-con tempt (masking jealousy/fear? naw, maybe that’s getting too melodramatic for anybody but the disgruntled musicians involved) operative while tending to all the little deviant (sub) cultures under his wing. Wilhelm Stekel once pointed out that many philanthropists are secret sadists. And anyway, since David’s really such a nice fellow as he is, it’s elegance and diplomacy itself to love all your erstwhile playmates and leave the dirty work of spine-scuttling and powerjockeying to the uptight drones of Mainman.

James: “They pulled a lot of power tricks on us after that, too. They made us use the album cover and the name the way they wanted it.”

Ig:: “I didn’t see the album till it was in tire stores, and when I saw that “IGGY” on there like that [LOOKING LIKE AN AMATEURISH TAKEOFF ON FIFTIES B-MONSTERFLIX POSTER LETTERING... DRIPPING MUNG. — Ed.] I flipped right out. I could have screamed. That cover was just the shits. Elektra’s were better. Tony DeFries purposely did that out of context. They couldn’t find a way to tie it up, and they blamed it on us. They said, ‘You guys weren’t available for taking pictures,’ which was untrue. [IG AIN’T LYIN’ HERE. - ED.] Leee Childers was out there, taking pictures up the asshole. From the time we got to London till we got back here, all we ever really accomplished out of the whole thing was just some good music. We grew in our music. I can say that if I were to die tomorrow, I’ve come farther than I would have ever dreamed with my music before we made that album. I just hope more people can hear what’s there than the number I suspect can.”

Mainman Don’t Need No Doctor: Tony DeFries Death-Wrestles The Skull

James: “So we came back and played Detroit.”

Did they ever. March 73, triumphal return of the homeboys and greatest show many ever saw them do. Absolutely twitch-perfect* they sounded and looked slick as a whip, and the audience was frothing floodtides down the aisles. Short set, though, and when the Stooges didn’t return for encore (on orders of DeFries, who wanted they should act like stars) the crowd perhaps not unaccountably snarled sideways into antipathy as furious and naked as the love in the air riot five minutes before. A friend: “Well, nothing like snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.” Luck of the Stooges?

James Williamson: “It was our second gig in a year and a half. But the band was having a lot of the kind of problems you always do if you don’t work. DeFries was pulling a lot of numbers and right after that he pulled his big one. He figured he’d put me out of the way, and that way he could control Iggy.”'

Maybe. Mainman’s rigidly puritanical position on drugs of all sorts is well known, and the Stooges are not exactly reknowned for their temperance. Hall monitors at Mainman might issue citations to sepcies and underwazoo flack hacks for toking in the john, but a man whose time and stature and assets were as valuable as TonV DeFries’ were could hardly be expected to shelter a band with a junkie lead guitarist. James ain’t no schmecker in any more sense than anybody else in the band; they may not play the Gulf Stream blues, but they do like to party just like every other itinerant guitar clown. So maybe it was all just a gopd excuse for the grand (and last) play from Above.

Iggy: “De Fries’ leverage that he tried to use for that one was that he said if we didn’t accede to his wishes he would use every trick in the book to see to it .that I would never step out on a stage again at all. He promised court inunctions, that he would tie me up for the rest of my life..

Why did he want James out of the band, though, aside from any possible disagreements over chemical table manners?

The Skull: “A lot of things were involved. A lot of things I was dissatisfied with in their fuckin’ set-up.

Drugs were involved, even though it was only a minimal kind of thing. What it really was was just caviling. And it wouldn’t even have gotten to that point if we’d been able to work. We’d been working all these little clubs in England, building up an audience, and DeFries kept saying, “Naw, man, wait, you’re too big, just wait and I’ll give you the call when it’s time.’ Which was either a big mistake or a big lie. DeFries wanted Pop to be a star, and he didn’t want a band, because he had been having, trouble with Bowie’s band too.”

Sour grapes maybe, but with the ring of substantiality. Similar complaints were heard from Mott the Hoople, who were also on a more quietly reserved and less rancorous level involved , in extricating themselves from the Bowie fiefdom at that same time. Maybe eliminating the competition by buying them up and then putting 'em on the shelf?

And anyway it all makes no difference now, because no contract is binding which tries to pin a spine as doublejointed as the Mighty Pop’s. Who spake: “I’m the only one signed with Tony DeFries. But I wasn’t gonna have any of that shit, either. I said, ‘This is a band, buddy, and if you don’t wanna have nothin’ to do with the band then you better have nothin’ to do with me.’

“We told him to kiss off and came out here.”

Growing Up With The Stooges, Part Two: One Day Like a Lion

Talking about survival, son. Mussolini: “Better to live ohe day like a lion than all your life cowering like a ro-. dent” (approximate).

Which is the whole point and ultimate good omen on the Stooge story. Like Walking Tall: DON’T TREAD ON ME! The Stooges would as soon slit your navel to your septum as take any waxstax biz bozo’s endless ration of horseshit. They’ve come up hard, went down broke and jonesed out once, and now they’re fine. At least one member of this band is fully prepared to take care of business on the business end, and that’s all you need to keep from getting bought up, diced and priced and sold down the rack. They are strong, with the rare strength to lunge head in and make the direst mistakes imaginable, then drive on from every horror and setback, and all of us are gonna lose if they don’t connect with the world soon and get a claw on the reins this time.

They’ve changed management again since Mainman sank, and at this writing they don’t have a record company. Vinyl shortage, general penury and paranoia in the music biz, so no more Columbia under the proud Stooges logo. But they’ll be getting another deal, perhaps even before you read this, and we’ll certainly be able to make next year sustain with what comes after Raw Poer, however it can be picked from this band’s constant surfeit of new material. Right now they’re keeping in shape by tearing around the tour trestles, and every time you see them it seems they’ve added not one but several more new songs, bedrock universal ramalammas whose titles grab you by the throat and make you laugh from the spleen: “I Got Nothin’,” “Rich Bitch,” “Wet My Bed,” “Head On the Curb,” “Open Up & Bleed,” “She-Creatures of the Hollywood Hills.” And the addition of pianist Scott Thursten has given the sound a whole new bite.

The new scheme for Total Victory embodies, furthermore, the consistent awareness of where they’ve rim wrong before. The rock ’n’ roll business is such an infantile fantasy that you can hardly believe it when you run up on a musician who actually has the wherewithal to be realistic (maybe it takes one failure to instill that). James Williamson of Iggy & the Stooges: ‘‘It’s all finally working out like we’ve always planned; we’ve worked'more in the last month than in the past two and a half years. We’re doing it the hard way, and the right way. I’m not gonna, say it’s all on the up arid up, because it’s not. We’ve got a lot of problems right now: we have a refutation to live down, and we still make mistakes. But our following is getting stronger. If we can make a good solid album, we’re all right. If we can’t get record sales on this next album, then we’re fucked. I think this material’s gonna be a lot stronger, and our overall production sound’s gonna be a LOT better. It’s gonna be a very clean album, very commercial. We have had so much negative appeal for so many years that we’re just gonna die unless we. can stop that appeal. So we’re gonna go on playing every gig we can, putting ori a professional show, no one’s gonna get hurt and nothing weird’s gonna happen, but I can guarantee you that if you go you ain’t never seen anything like us. Because we don’t plan on making any more mistakes. In any direction.”