Advertisement
UK markets closed
  • NIKKEI 225

    40,168.07
    -594.66 (-1.46%)
     
  • HANG SENG

    16,541.42
    +148.58 (+0.91%)
     
  • CRUDE OIL

    82.98
    +1.63 (+2.00%)
     
  • GOLD FUTURES

    2,242.80
    +30.10 (+1.36%)
     
  • DOW

    39,803.00
    +42.92 (+0.11%)
     
  • Bitcoin GBP

    56,194.16
    +1,767.96 (+3.25%)
     
  • CMC Crypto 200

    885.54
    0.00 (0.00%)
     
  • NASDAQ Composite

    16,382.35
    -17.17 (-0.10%)
     
  • UK FTSE All Share

    4,338.05
    +12.12 (+0.28%)
     

The Stooges, Cincinnati Pop 1970: a triumph of proto-punk and peanut butter

Cincinnati’s Midsummer Rock festival would probably be as forgotten as one of the dozens of post-Woodstock events that sprang up across America in the summer of 1970 – Sky River, the Cosmic Carnival, the Day of Joy, Kickapoo Creek, Rainy Daze – had a camera crew from a local TV station not been on hand to film it. It was subsequently broadcast as a 90-minute TV special, Midsummer Rock, and there’s every chance their footage would have been forgotten too – consigned to the same dusty corner of rock history as the films shot at that summer’s Atlanta Pop or Love Valley festivals – had they not elected to shoot at least some of the day’s performance by the Stooges.

That they did was a curious decision. The Stooges were far from top of the bill – the festival’s big draws were the reformed Traffic, or, if you preferred your music “heavy”, Mountain and Grand Funk Railroad, both riding high on the back of gold-selling debut albums. Perhaps the filmmakers were attracted by the buzz around the band in spring 1970. Their eponymous debut album had been a critical and commercial flop, but a certain media momentum was now building thanks to a new line-up featuring saxophonist Steve Mackey and the songs they had written for their second album, Fun House. Rolling Stone, Creem and even Entertainment World ran big features on the band. Perhaps they were just looking for something visually arresting and had heard the stories about what happened at Stooges shows: their frontman diving into the crowd, or swinging from the ceiling, or pouring hot wax over his chest.

If it was visually arresting they were after, they got it. Watching Midsummer Rock today is a bizarre experience. For some reason, it was presented by the 58-year-old TV announcer and talk show host Jack Lescoulie, a former second world war correspondent who gives every impression of never having seen a rock band before, boggling at the sight of musicians tuning up and “checking their speakers”. Certainly, he’d never seen anything like the Stooges before. The band sound extraordinary, completely unlike every other band in the film: a battering, relentless assault of drums and distorted guitar with Mackey’s sax blowing freely over the top. When a shirtless Iggy Pop jumps into the crowd midway through TV Eye, Lescoulie cuts to an ad break, apparently assuming something’s gone wrong.

'That’s peanut butter,' says the bemused TV announcer, as Iggy smears it over his chest

ADVERTISEMENT

When the programme returns, the band are playing 1970, Iggy is onstage on all fours, and Lescoulie is so discombobulated he feels obliged to offer viewers a running commentary on what’s happening: “Since we broke away for our message, Iggy has been in the crowd and back out again three different times. They … seem to be enjoying it. We seem to have lost him ... there he is,” he adds, as Iggy dives into the audience again, still howling the song’s chorus: “I feel alright! I feel alright!”

What happens next is etched in Stooges legend. The crowd hoist him up above their heads, holding on to his legs. He poses, then grabs a jar proffered by an audience member: “That’s peanut butter,” says a bemused Lescoulie, as Iggy smears it over his chest and throws handfuls of it into the audience. At one moment, he stands fully upright and points ahead of him with a silver-gloved hand, while somewhere behind him, the band pounds and howls away. It’s one of the great images in rock history: he looks fantastic, simultaneously feral and majestic, heroic. We’re accustomed to thinking of audiences in the late 60s and early 70s being shocked or horrified by the Stooges’ live performances, an impression reinforced by the notorious live album Metallic KO. But the one time a professional camera crew caught them in action, they caught them at a moment of complete triumph. Then Iggy falls back into the crowd and the footage cuts away to a cheery reporter gamely asking monosyllabic audience members where they’ve travelled from and if they’re having fun.

Related: Sign up for the Sleeve Notes email: music news, bold reviews and unexpected extras

Incredibly, by the time Midsummer Rock was broadcast in August, the Stooges’ career was unravelling. Laudatory reviews couldn’t convince radio to play the claustrophobic, uncompromising Fun House. Bass player Dave Alexander was sacked after a disastrous performance at another festival, Goose Lake. Their manager quit. Almost immediately, his replacement introduced the band to heroin. By autumn, they were playing irregular gigs for which they would get paid not with money, but smack. Weeks later, their record label Elektra asked for their advance back. The original Stooges were over.