Last Podcast On The Left - No Dogs in Space: The Stooges, Episode 1

Episode Date: January 22, 2020

Check out Marcus' new show: NO DOGS IN SPACE. Here's the first episode! On our first series, we cover the so-called godfathers of punk, The Stooges. Join us as we explore the early days of Iggy and the boys as the more innocent of their drug-fueled escapades as the band tries figuring out their voice in the midst of the ultimately empty peace and love movement.

Music How does that Iggy Pop song go? The one that I really like, is the one that he did his solo success. Oh, yeah. Here come success. Here come success. Here come success.

All right. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to No Dogs in Space. This is a music history podcast that will, each season, attempt to tell the story of a subgenre in rock music through the stories of the bands

that defined that genre from the most well-known to the more obscure, yet still highly respected innovators. I'm your co-host, Marcus Parks, and with me is my wife and number one concert-going partner, as well as the only woman

to ever successfully merge record collections with me, Carolina Hidalgo. Many have tried, and many have failed. And you succeeded. I didn't succeed. You succeeded. Well, actually, yeah,

I succeeded. I was the first round of that night. So, on this first season, we're aiming to tell the story of the genre of music that brought the two of us together way back when we first started dating, because this genre holds some

of our favorite music ever recorded. This first season is all about punk. Oh, good. I was afraid we were going to do Nintendo Core. What's wrong with that? Nothing. Oh, you don't want to listen? Stroll these notes away.

You don't want to talk about Anamana Gucci for three hours? Later. Later. That's our off time. Well, through the stories of 10 Bounds, plus a few compilation episodes, we hope to paint a portrait of the punk genre,

and along the way, share a lot of the music we love with every single one of you. Because that's a thing. This show is for everybody. For those of you who don't know a lot about punk, welcome. And we hope you enjoy what you hear,

because there's nothing that I love more than introducing someone to something they've never heard. You know what? And I love that too, because there's nothing worse than people making their own things and their own thing that they're a fan of,

like an exclusive club. I hate it. It's so dumb. And I mean, this is for everybody. Yeah. Whoever wants to listen to this stuff, and it shouldn't be like a, you got to like it before it was cool,

because you know what? If you think that way, then you're just not cool, man. I've always loved doing that, since I was a kid. Just like, hey, have you heard this thing, but not like,

have you heard this thing yet? Oh, you haven't heard that? It's more like, have you heard this thing yet? Oh, you haven't heard that? Oh, fucking hard. It's just, it's excitement, you know? That's what music's supposed to be.

That's, it's supposed to be about passion. It's supposed to be about love. And we hope... Vomiting. That too. We hope to share all that with you guys, you know? For those of you who are hoping

we're going to spend most of our time talking about obscure seven inch releases and debating the subtleties of the Chrome eggs, I mean, we're probably going to cover a lot of familiar ground for you hardcore people. But we still hope that you might rediscover what it was that made you fall in love with these bands in the first place.

Because these are the originators, you know? For those of you who are hardcore, like, these are the bands that you listen to in high school and college. And we hope that maybe you can learn something new about them. And maybe you can look at these bands in a different light. And so, seeing as how we just passed

the 50th anniversary of the release, what could arguably be called the first punk record, we figured we would be remiss if we didn't start with Iggy Pop and the Stooges. Oh, what a great choice. It's a wonderful choice, isn't it? Yeah, it's because of us.

We decided that. Well, the Stooges were an American rock and roll band from Ann Arbor, Michigan, who, from 1969 to 1975, recorded and released four incredible albums that helped lay the foundations for what we call punk rock music. Now, as I said, this show is both for people

who have never heard of these bands and for those who already know and love them. So, for those of you who have never heard the Stooges, I envy you for the experience you're about to have. For those of you who already know them, here's reminder of just how goddam good they were from their 1970 album, Funhouse. Die!

Die! Die for you! See that clip? Yeah, do you? See that clip? Yeah, do you? She got a TV on me She got a TV on

She got a TV on me See that clip? Down on the back See that clip? Down on the back She got a TV on me She got a TV on She got a TV on me

See that clip? See that clip? See that clip? Here's a sample from 1964, a song called The Witch from Tacoma, Washington's The Sonics. Who's new in town? Well, you better watch out for her Or she'll put you down Cause she's an evil kid

Say she's the witch She got a long backer In a big black car I know what you're thinking But you won't get far She gonna make it real Cause she's the witch When she walks around

Ain't that nice? Won't she got a fever? Sleep on the bed Give it here a knock On your head, girl You better sing it on me Wahoo! Wahoo baby, I know!

Marcus, they're good Yeah, they're fucking amazing Marcus, they're good And they're still good I saw The Sonics, what, two, three years ago? Me and Ed Larson, you know, from here at the last podcast, Network Family We went out to the Warsaw and Brooklyn and saw them a couple years ago And they still sounded just like that

But they looked like plumbers and lawyers But they sounded amazing Wait, which one was the plumber? The singer Oh, cool Yeah, they sounded so fine And I think it was the saxophone player is not like the saxophone player His like grandson is the guitarist or something

Like the guitarist was in his 20s Like early 20s Yes, you see that a lot with older bands Not old bands, but older bands Like when we saw Patty Smith, her kids were the band That's right Oh, that Patty Smith show was so fucking good Yeah, well, we'll see her again in a few

Later, later Well, just two years after The Sonics released their first record You also had a bunch of American GIs At the height of the Vietnam War Stationed in Germany Making weird ass proto-punk under the name The Monks This is Oh How To Do Now

Well, I'm goin' away for a long, long, long, long, long time Now. Oh How To Do Now Well, I'm goin' to make you, you, you, you, you happy Now, oh How To Do Now I don't know how, how, how, how, how, how to say Now. Oh How To Do Now Hey girl, I want to make you, you, you, you five, five today Now. Oh How To Do Now

I don't know how, how, how, how, how, how to do Remember you introduced me to the monks on a road trip in Texas And I thought they were so great especially the story of how like they were stationed in Germany during the war Like that's where they met yeah form the band Yeah, they were all hanging out on an army base in Germany like during the Vietnam War They were all soldiers and they just decided to start making music and they actually took it They took the name so seriously because bands would do that back in the day Where when they did live performances, they would dress like they would dress like monks. They actually shaved their heads

Like they shaved their heads and like that weird horseshoe The Friar Tuck thing yes, they shaved their heads like there's a great performance of oh how to do now of them doing it on like German television in 1966 I think it's fucking Amazing their album is so fucking good and they were just they were there and then they were gone Wow, that's so crazy. I mean, I you know so many awful things happen in Vietnam War, but I guess silver lining I Suppose so we did get there was some good But that's the funny thing about the monks is that none of their music has anything to do with the Vietnam War the song I think that also really shows like the proto-punctness of the monks is I hate you actually

Let's listen to I hate you. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and then later I'll do host Oh Yeah, well because you make me make me make me hate you baby That's a reason to hate It's fucking amazing as those bands are not a lot of people heard those bands back in the 60s I mean you did have later on like Kurt Cobain Sighted the Sonics as a big influence. Oh, yeah, and he also cited the Iggy and Stooges as well Like he called raw power his number one favorite album of all time

I mean, that's I think one of the things that everyone's gonna find out as we do this entire series And as we do like season two and season three like we're gonna keep coming back to the Stooges Probably more than any other band when we talk about influences But the thing is about bands like the Sonics and the monks and all that people have been playing hard and fast forever It's just that not many people recorded playing hard and fast I mean the problem is that you know They didn't get recorded and those that did get recorded weren't heard by a lot of people because nobody outside of a few small labels

We're willing to take the risk on recording hard and fast exactly This is before the you know do-it-yourself kind of what everyone's going on what's going on with everybody right now in these days Especially the last what 20 30 years before then it was just like a couple people who could decide who would have a music career Yes, exactly like you'd had to have a money man. You had to have people pressing the records You had to have people distributing the records, you know And then you had to get big first regionally then you had to get big nationally, you know now these days like me and you could work on a Music project and have it out the door next week and people could hear it instantly But back then in the 60s like there was a whole gigantic apparatus that you had to deal with and now we have soundcloud rappers

Yeah You know like back then like it wasn't just male groups like the Sonics and the monks doing this either I mean for an example of singing that could easily be considered punk take a listen to this clip from a song called Egyptian Shumba by an obscure early 60s girl group called the Tammins I'm gonna make that dream come real shimmy shimmy shimmy shimmy shy I'm gonna dance the way I speak The way I say it ain't just me and the monks that come and play it Egyptian Shumba I'm gonna dance the way I speak I'm gonna dance the way I speak

The way I speak I'm gonna dance the way I speak The way I say it ain't just me and the monks that come and play it Wow that's a good song you know fun fact none of the members actually named Tammins Yeah none of the crystals are named crystal either What? What about the Ramones? Oh I have some bad news for you Well what made the Stooges so special when we're talking about pre-punk bands is that damn near everyone who made up the first punk scenes in New York and London

all either actually saw or heard the Stooges and were thereafter forever changed In other words it's not too hyperbolic to say that the Stooges were among the most important rock and roll bands to have ever existed which makes Ron and Scott Ashton, Dave Alexander, James Williamson and Iggy Pop some of the most culturally influential people of the 20th century Those guys? Those fucking assholes The guy who would fling his vomit into the crowd and shit behind an amp Actually that checks out That totally checks out

But that's not to say the Stooges were born in a vacuum I mean they had their influences just like everyone else Even though it's well-treaded territory, you know, they love the Beatles They love the Rolling Stones I mean we don't need to play you guys the Beatles and the Rolling Stones You've heard the fucking Rolling Stones, you've heard the Beatles You know they also love the Doors, they love the Who But the one band that really showed them that you could do some real weird shit Weird Al

The Velvet Underground Up to Lexington, 125 Physic and dirty, more dead than alive I'm waiting for my man Hey white boy, what you doing uptown? Hey white boy, you chasing all our women around? Who point me suck, it's frizz from my mind I'm just looking forward to the freedom of mind

I'm waiting for my man He comes, he's all just in black He has shoes and a big straw hat He's never early, he's always late First thing you learn is that you always gotta wait I'm waiting for my man You know when Iggy and the Stooges first heard Velvet Underground They were like, what is this pussy shit?

