Iggy Pop challenging a violent biker gang during a Stooges show might not have been the most well-thought-out artistic choice, but at least it garnered the band an iconic, fan-favorite album. ‘Metallic K.O.’ features The Stooges’ final performance before their 2003 reunion on February 9, 1974, at the Michigan Palace in Detroit.
Appropriately, the album was originally a bootleg. But because Stooges guitarist James Williamson acquired the reel-to-reel recording from Michael Tipton, the band dubbed ‘Metallic K.O. a “semi-official bootleg” and released it on Skydog in 1976.
As music journalist Lester Bangs later wrote, the album “is the only rock album I know where you can actually hear hurled beer bottles breaking against guitar strings” (via Paleolithic Hunting Club).
Iggy Pop Challenging the Biker Gang Riled Them Up To a Fever Pitch
In his book Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, Lester Bangs described watching The Stooges perform at a small club in Warren, Michigan, two nights before the ‘Metallic K.O.’ performance. Frontman Iggy Pop planted the seeds of unrest in Warren, which Bangs described as “the Iggy holocaust at its most nihilistically out of control.”
“The audience, which consisted largely of bikers, was unusually hostile,” Bangs wrote (via PHC). “Iggy, as usual, fed on that hostility, soaked it up and gave it back and absorbed it all over again in an eerie, frightening symbiosis. ‘All right,’ he finally said, stopping a song in the middle, ‘you a**holes wanta hear “Louie, Louie,” we’ll give you “Louie Louie,” including new lyrics improvised by Pop on the spot consisting of You can suck my a**, you biker f***** sissies.”
Eventually, Pop called out one particularly rambunctious heckler, challenging him to a fight. The heckler challenged the rowdy frontman right back, prompting Pop to jump off the stage straight toward his challenger. Unfortunately for Pop, he would lose the brawl, ending the performance and causing Pop to return to his motel for a doctor’s visit. “The next day, the bike gang, who call themselves the Scorpions, will phone WABX-FM and promise to kill Iggy and the Stooges if they play the Michigan Palace on Thursday night,” Bangs wrote.
How The Doors Helped Inspire the Energy Behind ‘Metallic K.O.’
Unfazed by the Scorpions’ threat, The Stooges played their Michigan Palace concert. Thankfully, everyone made it out alive. In fact, thanks to Michael Tipton’s bootleg recording, the band achieved a new level of immortality. ‘Metallic K.O.’ surpassed all previous Stooges recordings, quickly becoming a fan favorite not only for the music but for the raucous energy Tipton captured that night.
From the sounds of glass breaking against guitar necks to the explosive booms of firecrackers, ‘Metallic K.O.’ was certainly the first punk record of its kind. However, it was a different (and equally disastrous) Michigan concert that inspired Iggy Pop to confront his agitated crowd with reckless abandon. Before Iggy Pop was, well, Iggy Pop, he was Jim Ostenberg, an audience member at The Doors’ 1967 performance at the University of Michigan. Jim Morrison’s drunken antagonizing of the unhappy crowd lit a spark in Ostenberg, and the rest is punk rock history.
“I was very excited,” Pop later recalled in Please Kill Me, an oral history of punk. “I loved the antagonism; I loved that he was p***ing them off. Yes, yes, yes. The gig lasted only fifteen or twenty minutes because they had to pull Morrison offstage and get him out of there fast because the people were gonna attack him. It made a big impression on me. I thought, look how awful they are, and they’ve got the number one single in the country! If this guy can do it, I can do it. And I gotta do it now” (via Louder Sound). Indeed, Iggy Pop challenging that biker gang seemed like a full circle moment from when he was a young creative watching Morrison challenge football players and their horrified girlfriends at the University of Michigan’s homecoming festivities.
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