It is Saturday 5 July
1969 in Pottawatamie Beach and as the Stooges finish their
opening number, Iggy looks blankly at the festival audience
and announces, ‘I’d like to dedicate the set today to Brian Jones, the dead
Stone. Oh well, being dead’s better than playing here.’
As they battle their
way through their set, perhaps a quarter of the audience is entranced, the
remainder indifferent or actively hostile. Cub Koda stands by the side of the
stage to admire the freeform feedback-saturated jam. As uncontrollable shrieks
squeal out of the PA stacks, Dave Alexander takes the neck of his Mosrite bass
and jams it into the gap between two Marshall cabinets, then starts to hump
them. Ron Asheton, in aviator shades and leather jacket, tosses his Fender
Stratocaster to the stage; it moans and howls as he bends the whammy bar with
his foot. Drummer Rock Action pounds out a Bo Diddley jungle rhythm on his
tomtoms before suddenly losing the beat and
starts kicking over the kit. Iggy writhes on the floor, blood
trickling from his bottom lip where he’s smacked himself with the microphone. Koda
looks on as Iggy leans over and starts to throw up in the middle of
the stage, when suddenly he senses someone leaning behind him, trying to get a
better view. He glances behind and sees it’s Muddy Waters, the grand patriarch
of Chicago blues, who will be playing the headlining set in a couple of hours. Muddy
watches for a few seconds. Then he shakes his
head, points at the stage and shouts over the feedback: ‘I don’t like that.
Those boys need to get themselves an act!’
‘Muddy!’ laughs Cub.
‘That is the act!’
Thanks!
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