True story And then they listen to it again Oh this is good This is very good Yeah, I mean well definitely get later here in a little bit as to why that was the Stooges first reaction Because they're what else they were listening to at the time But yeah, I mean the Velvet Underground really showed a lot of people That you could do some real weird shit

I think the quote I can't remember who said it Maybe it was Lester Bangs, but not many people bought the Velvet Underground's first record when it came out But every single person who did started a band That's right, their live shows, the way they played, the way they lived their lives It kind of felt like you could just have a fun time doing this Yeah, such a great time, and their live shows, I mean the Velvet Underground is such a great story in and of itself Like one of their first shows was at the, I think the New York Psychiatrist Association dinner, like annual dinner Like they somehow got like I think Andy Warhol

This is an episode of Frasier I think Andy Warhol booked them because he thought it was funny, or I don't know, or maybe it was an art piece But the Velvet Underground, yeah, I mean that's a great story in and of itself But before we get into what made the Stooges, let's acknowledge our stack of sources for today's show That opened up in Bleed by Paul Trinket, that's an Iggy Pop biography Yeah, Total Chaos by Jeff Gold, that's a more Stooges-centric biography The Wild One by Per Nelson, again Iggy Pop Please Kill Me by Lex McNeil and Jillian McCain, that's just the entire punk scene

That's personally my favorite book on music ever written If you've never read Please Kill Me, holy fuck, go read it After you listen to this episode, go read, start Please Kill Me, you will not regret it And of course, our last source, which is also the most unreliable source Iggy Pop's 1982 biography, I Need More This is one he wrote with Ann Wuer, who he knew from school And she came to him to start this autobiography, because he was like, he felt like it was time, because he was 28 No, he was in his 30s at that point

And you could kind of tell, with all the stories that she wrote down and everything, that he's just kind of walking around in a hotel room Smoking a cigarette, just trying to come up with the details It's very fuzzy It feels like one of those biographies is like, I'm gonna set the record straight right now I'm gonna let everybody know what the fuck Jim thinks about everything Right, right, and then an hour later it's like, should we just go out for food? Yeah, it wanders quite a bit, and it's got a ton of photos in it as well And there's one photo in particular that is a full nude of Iggy

And the hog on Iggy Pop is definitely in major focus Yes And the used copy of the book that we got, there's a big old crease on the spine on the Iggy Pop cock picture page Someone spent a lot of time with that We're gonna call that well-loved So, without further ado, let's tell the story of one of the messiest, dirtiest, druggiest, hardest And at times grossest pants in history, the Stooges It's another year for me and you

Another year with nothing to do Now last year I was 21 I didn't have a lot of fun And now I'm gonna be 22 I'll say oh my and a boo-hoo And now I'm gonna be 22 Oh my and a boo-hoo It's 9269 okay

It's quite the USA It's another year for me and you Another year with nothing to do It's 1969 It's 1969 It's 1969 baby It's 1969 baby So, the principal members of the Stooges were brothers Ron and Scott Ashton, Dave Alexander, Iggy Pop, and later, James Williamson

But if there's any name out of the five I just mentioned that sounds familiar to most people, it's Iggy Pop So let's start with him Iggy Pop was born James Osterberg Jr. on April 21, 1947 and is still somehow alive and performing today with what I'll say is an impressive amount of energy for a man his age who spent a good two decades brutally abusing his mind and his body Oh he is indestructible He looks good enough Considering what he went through, the abuse he put his body through, he's like 72, 73, 72 And he definitely looks better than most 72 year olds I know Well he looks great enough

If there are two things in this world that quite possibly drove Iggy Pop more than anything else, and this is by his own admission, it's attention and validation See although Iggy Pop grew up firmly middle class, his family still lived in a trailer because that's how his family liked it Well yeah and his father was a teacher and he wanted to make sure that Iggy, his only child, went to a good school and they just kind of wanted for nothing and lived in a trailer Like Iggy Pop didn't even know that people lived in houses Like he was just like what do you mean your house doesn't move I don't understand that, like when I was growing up, I grew up in such a small community of like 300 people, my classroom size was 12 I thought the big classrooms of like 200, 300 kids in a class, I thought that was just in the movies until I was like way too old, like junior high But Ann Arbor, Michigan in the early 60s was going through an economic boom which meant that there were a lot of rich kids around

And young Jim Osterberg was desperate for those rich kids acceptance Oh I mean he was always a very intelligent guy, and he still is to this day, but as a kid he even gave himself the name Atomic Brain The Atomic Brain? To himself He's THE Atomic Brain Yeah, like in the second grade there's this like really cute story on how he went up to this kid who was pissing in a stall in the bathroom And he goes up to him and he's like hey, do you know how to spell the longest word in the English dictionary? You know what word that was?

What? Anti-dis-estab, anti-dis-estab, anti-dis-estab, anti-dis-estab, anti-dis-estab Anti-dis-establishmentarianism? Fuck you I don't think I said it right either As such, while we think of Iggy Pop in the 60s and the 70s as this insane, blood-covered, puking Dionysus Jim Osterberg, wore loafers and slacks, hung out with the popular kids, even ran for class vice president Aw, that's sweet

Like the weirdest that Iggy Pop was in high school is that he would kind of cavort around and talk in a real high-pitched voice It was a character that he called Hyacinth and when one of his high school friends later saw the Stooges live Like in the 70s, he was watching it with arms folding, looked and goes, huh, that's fucking Hyacinth Like it was the same act that he'd been working on since he was in fucking high school It was just something that he used to do to make the other kids laugh That's it, use your weirdness Always Yes

Now really, about the worst thing that happened to Iggy Pop when he was growing up was that Iggy Pop hit puberty earlier than the other boys And as I said earlier, Iggy Pop had a bit of a hog I don't know how else to say it He had a big hog And the boys in the locker room used to grab it and drag them around the room against his will or hey man, fucking stop it, just let go Things used to be so cute in the 50s And now that's abuse Now that's intense abuse

Yes The real misfits in the Stooges were Ron and Scott Ashton They moved to Ann Arbor with their mother in 1963 after their father died I mean these guys were the ones that had the truly rough life Ron in particular only cared about three things Rock and roll The three Stooges Cool

And Hitler What? But what? Well actually now might be a good time to just go ahead and address the overall fixation that the 70s punk scene in general had with the Nazis To paraphrase Robert Criskow in a 1972 article he wrote about the punk scene when it was still coming of age He wrote concerning their affection for Swastikas Quote, none of this looks very good But none of it is as bad as it looks

You know what? It makes sense It makes sense It makes sense, let's explain it a little bit Well Mary Harron who you know wrote for Punk Magazine And also actually wrote directed I Shot Andy Warhol movie Yeah that was her She says like in the hippie days like styles of dress or symbols were used unironically You know like the peace sign, the love sign

Like what you wore was what you represented, what you felt Yeah it was all face value shit And it also meant nothing but anyways that's going to be a conversation That's a conversation for later on in the show And then she goes on to say like and suddenly a movement comes along with no transition Nobody said anything and they're using Swastikas and it's not about that It's a costume and an assault It's about gesture and shock tactic

You couldn't write an analysis of it You just didn't know what the fuck was going on It was all happening so fast Yeah I mean back then Nazi imagery was nothing more than another way to freak out the older generation The punks took the worst thing in the world which was Nazis Actually which is Nazis We're just going to go ahead and say is still I mean no one's topped the Nazis yet

Oh well you know we shouldn't challenge them But can you say it in the way I like it when you say it Oh Nazis Thank you Well the punks used that imagery to make people feel weird and uncomfortable It wasn't about ideology at all I mean for fuck's sake Joey Ramon's real name was Jeff Hyman He was Jewish

You know Like there were a ton of people in the punk scene that were Jewish Lou Reed Jewish I mean like a ton of these guys These dude are Hanukkah songs? But I mean really to draw a parallel to today's world It's kind of like what 4chan was for some people way in the beginning way back when 4chan first started

You know it's like you say fucked up shit to get a reaction You don't actually believe any of it But unfortunately as both bands like the Dead Kennedys as well as many people on 4chan eventually found out The ironic fun tends to stop when the actual Nazis show up thinking they found like mines They've ruined all the fun Not that just little particular part of fun All of it's ruined There were a lot of people having fun in Weimar Germany

And then the Nazis showed up But back to the Stooges See while the Ashtons were still teenagers frowning their way around Ann Arbor Iggy aka Jim was beginning his career in music Although he didn't start off as a singer Iggy Pop like Joey Ramon started off as a drummer And Max Weinberg Well Max Weinberg stayed as a drummer

Max Weinberg was always a drummer I don't know I just wanted to say something He defined his career by being a drummer That's cool right? Well Pop's first high school band was the Megaton 2 Comprised of Iggy and his friend Jim McLaughlin And it was through his buddy Jim that Iggy started hearing artists like Ray Charles and Chuck Berry Roll over Beethoven

I gotta hear it again today You know my temperature rising The jukebox blowing a fuse My heart beating rhythm And my soul keep us singing the blues Roll over Beethoven Tell Chicago's getting news Well another important artist during this time was Dwayne Eddy

Dwayne Eddy I'm about to say who's Dwayne Eddy His big song is Rebel Rouser Remember in Forrest Gump when Forrest Gump's running and he's in high school And there's all those rednecks in the truck chasing him around And there's that song playing like That's Rebel Rouser And that was Dwayne Eddy's big hit

That's what Dwayne Eddy was known for Dwayne Eddy was known for the twang He managed to work twang into every fucking album that he had First one, have twangy guitar will travel And then that was followed by the quote unquote twangs The quote unquote thang Then there was the Rohing twangies My favorite one million dollars worth of twang

And finally the biggest twang of all I think there's a missed opportunity here For what? Twang gang I kind of want to see if I'm going to just type in Dwayne Eddy Twang gang Yes

Yeah There was one compilation of Dwayne Eddy songs Twang gang, 2001 I knew it I knew it Well it's just Dwayne Eddy and a whole bunch of other Twangy artists like Lee Hazelwood, Samford Clark, Donnie Owens

Yeah, all the Comprising of twang gang Yes, the twang gang Comprised of all of these men But yeah, they took your key Well that twang was exceedingly important To the evolution of the Stooges Here's a song from 1958

Called Stalkin by Dwayne Eddy Which without a doubt influenced The skewed sexiness that the Stooges Later came to personify Oh Old man walks into a bar Lights a cigarette and asks for Dwayne Eddy

