Gimme Danger Page #3

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or what it stood for.

That's pretty oddball that you're buying

your eight year old son Nazi stuff.

[laughing]

(Kathy)

My name is Kathy Asheton.

I go to Garfield School.

I'm in second grade.

That's all, folks.

(Kathy)

I-I was standing on our porch

and noticed this guy walking

into the neighborhood with long hair.

And so I said to Scotty,

"Why don't you flag him down

and see who he is," you know?

And he whistled down Dave Alexander

who it turned out to be.

And so Scotty met him

then Ronny ended up meeting with him.

And they were the ones

that gravitated more together

because of the, the commonality

of their interest

in the British music.

(Iggy) Ron cut his

senior year in school.

Dave sold his motorcycle

and flew to England

and they saw "The Who" play.

They went to the Marquee Club in London

and they stayed

until that money ran out.

And that's what really

set me on the path.

Because when I came back,

I tried to go back to school

and I just really didn't fit in.

And Ann Arbor was still frat boys.

There's not a lot of us.

And my counselor even said,

"Well, why don't you just

"take the rest of the year off

and try to come back

next year?"

And I'm going, "Yeah, okay."

But then going back

next year, forget it.

Next year you can plan

for higher success, Bill.

Yes. Thanks, Miss Evans.

Plan for higher success.

[drum roll]

(female #1) Tape is rolling,

any time you're ready

They had had the concept of a band

called "The Dirty Shames"

and that was basically

something they would tell people

when they met people

at a party or something.

"Yeah-yeah, we got a band, we're

called "The Dirty Shames.""

There was a period when "The Stooges"

resembled "The Dirty Shames."

In that we, we decided

we had a band,

we told people we had a band

but we hadn't really done any playing.

At one point, there was a trip

we made to New York

and we met some attractive

girls... teenagers.

Younger than us.

Who said they had a band.

And we-we drove to Princeton,

New Jersey

to see these girls play in a basement.

And they were just...

lived with their parents.

And they were very, very good.

And they were much better than us.

At that point we, we were shamed.

[instrumental music]

We were gonna try a series of rehearsals

at Ron and Scott's house.

It was Ron who let me know

"Look, I gotta feel good playing with..

"It's-it's,

uh-it's a weed thing.

That's when I'm in the mood."

I found a guy who said he would sell me

an entire marijuana plant.

So he brought it to my parents trailer.

He had this-he had this thing,

al-almost four feet of it.

The roots still had dirt on 'em.

I'd seen marijuana, it didn't look like

anything I'd ever seen.

"Are you sure this is.."

He said, "Yeah, yeah."

He said,

"But you gotta cure it."

There was a communal laundry

at the trailer park.

I put a couple quarters in the dryer

and started it up and sat there

and it started to stink.

"Oh, no!" I thought, I was

really scared, but nobody came.

I went and buried

the whole bag of marijuana

but when I wanted to rehearse

I'd dig it up and,

uh, catch a 45-minute bus

and it would be about noon.

Usually I could get Ron up

anywhere from five minutes

to a half-hour,

depending on what I had to do

throw rocks, hose and, um, and with luck

we'd actually all get down

in the basement

2:
30 at the earliest.

But more often or not their mother

would come home just after three.

"I'm home, now shut up that racket!

I want some peace,

and Osterberg's a mental!"

[chuckling]

[rock music]

I was in Ann Arbor,

I never saw those riots of '67

but the way I thought,

must be abandoned houses

all over Detroit where we

could live for free now.

So I heard about one

and I went to Detroit with a tab

of Mescaline and a shovel.

And dropped the Mescaline

and went in that.

I told Ron and Scott,

I'm gonna make a house.

Prepare a house where we can live.

What are your building?

It's our house. Can't you tell?

Yes, but you haven't finished it.

I didn't know

from roofing and plumbing and..

I didn't know from that sh*t,

you know? But I tired.

This is where we hung out

for the first time

and started being a group of people

that were going to be a band.

Any time day or night, you have an idea

get together, talk about it,

play it out, work on songs.

(Iggy)

In one of our early houses

where we never accomplished

making any music

we had no discipline,

the cops kept shutting us down.

We were real communists.

We were not political at all

but we were true communists.

We lived in a communal house.

We ate the same food at the same time.

We practically shared

all the money pretty equally.

When we began to write

songs... happily

since we were too ignorant to realize

that there was intellectual property.

We shared authorship.

[instrumental music]

Michigan was a key c-crossroads

between San Francisco and New York.

And it was where everybody

stopped on the way

if they were gonna bother to stop at all

in the flyover country.

It was Ann Arbor.

I had actually heard a little bit

or read a little bit

either by or about these people.

I had everything, every sort

of record in the record store.

I was the Stooge

who knew who John Cage was

or knew Sun Ra, Carl Orff,

"The Ventures," Pharaoh Sanders

Wailers, Duane Eddy, Link Wray,

"The Velvet Underground."

"A Love Supreme" by John Coltrane.

We role-played a lot,

and listened to a lot of music

and one thing we would do

was get really stoned

on either marijuana or LSD.

Turn off all the lights

and we'd put on Harry Partch.

[bell ringing]

All these sounds..

[bell ringing]

Harry Partch was huge for me.

You know, it was the idea that he hoboed

he bohemed, he created

his own instruments.

I like to think

of w-what I'm doing

as visual and corporeal

and, uh, I-I want

the instruments on stage

and I want them to be beautiful.

I also want the, the, uh, musicians

to be a-an active part

a, a very active part in the,

the whole production.

(Iggy)

I was making instruments

while we played primitive riffs.

We'd-we'd find

an extremely simple theme

and play it over and over.

Then take a rest, and play another one.

Scott has in the basement

my old set of drums.

And then he also had

the big thing was oil drums.

He was beating on oil drums

with mallets.

Ron had his bass and an amp.

(Ron) Just let a feeling come over you

just kinda go with this

great sound that we're making.

A-and sometimes something

would pop in my head

sometimes, I, to get a sound

I would just hammer on my guitar.

(Iggy) They had this lap

steel and just tuned

every string beat

to the same note, to the E.

Sounded like an airplane taking off.

We had a blender around.

And the Jim-O-Phone,

it was a cone.

It had an opening about four inches

or five inches across at the top.

As soon as you drop the mic

into the opening, you'll get..

[imitates a tone]

You lower it a little bit

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