Cool Connections #3: Iggy and Evel

In Robert Matheu's new book, The Stooges: The Authorized and Illustrated Story, Iggy Pop describes the above image, taken from a 1969 photo shoot for the band's first album cover...

I didn't want to just be posed there, because we were a band that moved. So I got the other guys on the floor all huddled together, and I decided that I'd jump up over them like Evel Knievel going over the fountain at Caesars -- and just like Evel, I crashed down on Scottie [drummer Scott Asheton, the guy in the middle] and went face first into the cement floor. Scottie was always cool about those things, 'cause I crashed into him a lot over the years. So I went to the hospital to get stitched up and came back the next day.

On a similar Evel/Iggy note, I wrote in Evel Incarnate...

In the 1993 book, Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana, Michael Azerrad wrote that Evel was Kurt Cobain’s “childhood hero,” and that “two of Kurt’s favorite stuntmen” were Evel and Iggy Pop... The Stooges may not have had any direct connection to Evel, yet Cobain’s admiration of both Evel and Iggy Pop was rather astute. In the early 1970s, Iggy was rock 'n' roll's closest equivalent to Evel, as their respective pioneering acts and reckless, search-and-destroy nihilism curiously paralleled one another.

Also from the Stooges book is this cool mini- connection: guitarist Ron Asheton vandalized Bob Newhart's face on the cover of a 1983 TV Guide.















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