![]() Scotty beat the shit out of these cans it sounded like an earthquake-thunderous. For drumsticks I designed these semiplastic molded hammers. So, using 55-gallon oil cans which I got from a junkyard and rigged up as bass drums, I homemade a drum set. I found myself unable to continue work to finance a set of proper drums. I worked long enough to buy a small Fender Princeton amplifier and a Kustom piggyback amp that sounded like shit and was covered in tuck-and-roll Naugahyde-like any other country I couldn’t resist. We felt we should buy him real drums, but I had already worked for a month at two jobs-one serving burgers, fries and colas the other as stock boy at Discount Records of Ann Arbor-and that month of employment was the end of my rope. That’s the only way I can describe it, it sounds like an airplane.Īnyway, so I played that and Ron played the bass and I taught Scotty how to play drums, with a drum set I designed. I’ve got them in the basement, all the lights out, only the Christmas tree lights and sort of an amber lamp on the floor and I’d play this sort of wild Hawaiian guitar with a pickup that I had invented, which meant that I made two sounds at one time, like an airplane. Of course, feeling real stoned was a necessity-only on smoke at this time… They’d been just such totally free, undisciplined, spoiled, derelict guys for so long that they were really good at things like TV watching, or making wonderful creations, like collages out of advertisements and things. We’d go down to the basement and turn off all the lights, and once we’d get down to it these guys had a fairly strong degree of concentration to give something like music-something fanciful. But at this time it was just the three of us, me and Ronny and Scott.įinally, by about two, I’d actually gotten everybody to where they’d play some music and we’d go down to the basement. Later on, Dave, who lived down the street, would pop over. I’d spin a few records to get them in the mood. Finally I’d get in and then I’d have to wake them up a couple more times. So I had to turn on the garden hose and spray their windows, throw rocks, yell weird things, throw snowballs. Sometimes they’d answer and sometimes they wouldn’t. ![]() They would always be asleep and I’d ring, ring, ring, ring the bell. I’d make that trek and then the trick would be to get one of them to open the door because they’d always sleep roundly, soundly, until around noon. In fact, one of them, Dave, was spoiled to death. She wanted to relax when she got home from work.īut these guys were like, the laziest juvenile delinquent sort of pig-slobs ever born, right? Really spoiled rotten and babied by their mothers and white bread and chocolate and fighting and you name it. We had to practice, and we had to start in something resembling the morning because their mother got home at three-thirty from work and wouldn’t allow loud music. I’d put on all these heavy clothes, and then I’d take a little bit of hash or grass or whatever I had in my pocket, la-di-da… It was about 10 miles by bus, and I’d take the bus hither and yon, over hill and dale. We lived in a trailer court about five miles across town from where Ronny and Scotty Asheton-our bassist and drummer-lived. I’d get up in the morning, and my mom would leave me $2.50 on the kitchen table. When we first started rehearsing, it was in the winter and I was living with my mother and father because I had no money. We were young and just getting into smoking, you know, we loved it. I actually provoked the fellows into practicing by, mainly, scoring a quantity of grass or hash. So that’s the Dirty Shames-a one-note samba band.Īnyway, we formed a band and did nothing but talk bullshit for months and months. When they didn’t know a note they didn’t play. They used to play along with records, at least whatever notes they knew on the record. None of us were real musicians-I had been a good drummer, but that’s not being a singer, right? The rest of them had been in this band they called the Dirty Shames. I wanted to be a lead singer, you know, and write songs, you know, and la-di-da. By the time I was 20 I had this band of my own, the Stooges. Maybe I should tell you something about myself. ![]() Originally excerpted in the December, 1982 issue of High Times, we’re republishing the following on the occasion of Iggy’s birthday April 21. In I Need More: Weird Tales From the Rock ‘N’ Roll Crucible (written with Anne Wehrer), Iggy recalls those halcyon days of yore and jabbing the old wounds gets the blood flowing one more time. A typical concert would include some songs, a number of vicious fights with the audience and Iggy’s assorted acts of self-mutilation. Back in the late ’60s, Iggy Pop and his band the Stooges were pioneers of pathology rock.
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