Just got a note from Barney Hoskyns, with kind words about a manuscript he’s seen. And also suggesting that I’d got the location of SIR, the Stooges’ favored rehearsal space in LA, wrong. I’d thought it was the SIR location on Sunset, he thought the one on Santa Monica was more likely. I checked with a couple of people to find Barney was correct. Here’s one the emails I received when I was checking up,  from Annie Apple, depicting a typical Stooges SIR session from 1973:

 

“There were several practice rooms at SIR and some of them had a wall of mirrors, like in a ballet studio, so a band could get an idea of what it was like to be seen on stage... and the one room had a raised stage so bands could work out their stage moves.

 

“I remember one session when [Iggy] had gotten his hands on some Quaaludes and had taken three or four. We were congregated down in front of the stage and I remember him "popping a lude" (in the vernacular of the day) and then a minute later saying 'wait a minute, what was I gonna do, that's right, I was gonna pop a lude...' and taking ANOTHER.  He did this three times. 

 

“Then they got back to work and the band were all back up  on the raised stage and they started a song, and then the ‘ludes kicked in and knocked him out and he took a face plant straight off the stage about five feet straight down, landing on his head, passed out on the ground.  The session ended. Everyone was very grim.”

 

The photo above is the bottom of Mulholland, en route from the Stooges’ luxurious hilltop house to SIR, and opposite The Coronet, where they holed up late in 1973.