The hot wax gig...

Another classic gig - Whisky A Go-Go, 1970


Shortly after their arrival, the newly expanded six-piece lineup of the Stooges performed at the legendary Whisky A Go-Go on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood, a club which had been a home to a who’s who of ‘60s rock, having been opened in 1964 by Elmer Valentine and Mario Maglieri. Rather than the standard two sets a night at the club, they did only one show, starting at midnight. Their performance resulted in considerable press coverage and cemented the band’s Los Angeles reputation. Iggy had given himself an image overhaul, chopping his long locks schoolboy-short, which was an unusual haircut at a time when most rock artists had very long hair. “I was pretty much the first modern rock singer I know of during that era to work with short hair,” notes Iggy. “I had this short red hair and silver lamé gloves, and I often wondered if that was clocked by Ziggy-to-be. I have a feeling he might have checked that and then taken it a step further with even more shiny silver things, and even shorter, even redder hair.”

Iggy spent a great deal of the Whisky concert in the audience, standing on tables and pulling people out of their seats. At one point, he grabbed a candle off a table, returned to the stage and proceeded to pour hot wax on his chest. Reportedly, Andy Warhol thought it was hilarious, causing him to laugh so hard that he split open an old wound. “That was the first time I ever saw Iggy pour hot wax over himself,” comments Silver. “He had no shirt on. He picked up one of the big candles inside a heavy glass candleholder from one of the tables and poured it on himself. It ran down his chest and congealed. As always, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, he’s gonna hurt himself, what am I gonna do?’” John Mendelsohn reported in Entertainment World that half of the audience walked out, but those who remained were entranced. He concluded, “What they’ve been saying about Iggy all these years is true – he does make Jim Morrison and very nearly any other rock and roll schlock monger look like a simpering puppy in comparison, and he has extended the idea of physical liberation through rock and roll performance light-years past where he found it.”

“I don’t expect anybody to like our music,” Iggy told Mendelsohn the next day, while sunning at the Tropicana. “As good as it might sound to me, I’m not going to accuse anyone who doesn’t like it for lack of sophistication or musical maturity, which even bands like the MC5 do. To me, writing a song and then hearing the band perform it is the supreme intellectual achievement, but I’m still not going to tell anybody, ‘You’re just not ready for us.’” Iggy struck Mendelsohn as “an intelligent young man,” but he felt that he was using a “madman’s persona to achieve notoriety.” However, Iggy rejected the notion that there was anything insincere about himself or the act, “If what I am onstage seems artificial to you that’s OK – I’m not really sure myself what it is. But I wouldn’t call it artificial – I feel it’s so real. I know that in my songs I’m using my verbal capabilities and musical sophistication to their utmost. I honestly try to play the best-sounding music I can, the music that sounds most beautiful to me.”

thanks for another great review.
you should really make a new book.