The Stooges show at Hammersmith Odeon was enthralling, thrilling and hilarious. A typical touch of Stooges comedy was that I had arranged to take Don Gallucci, the producer of Fun House, and his wife to the show. They’d flown in with some friends from California, where Don now works in real estate. I was on holiday in Carcassonne and flew back for one night courtesy of Ryan Air, assured by both management and record company that Don and his wife’s tickets were all sorted. After a slightly surrreal sushi dinner with Don, his wife, and Don’s crystal therapist we turned up at the Apollo to find, of course, that one of his tickets had gone missing. Cue – as the opening chords of Down On The Street were ringing out over the Hammersmith flyover –- a frantic kerbside argument with a towering Rast ticket tout, where, for the first time in my life, I used the words: “Do you know who we are?” Shamefully, it helped bring the ticket down from £40 to £20, and we were in.
I’m a cynic, I always expect to be disappointed by these kind of events. Here’s the MOJO review:
By the time they were bottled off stage 30 years ago they were a comedy act. This time around it was deadly serious. And it was one of the great privileges of this writer’s life to watch The Stooges tear through an exhilarating live rendition of their greatest album, Fun House, standing next to that album’s producer, Don Gallucci, who watched open-mouthed in shock, hilarity and excitement as they stormed through eight songs in around 30 minutes, leaving their audience ecstatic, exhausted and demanding more.
In truth, there was something supernatural about this. At 58, James Osterberg is a well-spoken, distinguished gentleman, who walks with a pronounced limp thanks to injuries sustained on stage over the last couple of decades. But Iggy skipped onto the stripped-down stage of the Apollo with the bounce and energy of a spring lamb, yelling a terse welcome before leaping onto bassist Mike Watt’s Marshall stack and dry-humping it as the Stooges launched into Down On The Street. And all those years, all those injuries, all those humiliations simply melted away, as Iggy danced, lithe, beautiful, untroubled and untainted by history.
Even as bassist Mike Watt and the Asheton brothers powered their way through Loose and TV Eye, it became apparent that, for all their imitators, the way the Stooges play is simply unique. Rock Action’s drumming is supple, playing the song rather than the beat, and brother Ron Asheton’s guitar style is crazed, but intelligent and refined, all the more malevolent for being all the more controlled. Mike Watt added new propulsiveness to that familiar sound, and by the time saxist Steve Mackay attacked the closing choruses of 1970, the assault was almost unbearable. Fun House itself was tough, strutting and funky. As Iggy conducted the sturm und drang, commanding his comrades – “Wait a minute!” “Take it down!” - or imperiously ordering another violent surge, it was like watching a magician conducting a thunderstorm, or parting the seas. And then for LA Blues Mackay honks out a fiendish foghorn riff, Iggy prays as if to some Eastern God of the saxophone, and the noise degenerates into abstract squiggles before doubling in pace and morphing into Skull Ring. After a quick break it was once more into the breach with a run of songs from The Stooges: 1969, I Wanna Be Your Dog, Real Cool Time, and then carnage, as a planned stage invasion gets out of control with fractured limbs and broken teeth, Ron Asheton standing to the rear and quizzically observing the madness surrounding his singer, who eventually sits down calmly, like a king surrounded by his motley retinue. Then comes No Fun, Mackay’s saxophone drowning out Ron’s guitar, as hundreds of fans shout out the chorus, having fun, alone no more. And then it seems all-too-quickly over, the crowd ushered off, Iggy waving from the drum riser. And Don Gallucci shouts at me, “I think they nailed it.”
Mercifully, as they hit the stage again, they hit the brakes for a mid-paced, menacing Little Doll, Ron coaxing the bendy, minimal riff out of his Reverend guitar, Mackay shaking maracas, and up on the balcony boys were kissing girls romantically, joyously, in a way that never could have happened 35 years ago. Then the riff redoubles into a mad version of Not Right, while Iggy gets his scraggy arse out. Encore Dead Rock Star was tougher and more Stooge-like than its messy album version, propelled forwards by Watt’s bass. And then they were gone.
Even for those who’d witnessed all this first time around, this was thrilling. Don Gallucci: “It felt like it did at the time – fresh. And I looked around and there were these people two generations younger, experiencing it as if for the first time too.” Ron Asheton pronounced the show a “special moment”; one that would never happen again.
In the meantime, the surreal saga of The Stooges continues, one in which even the participants aren’t quite sure what happens next. “It is pretty weird,” agrees Ron Asheton. “Almost a dream or something. A dream I don’t want to awake from”. It’s a feeling that anyone fortunate enough to be in the audience that night will share. [review ends]
After the show I took Gon Gallucci to meet the band. It was emotional and bizarre, in typical Stooges fashion. Iggy hadn’t turned up to meet Don; perhaps he thought Don would be another hanger-on who wanted to tap his energy, more likely he simply needed a rest after that supernatural performance. I personally felt almost tearful seeing Steve Mackay again - I spent a lot of time with him in San Francisco in the early 90s, just before I joined MOJO, I like him a lot and it’s wonderful to see him back in the fold. Ron was “wow, great” but slightly disconnected - it’s easy to imagine how surreal this whole process is for him. It was only Rock Action, the hoodlum Stooge, who was genuinely warm, mentioning Gallucci’s work on the album they were showcasing that night, and telling him “without you, Don, this wouldn’t have happened.”