A rewrite approaches. For good reasons, in that via Philippe Mogane I’ve contacted Annie Apple, who lived in the Coronet building, where Iggy, James Williamson and Ron Asheton stayed over 1973-1974. Annie had a host of terrific stories, which I will work into the chapter on the Stooges’ last stand, Beating A Dead Horse. This, of course, is the tale of the Stooges’ last doomed tour, after they were dropped by MainMan. Sometimes I wish I could write the entire book on this period alone. It’s not just hilarious, salacious and drug-fuelled, it’s also extremely poignant, for even as the Stooges were becoming a laughing stock they were still pushing forward with the music, writing and attempting to record new songs – even when no record company would touch them.

 

No time for much more, but here’s Annie quick sketch of The Coronet; she rented the apartment which was eventually taken over by Ron Asheton:

 

“The Coronet was a crazy, wild apartment building. It had formerly been a very glamorous Sunset Strip address, with a grand view sweeping across Los Angeles below (Sunset is on the edge of  the hill) but the building had fallen into disrepair.  My apartment had a fire in it before we moved in and the floors were wrecked. But the place was HUGE as apartments go.. the living room was about 22 feet by 30 feet... absolutely enormous.  The front door had been painted sky blue with clouds, and the apartment number '4 0 4' in red, floating upwards on the sky background.  Rent was $225 a month, which sounds absurdly cheap by today's standards, but  keep in mind that  a take home wage of 60 dollars a week was normal for a young office worker in those times.

 

“The guy who ran the place was extremely eccentric. His name was Jerry Flannagan and he had fake cameras everywhere and used to write old fashioned longhand business letters to his tenants, always referring to the building owners only as 'the corporation' which sounded absurd, sinister, and yet somehow imaginary. During what became known as 'the 404 days' we all sat around and joked about him.

 

“Since the fire there was simply plywood flooring in apartment 404. Our plan was to put linoleum tiles, really vintage looking, but we were really just kids and managing the renovations ended  up being more than we could handle so we gave up and moved out. Ron Asheton became the eventual curator of '404' and in all the time it was the Stooges’ and then New Order HQ, no one ever did anything about that plywood floor. It just got dirty.”