We have a delivery of twang For a Mr. Dwayne Eddy And Quentin Tarantino goes cut That's not the line Well Iggy Pop, he was no Misunderstood genius growing up I mean his parents, remember his parents Chose to live in a trailer

Two bedroom trailer And they actually gave up their master bedroom So Iggy would have a dedicated Spot to play drums whenever he wanted And that's a thing that we're gonna learn Throughout this whole series of the Of the Stooges is the fact that Mr. And Mrs. Osterberg are the best people

That have ever existed in the world I don't know if I would call them the best people I would definitely call them the most patient people In the world They are so patient Well Iggy found that with the Megaton 2 He finally got the approval of the jocks And the rich kids that he so desperately wanted

And as it usually goes with positive reinforcement Iggy Pop ran with it Eventually the Megaton 2 Evolved into a band called the Iguanas Named after what Iggy Pop considered to be Quote in his words The coolest animal Oh don't tell his bird that

Don't tell Iggy Don't tell Iggy Pop No on Instagram What we mean We're gonna be talking about Iggy Pop a lot in this series Once the Iguanas were good enough They like a lot of bands at the time Started playing frat parties

And high school dances Now by the time the two of us At the time we got to college Frat parties were absolute nightmares Of bad music and shitty dudes Nobody wanted to go to a fucking frat party That's why we did college radio parties They're at least back at my place

Over on 14th and U If anyone got drunk in Lubbock, Texas Between 2002 and 2004 Probably got drunk at my place once Oh I don't know Well the only time we ever had fun At a frat party It was just like me and my friends

You pay $500 Unless you're upperclassmen You pay $5 to get in And then you go down to the basement Right next to the keg and you just hang out Just with your friends Our band used to play Hugs a bunch freeloader

Oh yeah What was the name of that? Hugs a bunch freeloader We played one show and then another show Another party Me and a few friends started a band called Performance where I've ever been the lead singer Oh really?

We had a few so we had Mountain's a Coke baby I love ya That was probably the best one It was just Mountain's a Coke Mountain's a Coke And then it just kind of goes like that For about two minutes But it was super fun

Oh yeah sure But back then All throughout the 60s You could see absolutely Plastic musicians playing Frat parties Like that shit from Animal House Like Otis Day and the Nights

That happened all the time I actually saw them play Otis Day and the Nights He had to change his name to Otis Day When Animal House got big And they still tour He's an older man They do a lot of Toga party

Shows and stuff like that It was like four or five years ago Seven or eight years ago What the fuck What year is this? It was awesome Everyone was in a Toga except me Because I didn't know I was going to be there

Well For just a small example of what you could hear At a Frat party Here's a rare, if rough recording Of Beau Dudley at a fucking Frat party In 1959 It was that time when I ran out of time

Oh, let's take it your private life It was that problem I can't see Oh, let's take it your private life Let's take it your private life Actually that recording That's not on Spotify That was like a super small release That came out a few years ago

It's called Beau Dudley spring weekend 1959 Sound quality, especially when Bo Diddley's singing, is way blown out. But it's such a beautiful little time capsule. And it's just fun to sit around and kind of pretend like, oh yeah, I'm at a frat party right now. 959, there's a lot of fun.

And Bo Diddley was just one of many bands to play frat parties in the 60s. I mean, the bands that made up the core of the 60s frat rock scene, these were the forebears of the Stooges. These were the guys that came right before. I mean, you had the Kingsman with Louis Louis, the Stooges covered Louis Louis

throughout their entire fucking career. You had Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs with Woolly Boolly. Oh yeah. And one of my favorites, Nobody But Me by the Human Bee. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no... Nobody can do the same

like I do, nobody can do the same like I do, nobody can do the Kungaindustrie nobody can do it 技, I'll dry you, if you know what to skin, I'll do it yeah, nobody to it but me somebody to me yeah, I'm gonna feel it, I'll do it No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no

No-no. No-no. No. I just want to say no-no's. No, that's one of the last podcast backstage songs that we will sing, or just like we start going. No-no. No.

No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.

No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.

No. No. It's just, just try it sometime in your house when you're alone. It'll make you happier. I believe you. Yeah. Today, all that kind of music falls under the much cooler name

of garage rock. Garage rock sounds much cooler than frat rock. And that's mostly owed to Lenny Kay's excellent 1972 compilation Nuggets, Volume One, which also played a huge role in influencing the punk scene. And Lenny Kay actually used the term punk rock in the liner notes. MUSIC

I get up in the morning, kick the covers from my bed. The sunlight in my eyes, playing track with my head. I work like a dog on a job every day, trying to make some money, so I keep going, play in the night time. Yeah. That's the right time. All the head.

I sleep in night time now. That's the right time. My zombie. I wanna be with you in the night. Didn't the Sonics also cover this song? I think they did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It sounds very familiar.

I love that fucking song. I mean, it's The Strange Loves. It sounds like one of those songs that you hear late at night on old FM radio. It's like, ladies and gentlemen, just remember, night time is the right time. Here's The Strange Loves. It's on KLBBK.

I love it when you do that. Well, admittedly, a lot of that music, especially songs like Louie Louie, they sound hopelessly outdated and hokey to a lot of people, especially people in our generation, because we kind of had those songs ruined for us. The 90s, all those songs got put in commercials. They were in every shitty baby boomer nostalgia movie. I mean, they just got such an.

Tell us how you really feel. You're going to be hearing a lot about that. All right. Yeah, they were all kind of ruined. They just seemed like that's mom and dad's music. But now, as I've been in my mid-30s, I've been revisiting a lot of that stuff. And you can really hear that that music really was powerful.

It was original for the time. It's fucking great stuff. So listening to all that stuff with new ears, and especially working on this series, listening to it with new ears, and listening to it in the context of the Stooges, you can see really how important this shit was. Oh, absolutely. Especially people who are much older from that time.

I mean, think about coming from Waltz's. And then they start playing Louie Louie. And you're like, oh, I can finally shake my thing. Yeah, because that's the thing. Back then, Frat Rock and Grodd Rock, along with bands like The Who, they were speaking to people in ways that were just more aggressive. And honestly, sexier than what the Rolling Stones and The Beatles

were doing, as influential as they were. And as sexy as the Rolling Stones could be, they were fucking nothing compared to these Frat Rock groups. At least that's how I feel. At least these Frat Rock groups just speak to me in a way that, I guess, the Rolling Stones don't always. Well, yeah, I know what you mean.

I was a very big fan when I was a kid. I mean, the Beatles and the Stones. You're growing up and you're 11, 12 years old. And then one band, The Who, I didn't know I would like The Who until we got to see them live like two, three years ago. And we got to see Old Who. Old Who was still Good Who. Yeah, we saw Half Who.

Like we said. How long can we keep this going? But if you go on YouTube and you watch The Who from back in the day in the 60s and everything, they were so badass. We're fucking amazing. I mean, it's not a stretch to say that the Stooges would not have existed without The Who.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Because like while Iggy was playing frat houses in the University of Michigan, the original guitarist and the bassist from the Stooges, they were on their own journey. When Ron Ashton and Dave Alexander were still in high school, they sold Ron's motorcycle and went to fucking Liverpool, going from Ann Arbor, Michigan to Liverpool

because they wanted to see this British rock shit firsthand. And naturally, they ended up at the Cavern Club because by the mid-60s, the Cavern Club had already gained a world-wide reputation as the club where the Beatles first made their mark. Because the Beatles played the Cavern Club 292 times between 1961 and 1963. But it wasn't the Beatles that Ron and Dave saw back.

They were there to see The Who. People tried to put us to down. Talking about my generation. Just because we get around. Talking about my generation. These ain't do look awful. Talking about my generation. I hope I die before I get old.

Talking about my generation. Talking about my generation. Talking about my generation, baby. Why don't y'all fail? And then Austin Powers waltzes in. Hellers are close up of his glasses and his teeth. Because that's all I can think of right now. I understand.

I understand. And that's the thing. Songs like My Generation, they've been used in so many movies and so many commercials. My Generation has been used in so many commercials that there is an article online from Ad Age Magazine about how many commercials My Generation has been in. And how many commercials behind blue eyes and Baba O'Reilly.

How many commercials The Who's music has been used in. So these songs just, I don't know. They sold so much life insurance. And it's really hard to grasp the true impact of this music. And another reason why it's hard to grasp The Who's true impact is because The Who doesn't necessarily translate, because The Who's real contribution didn't fully translate to recordings.

Because the true brilliance of The Who was in their live performances. That's right. Like I said before, go on YouTube, watch them. They're playing crazy, all wearing coats that they borrowed from someone's mom. They actually destroy all their instruments. And then for some reason, there's smoke coming out.

And then you stand there. And they stare at what they've done. And then they walk away. It's so cool. It's so fucking cool. Because I didn't really get into The Who and didn't really see any of this shit until I moved up here to New York City.

I was over at my buddy Ivan's place. We had been out drinking all night long. I'd stayed over on his couch, woke up in the morning. He was like, we got to watch something. Kids are all right. And so he puts on, the kids are all right. I'm just sitting there watching it. And as a drummer myself, just watching to be like, holy shit.

This is so fucking good. And concerning their live performances, although bassist John Intwistle, I mean, he's pretty much a statue on stage. And Roger Daltry, lead singer. I mean, it's like a calculated cool boredom, but it's also a very captivating cool boredom. The live power of The Who really came

from Keith Moon and Pete Townsend. I mean, watching Keith Moon play drums for the first time is a fucking revelation. I mean, watching Keith Moon play drums, it's like someone threw a couple of drumsticks into a hurricane. And they just miraculously start playing these fucking wildly complicating drum fills

while making it look like the easiest fucking thing in the world. Like you watch Keith Moon play and you're like, oh yeah. How can anybody can play drums? Anybody can do that. Because he looks like he was born to do it. He looks like he was a creature that was genetically engineered to play drums.

If it looks easy, that means they're a genius. Exactly. And Pete Townsend, besides his windmill style of playing guitar, he was among the first dudes to smash a guitar on stage during a performance, which again is now a cliche. But back then, it was both baffling to see and terribly freeing.

And it was at one of these shows that Ron Ashton and Dave Alexander were changed forever. I actually want to read this quote from Ron Ashton about this whole experience of them going and seeing The Who as it was transcribed in, as we said, the best book about rock music ever written, Please Kill Me. It was my first experience of total pandemonium. It was just a dog pile of people just

trying to grab pieces of Townsend's guitar. And people were scrambling to dive up on stage and he'd swing the guitar at their heads. The audience weren't cheering. It was more like animal noises, howling. The whole room turned real primitive, like a pack of starving animals that hadn't eaten in a week and somebody throws out a piece of meat.

