Oh My We're Getting Violent

Iggy and the Stooges : Cock in My Pocket

[Purchase]

   Released in May of 1976, Metallic K.O.--or at least the original second side of the album -- is the sound of a band at war with its audience. It's a recording of the Stooges' final show at Detroit's Michigan Palace in 1974, in which Iggy baited the audience into pelting the band with ice, eggs, jelly beans, and beer bottles. For its noisy, confrontational approach alone, Metallic K.O. is one of big influences on the up and coming punk rock scene

   

The stage had been set the night before when Iggy and the Stooges played in front of a crowd made up of mean looking bikers. Rock critic Lester Bangs was there and filed this report in a column entitled "Iggy Pop: Blowtorch in Bondage":

  The audience, which consisted largely of bikers, was unusually hostile, and Iggy, as usual, fed on that hostility, soaked it up and gave it back and absorbed it all over again in an eerie, frightening symbiosis. "All right," he finally said, stopping a song in the middle, "you assholes wanta hear 'Louie, Louie,' we'll give you 'Louie, Louie.'" So the Stooges played a forty-five-minute version of "Louie Louie," including new lyrics improvised by the Pop on the spot consisting of "You can suck my ass / You biker faggot sissies," etc.

    By now the hatred in the room is one huge livid wave, and Iggy singles out one heckler who has been particularly abusive: "Listen, asshole, you heckle me one more time and I'm gonna come down there and kick your ass." "Fuck you, you little punk," responds the biker. So Iggy jumps off the stage, runs through the middle of the crowd, and the guy beats the shit out of him, ending the evening's musical festivities by sending the lead singer back to his motel room and a doctor. I walk into the dressing room, where I encounter the manager of the club offering to punch out anybody in the band who will take him on. The next day the bike gang, who call themselves the Scorpions, will phone WABX-FM and promise to kill Iggy and the Stooges if they play the Michigan Palace on Thursday night. They do (play, that is), and nobody gets killed, but Metallic K.O. is the only rock album I know where you can actually hear hurled beer bottles breaking against guitar strings

A few days later Iggy called up Ron Asheton and busted up the band.They would not play together again until 2003.