Gimme Danger Page #2

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were built-in.

I had a little bedroom.

It was maybe, four or five feet wide

by about nine feet long.

There's room for a little palette

and a little mini desk.

So, the only place

I could set up my drums

was in the living room.

All weekend long

and every night after school

my, my drum set took up

the entire living room.

I had a lot of energy,

I'd beat for hours.

Beat, bam, bam, bam, and I'm..

[imitating percussion music]

The whole place is shakin'.

[music continues]

They never complained

but what they finally did do

was after about a year of that

they just gave me the master bedroom.

[laughing]

At the time I thought,

"Wow, this is great!"

but now I realize,

also it was probably a..

Probably a comparable lesser

of two tortures.

And they moved a..

They-they moved

a standard sized bed

into the small room.

No desk,

just-just enough so they could

get in and out of bed.

And I had a...

...single bed and my drum set

set up all the time

in the master bedroom.

I was so lucky...

...to live at close quarters

in a simple environment with my parents.

I got to know my parents.

Uh, that's a..

That's a real treasure.

[instrumental music]

I remember dumping my Tinker toys

and my Lincoln Logs

when I was a little boy

and pickin' up the wood bits.

And I would make a drum out

of the cylinder and beat on it.

And then, when I was in the fourth grade

they took us to

the River Rouge assembly plant

of the Ford Motor Company.

And they had a machine that engineered

a controlled drop of a piece of metal

onto a stamping plate.

And every time that thing hit

the stamping plate

it made... this racket, this..

[imitates banging]

A-a-a mega-clang.

And, uh,

I-I liked the mega-clang.

[instrumental music]

I walk today

Past some old time

(Iggy) I had a high school

band, "The Iguanas."

We got a job playin' full-time

at a teen club.

A place called The Ponytail.

I kept scheming, thinking of things

to get more attention and,

uh, so I thought

"What if I played

on the biggest drum riser

that anybody has ever had?"

I was about 16 feet up.

[chuckling]

All by myself, you know

and the, and the band

is down there grumbling.

A loser in the biz named Chuck

approached me and he said

"Well, I think you guys are pretty good

"I'd like to be your manager

and I'll help you

promote your own gigs."

So we rented a pier for one night

to throw our own concert.

And we had a huge turnout,

a huge success.

[instrumental music]

Until half-way through

the floor started to give.

[screaming]

Nobody got hurt but basically,

we, we broke the pier.

[Iggy chuckling]

That was the end of the self promotion.

I was "The Iguanas" during high school

and straight out of high school

then a semester in college.

Then I dropped out of college

and was looking out for

somebody to give me a job.

And the "Prime Movers"

were these school dropout

older guys.

And they knew

about all sorts of blues music.

Butterfield's band came through town

and the "Prime Movers"

tried to establish a connection

to see if our group could get

some work through them.

I asked, uh, Jerome Arnold

the bass player

in Butterfield at the time

if he had any tips for me and my playing

and he said, "When you play,

you play it like you mean it."

I was getting fairly good

and, um, at some point I lost

respect for or faith in the group.

And I thought it wasn't really itself.

So I decided to go where the real..

[chuckles] ...real people

were doing the real deal.

[instrumental music]

Different.

Not like white America.

I sat in with a couple of guys

and, uh, actually got paid

ten bucks a couple of times

to do very unimportant gigs.

Once with a guy named Johnny Young

and once with Big Walter Horton

when they had to go out

and play for white people.

And, uh, and it was a thrill

for me and I learned a lot.

[music continues]

It was more relaxed.

They knew how to have a good time.

And the music

was... very definite.

I saw a little glimpse

of a deeper life of people

who in their adulthood

had not lost their childhood.

[music continues]

I smoked a big joint

one day by the river

and realized that I was not black.

I thought I would like to do

for our generation

what the good black players

that I loved were doing for theirs.

[music continues]

Eventually, I just got tired of looking

at somebody's butt all the time.

[chuckling]

That's your-that's,

that's your curse.

The best butt I ever played

the two best butts I ever played behind

were Abdul Fakir,

in "The Four Tops."

He was the Four Top that would unify

the other in their,

in their dance steps.

He was, he was like

a ba-large bird.

And the other one was Mary Weiss

from "The Shangri-Las."

Wonderful body and face.

Delicious, creamy, female dream thing.

He don't hang around

With the gang no more

I realized drumming

wasn't what I wanted to do

so I decided to go back to Ann Arbor

but I needed a ride home.

So I called Ron

and somehow Scott Richardson had a car

and, uh, I did talk Ron

into working with me.

'Cause I know that he did it for me

Can't you see And I can see

It's still in the streets

His heart is out in the street

[instrumental music]

Ron Asheton was a musician.

He was one of the few people

that had longer hair than me.

He was playing bass

occasionally with a band

called "The Chosen Few"

and I really like his style on bass.

I met his brother, Scott, later

when I was working at Discount Records.

Across the street, there was a drugstore

called Marshall's.

And Scott and a couple of guys

hung out inside this drugstore

doing nothing.

One young tough and his friends.

Now Scott looked like Elvis.

Good-looking, athletic-looking

indirect, uncommunicative kid.

Scott left school after the ninth grade.

I think he would put it

to somebody and that was that.

He immediately began pestering me

for about a year to teach him

something on the drums.

I would ask you

do you double stroke on your triplets?

Mm-hmm.

You know, I would think up

things to ask you...

- Oh, I see.. Get it going.

- Just, just to talk to you.

(Iggy) So I taught him,

like, four or five beats.

Mostly, uh, Stax, Volt

and Bo Diddley stuff.

(Scott) My name is Scotty Asheton.

I go to Garfield School.

I'm eight and a half years old.

(Ron)

Hmm! My name is Ronny Asheton.

I'm nine years old.

My.. I go to Garfield school.

(Iggy) They lost their dad when,

uh, I-I think Ron was 14.

And their father had been

a fighter pilot in the war

and stayed in the military

shortly after the war

was something we all had in common.

(Ron)

...two, one, zero, dive!

[Ron imitating siren wailing]

My dad was a World War II veteran.

On his travels, he would buy

a little something

like a dagger or a medal.

And then I got interested in it.

And we started collecting.

And that was like a father and son..

We found something to bond with.

It had nothing to do with politics

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