I was afraid. For me, it wasn't fun, but it was mesmerizing. It was like the planes burning, the ships sinking, so let's crush each other. Never had I seen people driven so nuts that music could drive people to such dangerous extremes. That's when I realized this is definitely what I want to do. Cool.

Nissan, the new Ultima. Experience more. Actually, I did read somewhere that Ron and Dave actually did meet The Who. They actually made it? Yes, and the Rolling Stone. Oh, god. OK, this is a story that was told by Ron Ashton

to Gary Henderson. He's also known as the Colonel Galaxy, or simply the Colonel. The Colonel Galaxy or just Colonel Galaxy? You can call him Colonel Galaxy or the Colonel. All right. I want to be called Colonel Galaxy. Well, check out Dark Carnival.

And so this is a time where Ron and Dave found themselves sitting with Roger Daltry, Pete Townsend, and Mick Jagger at a bar. And they were all sitting there together because they were like, hey, we're Americans. We're cool. We're kind of in a band sort of. And they sat down, and they listened intently

to Roger Daltry talking about their lousy set and how the sound just sucked. And meanwhile, Mick kept moving up his chair and landing like the leg on Ron's foot. Get the fuck out of here. Yeah, it wasn't until the third time when Ron realized that it wasn't an accident. Oh, no.

Mick Jagger doesn't like me. And the guys, I mean, Mick Jagger and all them, they were being dicks to the poor young Ron and Dave. Even laughing at them when they ordered red stripe while everyone else was drinking Guinness. Oh, yeah, OK. But still, Dave was intrigued by Bill Wyman, the bassist for the Rolling Stones.

And after a short conversation, he started thinking, like, bass, huh? That sounds cool. Oh, yeah, bass would be pretty good. Because this is around the time when, right before the band formed, the Stooges formed, they're all slowly getting together and starting to evolve into their own instruments. Yeah, where they're trying.

Everyone's starting to evolve, and it's like Iggy Pop starting to evolve into a singer. Exactly. Dave Alexander is going to go towards bass. Yeah, it's like they're just all slowly growing these little things that made these guys who the fuck they became. And when Ron and Dave got back to Ann Arbor,

they got kicked out of high school for having long hair. Or so they say. Or so they say. I mean, I mean, I know back then people would get turned away from diners and shit for having long hair. They'd get refused service. But you don't get kicked out of high school just

for having long hair. Dave was drunk all the time. Yes, he was. Since the age of, like, 10. Yes, yeah, yeah. And Scott picked a fight with somebody on the first day of school, and then they get kicked out. And everyone's like, I don't know.

Long hair, man. Yeah, most have been long hair. I heard someone say that they got kicked out of school because Ron actually had a bet to see how fast he could get kicked out of school permanently the first day of his senior year. But it was after these dudes were kicked out of school that they started hanging out at discount records.

And who should have a job at discount records? But Iggy Pop. And just because Iggy didn't go to England didn't mean he wasn't putting in the time. And surprisingly, out of all the Stooges, Iggy Pop was by far the most professional, although that probably says a lot more about the rest of the Stooges than it does

about Iggy Pop's professionalism. Now, although Iggy was primarily the drummer in the Iguanas, he did occasionally sing. And what we got here, it's available on YouTube, is the only track from the Iguanas, both written and sung by Iggy, back when he was just plain old Jim Osterberg. In other words, this is the first recorded Iggy song,

although it was never officially released. It's called Again and Again. I walk to death, pass them all past, outside. In a long field of bleak death. And there was no sound at all. And I moved fast to look around. And I saw. Plans for saving one another.

Hey, that's all right. It's pretty fucking good. Yeah. And the lyrics are actually pretty cool too. I just want to read a little bit of the lyrics. It's like classic Stooges shit. I walked in step, passed the old times. I would fly in a long field of bleeding death.

And there was no sound at all. And I moved fast to look around. And I saw. Stand beside me one another. And the ground steady. Again and again. Wow. That's actually very good.

All I heard was. Yeah, I mean, it's again and again. It's that one thing again and again and again and again. But yeah, the lyrics are fucking great. I mean, and he wrote that he was a teenager when he wrote that. It's super fucking cool. But his primitive as again and again was Iggy was still gathering his influences. When Bob Dylan came to Detroit in 1965, Iggy Pop was there.

And this was just after Dylan went electric. See, Bob Dylan going electric was an enormous deal at the time. Because before this, Bob Dylan was worshiped in the folk scene. And the folkies were traditionalists who tended to turn their nose up at anything as banal and pedestrian as rock and roll. Oh, no. There's a war going on. Yeah, that's fucking Vietnam. And these hippies are pissed off about Bob Dylan picking up a different kind of guitar.

Oh, it's so good that we have not turned to that kind of pettiness now. It's so good that we finally moved past fighting over tiny little things in entertainment and art and have moved on to truly important issues. Exactly. We're this close to Starfleet. I can feel it. Around 1965, Dylan recruited a bunch of musicians later known as the band fucking love the band. Band so good. Go listen to music from the big pink.

It's fucking great. But when Dylan brought the band in, he switched things up. See, before he sounded like this. And you better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone or the times will be highly changing. I like that song. I love that song so much. Oh, yeah. I mean, and that thing, I still love folk Dylan.

Like, there's so many fucking great albums during the folk Dylan years. But after the addition of electric instruments in a full band, Dylan sounded more like this. It's so good that we finally moved past fighting over tiny little things in entertainment and art and music. John is in the basement mixing up the medicine. I'm on a pavement thinking about the government. A man in a trench coat batch out late off says he's got a bad car. He wants to get a paid off. Look out, kid.

It's something you did. God knows when, but you're doing it again. You better duck down the alleyway looking for a new friend. A man in a clean skin cap and a big pen wants $11 bills. You only got 10. And while that may not sound like a huge difference to most people, because honestly, those two songs follow the exact same structure. It's intro versus harmonica.

Yeah. It's the same shit. And you know, and to be fair, he did warn them times were changing. To be fair. But when Dylan went on stage at Newport Folk Festival with an electric guitar and a whole band, Folk fans lost their goddamn mind. One audience member, and this is like the famous story one audience member felt. It was such a betrayal that he shouted,

Judas in the middle of the set. Wow. You really got him. Way to go, dude. Yeah. You got that ticket, right? And it only got worse from there. I mean, Folkies who seem like they should be a chill and understanding group

started showing up to Dylan shows just to boo him because they hated it so much. Oh gosh. Really? Why would you go and show up? I don't know. Folk fans could really learn a lot from metalheads. What? They're the nicest fucking people on earth.

Metal fans, metalheads are the nicest fans. Go to any metal show. Everyone there is super, super nice. Oh, you're right. Remember when we went to go see Mayhem? Yeah, everyone was like, excuse me, sorry, pardon. But everyone was still having a fucking great time, you know? No, no, you were here first.

But Dylan, at least on stage, looked like he couldn't give less of a fuck as all these Folkies and hippies were booing him and yelling Judas and all this shit. And it was this, I don't give a shit, I'll do whatever I want, attitude that inspired Iggy Pop to later do whatever the fuck he wanted to do on stage. Oh yeah, no, he was a huge Bob Dylan fan. He'd listen to Bring It All Back Home every day. You know, that's the album where Dylan went half electric on that. And he said he listened to it like for hours, like a hundred times.

Yeah, and that's a fantastic fucking album. That's the album to listen to. But Iggy had one more musical stop to go before he founded the Stooges. See, there was another band in Ann Arbor at the time that was far beyond the Iguanas when it came to musical talent and success. They were known as the Prime Movers. That's a great name. It's a pretty good name, I don't know, I think it sounds very generic.

What? But it's philosophical, you know, it's like an Aristotle thing. Oh, I know! Have I talked about this? With your philosophy degree? Yes, we may have had a conversation or two about Prime Movers. I need to use it somehow. Well, since Ann Arbor was a small town, the Prime Movers knew the Iguanas.

And it was that band that started referring to Jim Osterberg as Iguana, which was eventually shortened to Iggy. That makes sense. That was the easiest explanation ever. Every single time we talk about the names or the weird shit that goes on and these people throughout this series, it's all going to be, it sounded cool. The answer is always going to be, because it sounded cool, man. No dogs in space.

It sounded cool. Sounds really cool. So in November of 1965, the original drummer left the Prime Movers and Iggy Osterberg left the Iguanas to work as the Prime Movers drumming replacement. Not too long after that, another guy came into contact with the Prime Movers. Ron Ashton. Now Ron just played bass for a few gigs and was eventually demoted to Rody because he wasn't quite good enough yet.

Or at least he couldn't play that style of music, because it was just blues. But yeah, Ron knew he wasn't very good. He even said so himself. He said, like, that's when I finally started learning how to play, because everyone was so much better than me. Ron is a great musician as he is. He just wasn't a bluesy guy. No, he wasn't a bluesy guy.

And that's the thing, speaking as a musician, when you start playing with people that are so much better than you, you either give up or you say, I'm never going to be embarrassed like that ever again. Because it is highly, highly embarrassing to sit down with a bunch of musicians that are so much better than you are, because they're trying to be polite and they all keep looking at you like, yeah, boy, we'd be having a great time here if it wasn't for you. We'd be sounding real good if it wasn't for you right now.

And you're just like, I'm sorry, I'm playing as fast as I can. Is there like a seed of memory that just sprouted right now from Marcus's brain? I'd say about six seeds. I'd say it's a bit of a garden. Now, after a few months of playing gigs with the Prime Movers, Iggy Pop dropped out of college to pursue music full-time. Now, the Prime Movers were one of those bands in the mid-60s like The Blues Project and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band,

who pretty much just listened to a lot of blues and copied the style because they liked the music. But what Iggy Pop was mostly absorbing from those musicians were the actual blues artists that they listened to, like Muddy Waters, Hallam Wolf, and John Lee Hooker. Oh, little girl, you look good to me. Hey, little girl, you look good to me. I'm just a lonely boy, baby, looking for someone to love.

