Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil & Gillian McCain

Author:Legs McNeil & Gillian McCain [McNeil, Legs & McCain, Gillian]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Music, Non-Fiction, History, Biography, Art
ISBN: 9780802142641
Google: mkG7Y6_J7pUC
Amazon: 0802142648
Barnesnoble: 0802142648
Goodreads: 14595
Publisher: Grove Press
Published: 1996-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

Metallic K.O.

WAYNE KRAMER: When the MC5 broke up in 1972, we all lost each other. It was like losing your brothers—we were schoolboys together, we started out together, and we'd all been through the fire together. In the end, when the band broke up it was so painful and so ugly that nobody talked to one another. Nobody was friends anymore.

So I just packed up my guitar and went to the dope house, because the dope kills the pain, and I didn't have to deal with anything. Of course, when you got that kind of pain, it opens the door for all kinds of funky behavior.

I became a criminal after the band broke up. I was doing burglaries, dealing, and fencing TVs, guns, and drugs. I mean, in ’72, ’73, and ’74, there was really no music scene in Detroit to speak of. It was brutal. The automobile industry started to go downhill, so there wasn't any clubs, so if I went out and robbed two or three houses a night, I was a star again.

I had this hole that had to get filled, from the loss of my band, so I filled it up with dope and crime. But if you're putting the money in a hole in your arm, there's never enough money, so you always gotta find a new scam, you know?

Around this time, Iggy came to town, and I remembered he owed me a couple hundred bucks from our failed dope business. So I went backstage at one of his gigs in Ann Arbor and said, “Look, you owe me this money, you know?”

Iggy said, “What, what do you mean?”

I said, “You remember, from our business deal?”

So he says, “Oh, yeah, right, but you wanna cop?”

I said, “Yeah, sure, tomorrow, when you play in Detroit, man. I'll get the dope, and I’ll meet you at the hotel afterwards.”

The next night I went to the hotel and I brought this dude with me, because I was worried about Scotty Asheton—you know, I thought I might need to neutralize Scotty when I took the money from Iggy.

Iggy collected all this money from the band—it was about two hundred bucks—so they could get the dope, and he said, “Okay, you wanna do it here?”

I said, “No, let's go down in the street,” and we went down in the street. He gave me the money and I counted it, then said, “Well, this means we're even.”

He said, “We're even?”

I said, “Yeah, you owe me this, man.”

He said, “You mean there's no dope?”

I said, “No, man.”

Iggy started crying, and my backup guy saw Iggy crying and went over and gave him a hug, saying, “It's all right, man. Don't worry, it's just drugs. Don't worry about it, brother.” I'm certainly not proud of it, but I needed the money.

BEBE BUELL: The last time Iggy and I were together I went with him to Washington, on the train, where he was playing at Constitution Hall. It was really a prestigious date

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