SCOTT Thurston stuck it out ’til The Stooges finally hit the wall, a full year after Raw Power’s release. Desperate weeks of midnight flits from motels and druggy self-destruction finally brought one of rock’s most notorious sagas to a close. “We had some pretty rough gigs,” Thurston deadpans. “We played this place in Michigan called The Farm, where somebody cold-cocked Jim [Iggy], and that was the end of that show! The last gig, of course, was at the Michigan Palace.” Semibootleg Metallic KO – which outsold Raw Power in the ’70s – captured the show on February 9, 1974, where enraged bikers hurled bottles at the band and Iggy immolated “Louie Louie”. “Frightening? Somewhat,” Thurston considers. “But we had the attitude of being cool. It was really sad in its way, but inevitable. Dead of winter, with no more gigs. That’s how it ended.” There was, it seemed certain, no way back. Yet in 2003, Iggy reconvened the original Stooges, with Ron Asheton back on guitar, for redemptive gigs and a new studio album, The Weirdness. “It was 125 months, some of the best of my life,” Mike Watt says of his spell as Stooges bassist. “These guys were serious about working the room, like vaudeville. They got fucked up when they were younger. They were straight, cold sober when I was with them.”
AfterRonAshetondiedofaheartattackon January6,2009,Iggyannouncedthereturnof JamesWilliamsonandIggyAndTheStooges.“Iget callafromIg,sayingJamesiscomingback,”Watt recalls.“Jameslivesfaraway,sojustmeandScotty practisedRawPowerformonthsinthisHollywood pad.Thatwasatrip,tobeskeletoncrewforRaw Power.Whaddayacallthat,aninternship?”