Oh, I love John Lee Hooker. I can just feel the talent from over here. Now, Blues was one of the first styles of music that I got into. My dad is a huge, huge Blues fan. Really? Yeah, so I grew up listening to Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, dad's big Stevie Ray Vaughan fan. Naturally, I mean, Texas is going to be a big Stevie Ray Vaughan fan.

But yeah, I absolutely love John Lee Hooker. Iggy Pop was huge in all these Blues guys, and all these dudes in the Ann Arbor scene were all huge into the Blues. And I'm not saying that these guys in these Blues revival bands weren't talented. I mean, how Paul Butterfield mentored with Muddy Waters. Muddy Waters respected him. And also Paul Butterfield, he played with Bob Dylan.

Yeah. Dylan saw Paul Butterfield perform at a Blues festival, and he's just like, hey, you guys are all right. Come and play with me tomorrow. Not realizing that Bob Dylan was playing his Symphony of Booze tour. So it didn't really go so great for them. But it's still really cool to play with Bob Dylan now. It's super cool.

Man, it's so funny how many different collaborations came from those Blues festivals. Like, speaking of Stevie Ray Vaughan, that's how David Bowie found Stevie Ray Vaughan. Stevie Ray Vaughan played, I think it was the Montreux Jazz Festival. David Bowie saw Stevie Ray Vaughan. He said, I want to work with that guy on my next album. And so Stevie Ray Vaughan played guitar on Let's Dance, Cat People,

and, oh, shit, Not Modern Love. One more song, one more huge hit off of the album Let's Dance that I can't quite remember right now. But yeah, all kinds of shit used to come from those Blues festivals. But while some of these guys found new ways to approach the genre, like other bands like the Prime Movers, they were just kind of recycling what had come before. There wasn't anything super new about it.

Oh, well, you know what, back then in Arbor, like Wayne Cramer from the MC5, he said like, if you're a white suburban kid from Detroit, Blues bands were pretty exotic. Because it wouldn't come to them so often. And the Prime Movers was so popular because they were so different to everyone else. Everyone else tried choreography and had steps

and did instruments like the bands of that era. But these guys were playing Blues. Yeah, they're playing, I mean, they're playing Blues. Blues was not such a popular music genre as it is now. Like now, like everybody knows the Blues, like because Blues just kind of made its way into everything. I mean, thank the fucking, I guess the Blues Brothers. I guess that's, I guess that's what brought it kind of,

kind of brought Blues to the mainstream. But yeah, back then, like, you know, Blues was, yeah, I mean, exotic is the right word for it. You know, it was as exotic as world music because it just was not something that was in anybody's purview at all when it came to white kids, white suburban kids from Detroit. Especially when Elizabeth Hsu had to learn the Blues and the one quintessential scene of adventures in babysitting.

I would argue that scene killed the Blues. Like that's when the Blues ended. Really? It's when it started for me. I would say that's probably when it's like, ah, okay, that's over. Back it up, back it up, everyone. She had to sing the Blues so she could leave. Well, let's hear an example from the Prime Movers,

which was actually uploaded to YouTube by the former band leader. This song features Iggy Pop on the drums. It's cool. I will never be as cool as those guys. Neither one of us will ever be as cool as those dudes. It's cool. I would imagine that's like the best night I'd ever spend in a bar is going in and that band is playing.

That's super fucking cool. It is cool. It's become kind of a cliche to say that white musicians stole black music, specifically the Blues, that they just repackaged it, that they had, as Iggy Pop put it, a studious copy. I'd say that's very much true. It's pretty true in the case of the Prime Movers. The guy that uploaded it to YouTube, I think he was also the lead singer, he went on to found AllMusic.com, which was my favorite website for many, many, many years.

I still use that website sometimes. Yeah, AllMusic is fucking great. But these dudes, they were just straight up playing the same exact kind of music that had been released 10, 20, 30 years earlier. The only difference was that they were doing it with just a hint of psychedelic flair. That's called LSD. Yeah, but that's what they were doing. They were dropping acid and playing the Blues.

And that gave it a little bit of a twinge. It gave it a little bit of a switch. But for the most part, they're just kind of copying the style of all the guys that came before. And Iggy Pop was smart enough to notice this. So in 1966, Iggy quit the Prime Movers and moved to Chicago to find Blues drummer Sam Lay, who had recorded with Hallam Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Bo Diddley, and Muddy Waters. And Sam Lay had also played with Dylan at the Newport Hallfest.

Oh, Sam Lay, the most legendary musician to ever shoot himself in the scrotum. He shot himself in the balls. Yeah. Wow. When Iggy got there. I mean, not because of Iggy for once. Not because of Iggy, but it was over a fight. But you know, Sam Lay also played on Bob Dylan's album Highway 61 Revisited.

No shit. Yeah, yeah. So they knew each other. That's fucking, I mean, this is the guy to go to. If you're Iggy Pop, this is the guy to go to. See, Iggy thought that maybe he just wasn't understanding the Blues correctly. And that if he found a great Blues drummer, he'd figure out what he was missing. And Iggy did end up finding Sam Lay.

And Lay wasn't pressed enough with Iggy to get him a gig playing drums with Big Walter Horton. Half because Iggy was a more than competent drummer, and half because they figured having a white boy in the band would help them book white clubs. And they were right. Well, when he did get that gig playing drums for Big Walter Horton and Johnny Young at, it was at a Unitarian church on the way to the gig. Now this is like a scene from like Iggy Pop's biopic. It's gotta be.

So on the way to the gig, in the car, Big Walter Horton takes out his switchblade and waves it around saying, you better know how to play white boys. And he laughed because you have to laugh when you're, you know, holding a weapon. Oh yeah, no, I've laughed plenty of times when I've been physically threatened. And to which Iggy replied, look, man, I can do anything you can. Just give me a break. Because he's what, 19, 18, 19, somewhere on there? I mean, yeah, he is very, very young.

As far as where Iggy lived during his time in Chicago, he found residents with a record store owner and local blues guru named Bob Coaster. And this is pretty much where the Iggy Pop we know began to fully emerge. So Bob Coaster, he was the founder and owner of Delmark Records, which is like the oldest jazz and blues indie label in the US. They released dozens of records in like the 60s and 70s. Right. You know, Bob Coaster lived a good life and he was very well respected.

And he also owned the jazz record, Mart Store, which was a place where employees and fans could crash. And Iggy did as well for a little while. So Bob Coaster gave him a place to stay and Iggy decided to invite his friends over. Yes, Bob's like, hey, can I just invite like two, three, four friends? And Bob Coaster's like, sure. Why not? You seem like a nice young man.

What's the worst that could happen? Oh, you're just another young boy that wants to learn how to play the blues. Of course, Mr. Poppering, all of your chums and schoolboys over. This sounds like a wonderful time. So he brings Vivian Shevitz who worked at the record store with Iggy before and Scott Richardson and Ron and Scott Ashton. So they were all staying at Coaster's place together and they drove Bob insane and kept goading him just for the fun of it.

Scott Richardson described it as the droogs from a clockwork orange. Yeah. I remember what, well, the thing is that Bob Coaster was gay and so they would wrestle with each other naked in his presence and Iggy would tuck his dick in between his legs and go, I'm a girl. I'm a girl. Absolutely all. And then the last straw finally came when Bob Coaster was asking for a glass of water.

He was very tired. He was very, he was a little sick. He was like, could you please bring me a glass of water? Somebody please bring me a glass of water. And Iggy brought him a glass full of piss. He almost drank it, but he just like threw it at Iggy Pop and then kicked everyone out into the street. You roughhands must get out.

Please leave my presence and post haste. But the thing is that it seems like even though Iggy's times with Coaster were more shenanigan based than anything, Iggy, I mean, he came to a very important and profound realization during this time in Chicago after smoking a joint on an unnamed bridge somewhere in the city. Yeah. Well, actually he hung out by the dock near the sewage treatment plant across the Marina Towers looking over the Chicago River. And then, you know what, he lit up a joint one of the first times he ever smoked pot,

and he just looked over the river and thought, hmm, structure, lyrics, simplicity. And that's where he got his philosophical mind together. Yeah. I mean, supposedly, according to Pop, this was the first time he'd really had any experience with drugs. But, you know, as it happens with a lot of us around that age, that experience knocks something loose in Iggy's brain. He realized that he wasn't understanding the blues because he couldn't understand the

blues, as it was being played because Iggy Pop wasn't black. He never would be black, and we'd never understand what it was like to be black. I mean, Iggy Pop was a suburban white kid. His experiences were not only different, they were incompatible with the type of music he was trying to play at the time. But he also realized that his experiences still mattered. Just because he was white didn't mean he didn't experience pain and suffering, because everybody experienced his pain and suffering, but he still wanted to express those feelings

through music. So Pop figured that what he had to do was play his own simple version of the blues so he could translate his experiences and suffering in the same way that blues musicians used their style of music to convey theirs. Simple. Punk. That's exactly what it is! Yeah, and when Iggy called up Ron and Scott Ashton to see if they wanted to join him,

they said, why the fuck not, and would eventually came to be known as the Stooges was born. The last person to be added to the group was Dave Alexander, who'd gone to Liverpool with Ron. Dave was, in Iggy's words, a tortured kid with a bad skin problem who couldn't get fucked but was a seriously fearless and vicious street fighter. Perfect. Punk! Perfect.

They all knew each other growing up, Kathy Ashton, the Ashton sister, she saw him walking down the road one day and was like, that guy has long hair. Hey, long hair guy, come on over! And thus a friendship was born. I mean, that's how it usually goes. I know that's how it's gone for me in the past, like, hey, cool t-shirt, let's hang out. Yeah.

You know, like that's how these things go, they're all flags, you know, especially when you're a kid. It's like putting up a flag of like, hey, I like this thing, if you like this thing too, please talk to me. Yeah. I became friends with this girl in college, Stacey, because she was wearing a monster magnet shirt. Yeah, there you go.

