Brett Callwood - The Stooges--A Journey Through the Michigan Underworld

The title of this book is The Stooges: A Journey Through The Michigan Underworld, but it could just as easily be called The Detroit Chronicles, Part II. During 2006, I wrote my first book, Sonically Speaking, a biography of the MC5. While often gruelling and always incredibly hard work, the experience was ultimately an uplifting and inspiring one. When the reviews that followed were almost all glowing (with a couple of obligatory exceptions), I found that I had developed confidence as a writer that my journalistic commitments could never give me. With a book on the shelves, even my mum was proud.

And so, with the MC5 saga put to bed, at least in literary terms, it was time to think about book number two, but really there was little to think about. I believe The Stooges story is one that needs to be told. Or at least, it needs to be told in the way that I would want to read it.

Around the same time that Independent Music Press put out my MC5 biography, former Mojo editor Paul Trynka released a biography of Iggy Pop, called Open Up And Bleed. Its a fantastic book, totally deserving of the praise that it received from all sides. It covers Iggys short time with The Stooges in great detail, and all fans of both Iggy and The Stooges should certainly own a copy. But I wanted to do something different. My approach, put simply, was to treat the Asheton brothers, Ron and Scott, with the same amount of respect as their singer. I wanted to know all about former members Dave Alexander and James Williamson, as well as new boy Mike Watt and perennial sax man Steve Mackay. I wanted to know what these guys had done pre-and-post-Stooges, and I wanted to give those stories more coverage than another anecdote about what Iggy did with Bowie in Berlin. I wanted to treat The Stooges as a band, rather than as something that Iggy Pop once did. What started as a germ of an idea in the back of my mind started to grow and spread while interviewing Mudhoney man Mark Arm for my MC5 book. Mentioning my plans for a Stooges book that focussed on the Ashetons, Arm said to me that, its a forgotten story.

Of course, there was always going to be some crossover, both with my own MC5 book, and with Trynkas excellent Iggy biography, not to mention the countless other Iggy books that are on the shelves. When guitarist Fred Smith came out of the Motor City 5, he formed the Sonics Rendezvous Band, featuring Scott Asheton on drums. Similarly, both Dennis Thompson and Mike Davis of the MC5 played in bands with Ron Asheton (the former in The New Order and the latter in Destroy All Monsters). The trick, however, would be to tell these stories from the perspective of the Stooges men. This book has been designed to sit comfortably alongside the aforementioned chronicles, by simply but quite deliberately shifting the focus.

As I was coming to the end of Sonically Speaking, I wrote, After speaking to Dennis Thompson, Michael Davis and Wayne Kramer, I realised that I had been spoiled. When I come to write my second book, whomever it shall be about, surely Ill never be treated so well and openly again. As prophecies go, this one was a bit of a corker. While the MC5 pretty much made themselves available on tap to me for interviews, the Asheton brothers were more difficult to get hold of, verging on being reclusive, or at least elusive. Add this to the fact that while I had written the first proper MC5 biography, The Stooges had had many pages already written about them, and it was obvious from the start that this was going to be a different beast entirely. The upside was that, because of the countless existing Iggy Pop biographies, I was free to put whatever slant I wanted on to my book, and not be accused of missing out major parts of the story.

I visited Detroit for two weeks on a research mission during September 2007. Very quickly it became obvious that, if I was going to be able to talk with the Asheton brothers, it was going to take some time and a lot of persuading. Therefore, while in Detroit, I spoke with a lot of people that had played a part in The Stooges history, people that impacted on the lives of these men, or had been impacted upon by them. The adventures that I had along the way began to form a story of their own, and so the focus of my book began to shift once more. Detroit, and more accurately, Ann Arbor, is rightfully proud of The Stooges and the coverage that the band has given to their city, and it was the people that I spoke to along my drunken two-week journey that I began to find interesting. This band had changed the city; there is an underground music scene still blossoming that The Stooges have had a profound effect upon. So thats where the title of the book comes from. I thought Id seen everything until I ventured to Detroit for this trip. I dont know whether it was the length of my stay this time around or the band that I was researching, but the mere mention of The Stooges seemed to inspire chaos in Detroit, much of which has been documented in these pages. Youre about to meet Ron Cooke and Johnny Bee, former members of both The Detroit Wheels and The Detroit band and two extremely funny gentlemen. Then theres Jerry Vile, former member of The Boners and one-time editor of the infamous Orbit magazine. Jerry gave me an afternoon Ill never forget. My evening at the Detroit Erotica Ball is chronicled, a night of utter debauchery that even Iggy would surely have winced at. I had two meetings with the fabulous Niagara, former front-woman with Destroy All Monsters, and her husband Colonel Galaxy, and both were of huge importance to my understanding of what makes Ron Asheton tick. And then there was the premiere of the