The Iggy Pop Tour With ‘Only Drugs + Booze’ Backstage
Drummer Clem Burke first met Iggy Pop whereas out on street in 1977 with Blondie – however that wasn’t his most memorable expertise.
“I later toured as part of Iggy’s band for six weeks promoting the Party album in ’81 and he was basically out of his mind,” Burke tells Classic Rock. “There was no food allowed backstage, only drugs and booze.”
Pop memorably smashed a microphone into his personal face at one level throughout this tour, dislodging a entrance tooth. Fans acquired a peek into the onstage insanity with 1983’s Live in San Fran 1981, recorded in November on the Warfield Theatre in San Francisco. A DVD model adopted in 2005.
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“It was ‘no blow, no show,’” Burke added, “and his only mandate was: ‘Play as loud and as fast as possible.’”
Even if a superb time was had by all, Party turned Pop’s final album on Arista Records after stalling at a paltry No. 166 on the Billboard Top 200. That was fairly a tumble from Pop’s industrial peak within the late ’70s with The Idiot, the David Bowie collaboration which hit the U.Ok. Top 30.
Pop invited Blondie to open on the Idiot World Tour in 1977, simply after Burke and firm launched their deeply underrated debut album. “Blondie’s first national tour of the States was with Iggy, with David Bowie on keyboards,” Burke mentioned. “The night before the start of the tour we did a gig at Max’s Kansas City [in New York], got straight in an RV, drove to Montreal overnight [and] went to the venue.”
Everyone was “still crashed out in a funky dressing room backstage when the door opened and in walked Bowie and Iggy,” Burke mentioned. “They couldn’t have been nicer.”
That’s simply when Burke seen one thing: “Iggy and I both had Anello and Davide Beatle boots on, which I’d got on my first trip to the UK in ’75.”
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Gallery Credit: Lauryn Schaffner