I mean, it's, we've all got those little things, you like, reach out and you're like, hey, that's pretty cool, let's hang out. Well, in other words, Dave Alexander was the perfect person to play bass for the Stooges, but when Iggy returned to Ann Arbor, Iggy was met with a scene that was much more psychedelic and much more rooted in the hippie ethos than what he left. And this is what I particularly love about the Stooges. While everyone else in the 60s counterculture were preaching a naive version of peace, love and harmony that ended up all being bullshit anyways, the Stooges saw the hype for what

it was almost immediately. They were preaching nothing. It's a show about nothing. And sure, the members of the Stooges wanted to make their mark on the world, but they didn't necessarily want to change it, nor were they telling anybody what to do, how to live, or what to think. All they were doing was translating what they were feeling and experiencing into music. Because if anything, the Stooges were always honest with what they were saying, and partially

that's part of why I love them so fucking much. But that's not to say the band did not partake in the drugs of the day. It's not like they were like, oh fuck this entire hippie scene. Now, they were into the scene just not into the bullshit. How else would they get their drugs? Acid became their favorite drug. Enduring their extended group tripping sessions, they read books on the occult, and they listened to music.

That's how they formed what they eventually called their oh mind. Oh yeah. And that's how they learned how to talk to each other. A lot of the lyrics, a lot of the titles of the songs, like real cool time. That's how they would say, real cool time man. It's alright. I'm alright. Yeah.

I'm alright. Yeah. They sat around, they listened to Hendrix, they listened to Jazz Great, Pharaoh Sanders, they listened to Frank Zapp and the Mother's Invention, they listened to Dr. John, who's highly underrated. You love Dr. John. Like they listened to bands and artists who were much more experimental than, you know, the garage rock and the straight blues they've been listening to before.

They were expanding their minds. And don't forget Harry Parch. Of course. Harry Parch as well. Yeah. The musical theorist and composer. How he described his music, he's like, it's not abstract man, it's corporeal. And it's cool as shit.

Like especially if you love Ambien. Oh yeah. If you love any like Brian Eno's Ambien stuff or anything like that, like all that Ambien shit's great. Like this guy, Harry Parch is magnifique. Oh yeah, they would actually play his experimental records on and then they would run around like on LSD and Ron would stuff tissues in his cheeks and walk around all hunchback and make strange noises.

And if girls ever came over, then he would chase after them while they screamed. And they just, they just wanted to be weird. Of course. No, they're just pushing the limits of weirdness and that's great. Like that sounds, I wish I could have been there. Like that sounds like the most fun thing to do when you're 19 is pushing the limits of weirdness. I mean, I'd do that, but it was alone.

We do that at home now. Now we do that at home. That's why we got married. Well, let's listen to an example of some of this experimental music. Let's listen to a song from the Mothers of Invention album Freak Out, which the band Sight is having major rotation on their turntable at the time. Wow, that was a good outtake. What's the real song?

Oh, you have no appreciation for Zappa. Oh, he's a rock. Oh, I'm a fire hydrant. No, I'm a little hit and miss on Zappa as well. Like I love Weasels Ripped My Flash, but Zappa is the guy that I've sat down so many times in my entire life and just be like, and I'll listen and like, fuck, I almost get it. I almost get it. Like every year it's like, okay, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to listen to the

Mothers again and see if like this is the year that like I finally get it. Like, shit, maybe next year. Maybe next year. I don't know. Listen to this. Listen to it like I'm doing this episode. Like I feel like I at the very least get Freak Out now. Like I started with I got Weasels Ripped My Flash first and now I get Freak Out.

Eventually, I'll just expand to the whole. That small Zappa clip that we just listened to was probably a lot closer to what this two just sounded like before they recorded their first album. But unfortunately, we only have descriptions of their more experimental years. We just don't know what the fuck they sounded like. We have no recordings at all of what the suges sounded like before their self-titled debut. Now as far as the name of the band goes, remember that Ron Ashton was absolutely obsessed with the three Stooges, among other things.

And even though Dave Alexander was in the band, it was mostly Iggy, Ron and Scott Ashton who hung out the most. So Ron figured that they were like the three Stooges, man, only like psychedelic. I heard that they were like watching the three Stooges on TV when they came up with that, which is a good thing that they didn't happen to be watching Remington Steve. And so the original name of one of the greatest rock and roll bands of all time up until the release of their first album was the Psychedelic Stooges. It's a fucking terrible name.

It could be worse. It could be a lot worse. It definitely could be a lot worse. It could be what was Radiohead's original name on a Friday. Like that is an awful band name. But the Stooges never would have gotten off the ground if not for Iggy Pop. And from the very beginning of the band, Iggy was, quote, the prime motivator, as he called it, constantly telling the others that there really was something special here.

If only you guys would get up off your ass and put in the work. I know. And so on Halloween night, 1967, the psychedelic Stooges had their first show. Oh, what a show it was. Oh, yes. Well, they got it all set up because Ron Richardson agreed to manage them. Ron Richardson, also known as the professor, because he was a professor, he actually did have managing experience.

He managed the chosen few, which is a band that Ron Ashton played in before with Scott Richardson. And the professor also was very helpful to them because he had a van and he had LSD. How did he have LSD? Well, he was involved in LSD testing in the University of Michigan where he happily supplied all the drugs to these people. He actually used them as lab rats because he made them like read books and then they took LSD and he kind of like a professor would kind of like study them a little bit.

And so they had the show. Ron had the show at his house outside of Ann Arbor and he took care of the guest list for the show, which included John Sinclair, you know, he's a writer and an activist, the MC5, Bill Kirchen from the psychedelic band, Seven Seal, and Jimmy Silver and his wife, Nassica, we'll know, we'll learn about a lot. And so for Iggy to get ready for the show, he got Jimmy Silver's wife, Nassica, to make a metallic wig by pasting strips of curled aluminum foil into a bathing cap and then helped him put on his Victorian nightgown that he wore for the first show.

So Iggy got all ready and then he scoured the junkyard that was right outside of Ron Richardson's house and he just picked up a bunch of stuff, a bunch of junk to make his own instruments. Because remember, Harry Parch also made his own instrument, so he wanted an experiment. So he put all this stuff together. He made a thing called the Osterizer. Oh man, it's so cool. It is so cool.

So much fun. Yeah, it was a blender with water that you put a microphone inside. That's not a fuck, that's just a blender. With a microphone inside. That's what makes it an Osterizer. So what they did is that they set that all up with the mic and then they turned on the Osterizer, not blender, and played it for 15 minutes for the beginning of the show. Oh man.

That was it, just to set the mood. And let me just tell you, like at the show, when the people showed up, there was a lot of drugs. Naturally. DMT, LSD, DET, and lots and lots of weed. I couldn't imagine watching this on DMT, oh god. Somebody rolled a hundred joints for the party and you know how many people attended this party?

About 12 to 20. But that was also back in the days when weed was not anywhere near as strong as it is now. Yeah, we got better at drugs. Or worse, I miss old dirt weed, I miss high school weed, I miss when I could smoke a joint and just like have a day, you know, like I miss that. So Iggy, his other instrument, he had his Hawaiian guitar that were all tuned to the, all the strings were tuned to note of E. So it sounded like an airplane when he played

it. Oh, it's so, man, it's so much fun. And so he sat on the floor cross-legged right there, right in the middle, right after the Osterizer stopped playing and Scott beat on these like barrel, like 55 gallon oil cans with like some sort of hammer parade beaters and he was just beating like crazy. And meanwhile, like Dave, who wasn't in the band yet, because it was just the three Stooges at the time, he would twirl like the amp dials and like he would smash like Ron's amp to make a loud booming echoing sound while the band played.

So they played, it's not music, just a bunch of noises, but it makes sense to them. Well, you know, I mean, noise, music, yeah, art, yeah. Well, Iggy shuffled on a washboard with contact mics on it in his golf shoes. So it's a soundscape. Yeah, yeah, the music, they called a very North African tribal, jazz gone wild. They'd get high, they would play for 10 minutes, and then they would get high again. And Iggy would get on there and play the organ, Ron, he was playing the guitar. They kept blowing fuses throughout the whole party.

Yeah. Like while they were playing their music and by the time they blew the last fuse, the set was done and they looked up and almost everyone left except John Sinclair. He thought they were pretty good. Yeah, of course. Man, I wonder how much that is actually true. I have no idea. Like I wonder how like how many different how many different people do they have to

talk to before they finally put together like, OK, this is what we think probably happened at this show. We read six books to find out and what we found out is that a lot of people are too high to remember things that happened 50 years ago, but is absolutely fucking bizarre and weird as that show was. It still caught the attention of, as you said, John Sinclair and John Sinclair was the manager of the hottest band in Detroit, the MC5. And the MC5 have a fascinating story all their own that runs almost concurrent with the Stooges,

but what the MC5 are best known for is being the only band to show up to actually play the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. For a quick refresher, the 1968 DNC ended with police moving in on a crowd of demonstrators and just beating the piss out of anyone in swing and distance, and MC5 were about five songs into their set when it all went down. What a great soundtrack to police brutality. Extreme police. I mean, go check it out on online, like, you know, it's on YouTube.

Yeah, of course, it's all on YouTube, but yeah, it's fucking insane to watch this shit. Now, although the MC5 were known as being a political band, you know, because they were closely attached to the White Panther Party, well, that's because the Black Panther Party did not like them. No. No, but so they're like, we'll just make the White Panther Party. But they didn't want any part of what was happening in Chicago, and they were just really excited for the gig.

I mean, it wasn't necessarily like, man, we're gonna go there and we're gonna show these pigs what's up. They're like, no, we're gonna go there. We're gonna play some fucking rock and roll music because we're a rock and roll band. In fact, it wouldn't be totally unfair to say that the MC5 were on some level, they're fucking hustlers. I mean, they saw money in the hippie scene, and they capitalized on an opportunity, which became painfully obvious when they signed to RCA and spent all their money on bitching

cars. Oh yeah, but it's bitching cars. Yeah, they're bitching cars, of course, but... I know. Well, they had a three-point political program. That's what Wayne Cramer called it. His three-point political program was rock and roll, drugs, and women. I mean, they were into it, you know, like, you know, of course, Fred Sonic Smith went

on to marry Patty Smith, and they were very much in love and very much in a politic because Patty Smith is very politically active as well. But back then, the MC5, during this time, they were not focused on politics. Well, the thing is, they had a lot of connections with these activists, and they just gave them a chance for more gigs, which is what they wanted, but then eventually the movement kind of took over the band. Yeah, and the thing is, there were people, you know, we talk a lot of shit about the hippies, you know what I was saying earlier about it being mostly bullshit, for a lot

of people, it was mostly bullshit, but they were also, during this time, very intense people in the activist scene. There were terrorist bombings back then, like, you know, the weather underground, like Abby Hoffman, like there were people that were fucking serious, very, very serious about shit, and the MC5 had that kind of tone, like they were, because they had, they were playing rock and fucking music, because these people were serious and they were angry, and the MC5 really matched that well, but the MC5 didn't really have the ethos to back it up. Well we found that out when the MC5 played the Fillmore East in New York City.

