The gig that ended with Iggy Pop in the parking lot with a pistol in his gut
Considering one of Iggy Pop’s best-known songs is ‘Lust For Life’, the famous punk rocker had little to no respect for his own life.
His career was fraught with wild stories of him dancing with the devil and putting his own life down as collateral. One time, a rumour circulated around the damp streets of late 1970s New York, stating that Iggy was set to commit suicide on stage, and bring a run of frenzied shows to a close with his own death. Dark and worrying, but entirely plausible given his track record at that point, which involved countless blood-soaked shows.
But for those either fortunate or unfortunate enough not to see a show, the choice entirely dependent on your own appetite for danger, the Stooges delivered a remedy. Their live album Metallic KO was a full-blooded recording of their final ever show that took place in their native city of Detroit, at the Michigan Palace on February 9th, 1974.
It concludes with a near breathless Iggy Pop shouting, “Thank you very much to the person who just threw this glass bottle at my head. It nearly killed me, but you missed again. Try again next week!”
There wasn’t a next week in fact, for it was the band’s final live performance until their reformation in 2003. But it was a fitting way for the record to bow out, thrusting Iggy into a sense of danger that was ever-present throughout his career. But rather oddly, it wasn’t the only time he nearly died that night, just the second time wasn’t caught on record.
“I did end up with a pistol in my gut in the parking lot afterwards,” Iggy remembered, ”But that was another story, and I can’t reveal any more about it now that I’ve become an old git. They didn’t hit me with anything that night, though a couple of nights before, I got knocked out briefly by a guy with a knuckle duster.”
Maybe right there, in that moment, Iggy realised that The Stooges ought to come to an end, wherein they had just spent the previous seven years unleashing fury on every stage they had set foot on, delivering punk chaos that ultimately thrust Iggy himself into a position of global fame, reverence and danger in one fell swoop. Had they bought into the roles they carved for themselves so deeply that it would ultimately end with Iggy shot dead?
Maybe they realised they had, and soon after they disbanded, but instead of taking stock and slowing down, Iggy furiously sped up. His solo career converged with David Bowie’s, and together the pair became rock’s most charming hell raisers.
Coke addictions spiralled out of control, and at the end of the ‘70s, a pistol pressed into the stomach felt like child’s play to the sort of trouble Iggy found himself caught up in. Finally, with a little help from Bowie himself, he found some sort of personal solace at the end of the decade and went into the ‘80s a cleaner man, living a life far away from the dangers of car park pistols and high-grade cocaine.
