Detroit Rock City by Steve Miller

important was how we wanted to look and how we wanted to sound and what we wanted to do. Although we didn’t use the term then, today it would be “as artists.” That term would have been a little bit too pretentious for us to use then, but that was where we were coming from. I always believed that if you do that superbly, the career would take care of itself.
    Hiawatha Bailey: The Stooges were gods in both Ann Arbor and Detroit. Ron saw me on the Diag at U of M one day when I first came to town, and he said,“You know what, you’re the most suspicious black person I ever saw in my life. Hi.” Then I saw Scott, and I couldn’t believe it was the drummer in the Stooges and I was like, [sound effects] . . . Scott goes, “Hey, I know you . . . you know where to get some good drugs? Go get me some drugs.” No, I didn’t. I made sure he got them, but I didn’t give them to him. I was working for the White Panther party at the time.
    Iggy Pop: Between the first album and Fun House , I’d say we had the sound, but what I’d say changed was the drummer. We wanted the more aggressive approach, and the sonics of the band had been sort of a thick-layered guitar sound, guitar-based sonic approach on the first album. I was really, really influenced by what James Brown was doing at the time and also people like Coltrane and Miles Davis to a lesser extent. But especially James Brown. He was in the period of “Can’t Stand It,” “Funky Drummer,” that sort of thing. Ron had a riff for something that became “T.V. Eye,” and the original way he was playing it sounded a lot like “No Fun,” and I thought we needed to push a little farther, so I said, “Will you start out, play that single note like you were Hooker?”—John Lee Hooker, who was pretty much a Detroit musician. From a lot of other things on that whole record we used a contrast between parts of each song where the guitar is very spare and you can hear holes. Really, you can hear every, every note the rhythm section is playing, and you can hear big holes in the music and then each song, when it’s time, blows to a climax. There’s more dynamics, but it’s less like usual rock, then we added the saxophone. I was taking a lot of LSD at the time, and that may have had something to do with it too.
    Steve Mackay: When we did “LA Blues” in the studio in Los Angeles, it was originally a hippie vibe. But the producer said, “Let’s make a completely different song out of this.” So when we did that, that was when I took some acid. Iggy scared the shit out of me. I was tripping, and just the whole thing was like, “Whoaaaaa, this guy is being really scary now. I better play really scary.” That’s exactly how it came out. As the years have gone by, people have said to Jim, “Well, Steve Mackay says he was high on acid for that session,” and he says “Oh well, that’s great, Steve. I was on acid every single day.”
    Iggy Pop: All I’d ever had before Fun House was recorded was marijuana and LSD. I would call it occasional LSD, but that’s a relative term. To me occasional meant about twice a week. Marijuana for me was like when I became conscious in the morning then right through the day, right into the evening. Any time I woke up inthe middle of the night either I was . . . I was smoking it or trying to get it. Acid about twice a week was probably my average. We recorded the album in that way, but towards the end—towards the end of the vocal overdubs and the mixes—two people turned me on to cocaine for the first time, and I was one of those people that takes it and goes, “That’s great!” There were some points in some of the songs, the outtro and the verses to “T.V. Eye,” the outtro and maybe the second part of “Loose”—those were done with some coke up my nose. But the