They fucked up real bad. They were billed as the people's band, the band of the movement, right? So Danny Fields, who we will talk about a lot, he booked a limo to get the band downtown, because he realized, like, how do we get everyone in there, so he's like, let's just get him a limo. Yeah, that's here in New York City, right? Yeah. Yeah.

So the band comes in, in a stretched limo, to the movement, the people's band, and outside is like 500 people from the movement, and they were, they were this big activist group, they were called the motherfuckers, the East Village motherfuckers, serious people. Very radical part of the community, and they see this limo, and they start yelling and throwing shit and calling them traitors. It's like, sell out, sell out. Meanwhile Rob Tiner from the MC5, Rob Tiner is like, okay, all right, you know what, I'm gonna, I'm gonna talk to them.

I got it, man. I got it, dude. I got it. I know exactly what to say. So he gets up, I hope it's from the moonroof, I'm not sure, he gets up and he goes, hey, we didn't come here to play New York for politics, we came to New York to play rock and roll. Fuck you.

Yeah. Oh, my eye, my eye. Oh, God, it did, it did not work out well for them. The place just erupted into a riot, and Bill Graham, the venue premier leader of the Film More East, he banned MC5 from then on, thinking that Rob Tiner broke his nose through the riot, during the riot. That's the Film More East and the Film More West, which were two of the biggest music venues in the entire country back then.

Right. You know, some of the best rock and roll shows ever played were done at either the Film More East or the Film More West, and man, it's just, we're gonna see again and again, it's like, how many beginnings of the end does MC5 have? Like six? I know. They're just, they are the most tragic, also-ran band of the entire late 60s, early 70s. I know, it's a shame, because they were so good.

So fucking good. But like, even Iggy Pop said that he didn't feel any sort of real political feeling from the MC5. He said, on a basic level, would they share their peanut butter with me? Yeah. And their girlfriends would sew my pants. Well, that was a shitty thing about the MC5. The MC5 were intense misogynists, but a lot of those fucking hippy people were.

Yeah, but they treated the women like servants. Like, they were there to serve them, to make them food, to wash their clothes, to have sex with them. Yeah. To have sex. Then they would just like, just be so condescending and be like, oh, you're so bourgeois. Yeah. I can't believe you won't do this for the movement, which is a very shitty thing to

do, which I'm glad that Wayne Cramer has now owned up to that. All of the MC5 owned up to that. Yes. Like, they all owned up, like, yeah, we were fucking awful back then. But a lot of those fucking hippy communes and all that type of, all that shit, like, it was very, very misogynist. It was fucking awful. It's all romanticized.

Tell us how you really feel. I got a lot of problems with hippies. But regardless, the psychedelic Stooges became like a little brother band to the MC5 because John Sinclair saw the psychedelic Stooges and figured, all right, these guys are taking the European avant-garde scene and they're turning it into something that the kids are going to like. And that's extremely insightful on the part of John Sinclair. And John Sinclair tried to get in the Stooges to cop to the MC5 style.

Iggy told Pops like, man, you got to get with the people. You got to get with the people. But Pops said, quote, oh, the people, give me a break. The people don't give a fuck. No, they don't. And he's right. People don't give a fuck. The people.

The people. The thing was, Iggy Pops still wasn't even really singing at this point. It wasn't until- Oh, his blender was working. The Bosterizer was making a lot of fucking noise. It wasn't until Pops saw the doors near the end of 1967 that he realized he could be a singer, too. This is the end, beautiful friend. This is the end, my only friend.

This is the end of our elaborate lives, the end of everything that stands, the end. No say to your surprise, the end, I'll never look into your eyes again. Can you picture what will be so limitless and free, desperately at need of some stranger's hand? Head up, desperate land. That song is so good it gave Martin Sheen a heart attack. From Apocalypse Now. Yeah, of course.

Of course. I like listening to the doors again, like that's something you're gonna hear me say a ton throughout the course of this entire show. Listen to the doors like, oh man, Iggy Pop really took a lot of his vocal styles from Jim Morrison. I mean, did it a billion times better, but- Jim Morrison had that charm, that sex appeal that eventually Robert Plant bestowed upon himself. But Jim Morrison was not even close to the songwriter that Iggy Pop is, not even close

to the fucking singer that Iggy Pop is, but- Have you read his poetry? Yeah, I have. Yeah, I even knew in high school that it sucked. He tried. Yeah, he tried real hard. But you know, Iggy's experiencing Jim Morrison's sing wasn't quite the same kind of inspirational moment Iggy had while he was watching Dillon. Instead, Iggy was inspired by how fucking terrible Jim Morrison was.

I mean, from what Iggy said, Jim Morrison was tragically drunk and the band sounded like, in Iggy's words, old pussy. That's not a sound. Yes. Okay. You know exactly what it sounds like. What is that supposed to mean? It's evocative.

Uh-huh. Well, when Morrison did manage to get it together enough to sing, he did it in a high-pitched Betty Boop falsetto voice. And of course, the audience fucking hated it, but they were also mesmerized. They couldn't stop watching it. And this was when the doors had the number one song in the country. This was when Light My Fire exploded and everyone's like, Light My Fire, Light My Fire. And Morrison just kept doing the Betty Boop voice and Light My Fire and he's just, fuck

you. And he'd start singing normally for just a little bit and everyone start clapping. And then right when everybody got comfortable again, he'd go back to the Betty Boop voice. And Iggy was absolutely inspired. I heard that's how Michael Buble started. He was a wedding singer and some executive just saw him be like, wow, boop, boop, boop. Well, pop later said that he thought, look how awful they are and they've got the number one single in the country.

If this guy can do it, I can do it. Well, Iggy could sing. I mean, he does have a good singing voice. He's a crooner. Yes. He can croon like a motherfucker. Right. Exactly.

And he found this time that the Stooges actually got a manager, Jimmy Silver came in. Before that, they were quote unquote managed by Ron Richardson, who was more than happy to be relieved of the burden of the psychedelic Stooges. Yeah. Ron Richardson didn't last very long. Even after the Halloween party and just after dealing with Iggy and the rest of the Stooges, I remember reading, he said like, okay, so I got this buddy, Jimmy. He's like, hi, how's it going?

He was at your Halloween show. All right. He's going to be your new manager. And their guys were like, oh, what about the van? You can keep the van. And he just ran away and just like jumped over a corn stalk. Never see it again. I could imagine you want to get rid of them.

Yeah. I would imagine it'd just be difficult. Just getting them from point A to point B. Quite difficult. But Jimmy Silver was all about it. He was actually in grad school at the time at a university of Michigan. He was getting his doctorate at the School of Public Health. Well, Jimmy started booking the guy's local gigs and he put them all on a macrobiotic diet.

Public health. Public health. And Silver was the guy who moved the entire band into what came to be known as the Fun House. The Fun House. Yeah. Well, it had a lot of names like it was called Stooge Hall, Loon Hotel, and the Old Bears House.

Oh, the Old Bears House. You don't want to go up. Never. Do your breadwin. Yeah. You don't want to go up that road. That's where the Old Bear lives. They called it that because Mr. Bayless, who was the, he was a farmer who built the Fun

House or before it was the Fun House, he built it with his own bare hands. Oh. He had this whole farm going on, but he, he rented out to these guys because he knew the whole place was going to be bulldozed anyways to make way for a highway. Yeah. I think it was about two years away from being bulldozed. Yeah. The Fun House, the Fun House for the time being was full of the Stooges.

Jimmy Silver's family, you know, his wife, Susan, and his little baby daughter, Rachel, they lived in a separate apartment in the house with, and then Ron, Scott, and Dave also lived in their own living quarters and Ron with his own little living area filled to the brim with Nazi paraphernalia. Well, that's his prerogative. And Iggy, in the attic all by himself. That's nice. You know, what really pushed the psychedelic Stooges to the next level was their professional

debut at the Grandi Ballroom on January 20th, 1968. That was the first show that actually featured Iggy Pop as the front man. That's right because he had his Hawaiian guitar that he was going to play. Dave, really high on acid. Yeah. So he's like, hey dude, let me, let me paint your guitar. Be really cool. Be real psychedelic.

So Iggy's like, yeah, go ahead. I know you're totally on acid, but that's fine. And Dave like painted like day glow paint all over the guitar, even including the pickups which rendered the guitar unusable. So he had to just put that Hawaiian guitar alone. And then that's where he was there with no Osterizer, no experimental instruments in his hand. And that's when he got to be Iggy Pop.

Oh, that's so fucking cool. Oh, so their show on January 20th, which by the way is very close to your birthday. It's one day after. The venue was at the Grandi Ballroom where this venue was a big stop for big musicians. Well, yeah, Detroit's like right in the middle between New York and LA. Exactly. So it was an easy way for big acts like, you know, Led Zeppelin and Janice Joplin to stop halfway through the country that had this venue that held 2,000 people because all over

the country at that time, they just had like little spots like of like 100, 200 people that I could hold. And as you know, you go on tour all the time, Marcus, sometimes it's hard for a big band to go and play really, really small hole in the walls. It's very difficult. I mean, it's just it's expensive to travel around, you know, like it costs money to get from place to place to place. It costs money for travel, it costs money for hotels and like especially like if you're

in a big band, it's I mean, that's what you're talking about six, seven people on the road. And that's going to be insane to go and try to pay for six, seven people to travel to a small town to play for 100 people. Which is so great that the Grand Ballroom opened in 1966 so they could stop there in the Midwest and also go around because you have Chicago, you have Minneapolis and big names like Cream, Frank Zappa, The Who, Grateful Dead, like a lot more and the owner was Russ Gibb who booked all the main acts and I don't know if you know this, but he was kind of famous for part of the whole Paul is dead conspiracy.

Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah, because he had a radio show and he kind of added to that. That's like his number two famous thing. That's awesome. So Russ Gibb actually auditioned the Stooges before they got to play. So he all he says that he remembers is that he just saw the skinny guy with no shirt on just dragging a toilet onto the stage and playing a little bit. And Ross is like, all right, man, you're on, you're on because they needed a lot of local

supporting acts to support these big bands. You know, like the MC5, like Frost, like Amboy Dukes and SRC, Scott Richard Case. So this is the Stooges' first professional gig at the Grand Ballroom. They supported Apple Pie Motherhood and Scott Richard Case, you know, the SRC. They were filling in for the Amboy Dukes. And of course the Amboy Dukes, that would be Ted Nugent's first band and even though Ted Nugent is fucking awful, journey to the center of the mind is such a good fucking song.

He says so. So that's the Amboy Dukes. Yeah, they're fucking amazing. All right. I agree to disagree on this one. I totally agree to disagree. All right, all right. So the show, January 20th.

Just doesn't stand due to it. It doesn't mean it's bad. No. No. No. Just the music. All right. January 20th, right?

Grand Ballroom. Big show. And this is the first time that they're playing as a foursome now. Dave Plain Bass, Rana Guitar, Scott Undrums and Iggy as a frontman, as you said. And Iggy, of course, wearing a Victorian nightgown again with white makeup on on his all over his face with the metallic wig on top of his head. And he shaved his eyebrows just to make the white makeup, like, look really, really good. That's a bad idea.

Use grease paint. And then he found out why you need eyebrows. Oh, man. I used to do grease paint all the time, like, for every single show for many, many, many years. And just the sweat getting in your eyes, like, from the grease paint around my own eyes was bad enough. But when you've got forehead sweat pouring in mixed with grease paint, oh, that's gotta

be fucking awful. That's why you need eyebrows. Because within minutes of the show starting, his eyes were so swollen and so red. And this is a quote from Iggy about the show. I don't remember anything about that gig. But some do. Some do. And that's how we know about this.

Actually, there was a review of the show. This guy, Steve Silverman, wrote a review in his college paper. He said that Stooges were visually the most exciting thing at the Grandi. He wore white silk pajamas and a two foot high wig of curled aluminum. The band with Iggy on the vacuum cleaner was the most imaginative music of the evening. Unfortunately, the performance was marred by equipment difficulties. Visually exciting. Imaginative music.

Equipment difficulties. Because as you know, they blew a lot of fuses. Yeah. That's the review equivalent of bless their heart for trying. Exactly. Because you know, they need to turn it all the way up. Well, Stooges played the Grandi ballroom 22 times in 1968 alone. They opened for Sly and the Family Stone, Cream, the Mother of Invention, and another spiritual

brother to the Stooges out of New York City, the Fugs. And they were all in his bed, overthrow dictators if they're red. Fucking A Man. CIA man. Who can buy a government such sheep? Change a cabinet without a sweep. Fucking A Man. CIA man.

Who can drink gorillas by the dozens? Send them out to kill their own drinkers. But of course, some of those shows were absolute fucking disasters. And one of the worst, but also one of the most formative, happened on Iggy's 21st birthday. See both Iggy and Ron Ashton had taken acid that day. Now Ron had a fucking fantastic trip. His trip was so good that he swore off acid forever afterward, because he knew that he would never have a trip that good ever again.

He was like, it's not worth it. That was the best. He was like, no way. He never did acid for the rest of his fucking life. I totally get that. Oh, yeah. Now for Ron, that was the day that the album, The Notorious Bird Brothers, shared all of its secrets.

It was nothing so much fun. It was taking a bunch of drugs and having an album open up itself to you. For a shower. Well, particularly the song that opened up to Ron was Tribal Gathering. And if you listen to that solo, it is an obvious influence on Ron's guitar style. I could totally hear that. Yeah. Yeah.

And the way the guitar goes up and down, it's like the, it's like he took that one little clip and formed a whole fucking album around it. Right. It's amazing. And he had an amazing day. It sounds like the coolest day ever. Well, Iggy. Iggy on the other hand.

Well, Ron, he was hanging out with a pretty girl. They're flying kites. He's later lost his virginity to that girl and they're just listening to The Notorious Bird Brothers and just having a great time. But yeah, Iggy. It didn't work out so well. Bad day for Iggy. Yeah, because they had a show at the Grandi again, opening for the James gang.

And he, Iggy dropped two hits of Owlsley Orange Sunshine. Orange Sunshine? Orange fucking, that's what the Manson family took. That's what everyone took. But that was specifically the, we even talk about it in the live show that we're touring right now is that, you know, the Manson family, like Tex Watson said that it wasn't until they started taking orange sunshine that Helter Skelter started making sense. Iggy also had a bad day.

So he drops these two hits and he goes on stage to perform. The problem was their amps were reduced like down because of some sort of connection issues. So instead of a loud rocking sound, it was just a soft murmur, it's like limp dick. So the band had to like stop to get like the, you know, the amps back on, people started getting restless. It was like a little while they started chanting, we want creep, we want creep. And Iggy really stoned, just gets up on the, like one of the barrels that Scott was playing against.

And he stands on top and he goes, fuck you, you don't like cream canceled. Cream did cancel. Cream had canceled. Yeah. But he is, I mean, on some powerful, powerful fucking acid. I mean, it was, I mean, orange sunshine was the most powerful acid of the day because you got to remember, like think about, for those of you out there who've taken acid or even mushrooms, but specifically acid.

Like, think about having 2000 people all yelling, fuck you, 2000 people hating you all at the same time. And you've got on a white maternity dress, you know, cute, like aluminum foil coming out of your head, your face is painted white, you've got no eyebrows. And there are 2000 people all fucking screaming and yelling at you. And you're absorbing every single second of it. I get weirded out if a cat looks at me weird. Yeah, imagine that.

Imagine that. Jesus. So the show finally ends after they get the amps going on, but they just could not get it going. Like the show just sucked. So Iggy goes back with Dave to Dave's house. Dave's mom served him a cheeseburger with a candle on it. It was one of those like happy birthday Iggy.

Oh. It was a really sad and horrible birthday. And that was like the moment where Iggy thought like, if I were to give up, it would be right now. Yeah. But he had to keep going. Yeah. And that's the things that Iggy had hit upon something there.

Even though it was a bad trip, he found that the hostility of the audience was energizing and inspiring. And the more hostile they were, the more Iggy reflected the feeling back towards the crowd. And the more they reflected back to him, I mean, it just became two mirrors staring at each other and just going into an infinity of hatred and bad feelings. Just like Tony Clifton. Now, and Iggy was also starting to figure out his look. Now, if there's one thing you know about Iggy Pop, it's that he's so well known for

performing shirtless that I've seen memes about he actually looks kind of weird when he's wearing a shirt because he kind of does, especially when he's wearing a button-up shirt like all those Gucci ads that he's doing right now. It's like, huh. Why are you selling shirts then? You're the last person I'm going to buy a shirt from. Well, Iggy got the idea, he says, from reading a book on ancient Egypt. He said that he noticed that none of the pharaohs wore a shirt.

They're in the desert. He's in the Midwest. Yeah, but they still look pretty cool. Oh, yeah. So Iggy thought he'd do the same. Another of Iggy's trademarks is the way that he moves on stage. If you've never seen a Stooges performance from back in the 70s, do yourself a favor, go on YouTube and check them out because Iggy is one of the best frontmans to ever take

the stage. He contorts. He gavorts. He dives. He bends backwards to the point where it looks like he's going to fucking snap in two. But every once in a while, shit went wrong. Shit did not go well for Iggy Pop all the time because it's intensely reckless. Oh, yeah.

No, there was a one show where he and the band went up and Iggy got up to sing. He grabs the microphone. It's not working. So he just throws it on the ground and starts dancing. And then one of the roadies just picks it up and turns on the on switch, hands it back to him. Oh, OK. Oh, god.

Got it. Dear one show, he bent backwards, his zipper split, and his cock popped out of his pants. Well, there were PVC pants. There were very, very tight pants. Yeah. And he said he just didn't phase them. He just left it out and started writhing on the ground, quote, like a tortured worm or a cavorting cat.

Eventually, the pants slid off him, which is this is my favorite part. He goes backstage. He finds like a little towel. He goes back up and with the towel, he does like a striptease, like a little peekaboo with his penis. Just as he was thinking to himself that he's going to get away with all of this, the cops bust through the door and bust the whole place because they'd heard that there was some sort of illegal homosexual strip club operating.

Well, you know, to be honest, what could be more gay, strip clubby than a bunch of men and policemen uniforms just busting onto the stage? So Iggy was arrested and his dad bailed him out for the first time, paying a fine of $41 and $9. For peace, for peace, yes, and of course his dad did it with a smile because James Osterberg Sr. surprisingly seemed to be tickled pink by his son's antics. Son, we're going to the Dairy Queen. But because of those antics, people started showing up just to see what Iggy Pop would

do, whether they liked the music or not, although there were plenty of people who were into the stooge's sound. But some showed up just to abuse and antagonize Iggy and the more aggression the stooge's received, the darker they became and it was in this environment that Danny Fields from a lecture records showed up in Detroit and that's where we'll pick back up for part two of the Stooge's. Oh, I'm so excited. I'm so excited for part two.

This is going to be a four part series. Oh, yeah. So we've got a lot more to talk about. We've got all four albums to talk about, plus the two Iggy Pop solo records that everybody knows and loves is first two. And we're going to talk about some of the other ones as well, but you know, of course, the idiot and lust for life, that's the one. Those are the ones.

Those are the albums. You know, and we're going to be talking about Iggy and David Bowie's time together. All the nitty gritty, the cocaine, the heroin, everything that just went wrong. Yeah. And plus three of the best albums ever recorded. That's true. All right. We'll be back next week with part two of the Stooge's.

Thank you all very much for listening to the first episode of No Dugs in Space. And remember, if you dug any of the music that you listened to today, you can go over to my Spotify profile. I'll have everything on a playlist there. So hopefully you can discover something new and discover it because that's also a big part of what this show is about. Absolutely. Goodbye.

It's your hand to you, a stick of sand, and with a little smile, I'll let you disappear, back into a crowd of happy people, looking like they never came from here. Strange thing gathering of trash. Strange thing gathering of trash. A message only in a pilot comes a laugh, an energy that'll chest a joke, a friend of a psycho, an angel comes to sit and talk a while, a chair is small. Strange thing gathering of trash. Strange thing gathering of trash.

Strange thing gathering of trash. Strange thing gathering of trash. Strange thing gathering of trash. This show is made possible by listeners like you. Thanks to our ad sponsors, you can support our shows by supporting them. For more shows like the one you just listened to, go to lastpodcastnetwork.com.