A forty-five-minute cover of Louie Louie sounds like a performance that would insight a riot, and it did at The Stooges‘ penultimate show.
The Lust for Life hitmaker was attacked by a group of bikers at a show in 1974 for playing the Richard Berry blues hit over and over. A gig with The Stooges saw Pop push the crowd to their very limit with an ongoing cover of Louie Louie, the audience clearly agitated and responding with fury. Pop and The Stooges were known for some erratic behaviour on stage to say the least, including one of the first stage dives, covering himself in peanut butter, and most recently being wheeled onto the stage in a coffin he springs from. Newfound attention for the band and a rise in audience expectation had, clearly, sickened The Stooges, who were more than happy to appease the audience with a rendition of Louie Louie that just wouldn’t end.
“All right, you…wanna hear Louie Louie? We’ll give you Louie Louie!,” is what Pop told the crowd. The crowd in Warren, Michigan, was allegedly full of “hostile bikers” who didn’t respond well to The Stooges’ punk rock and roll. That group of bikers were there not for the music but to haze a new member of the gang, according to Far Out Magazine.
But the group began taking their anger out on Pop and the band, rather than the new members of their gang. Not happy with this hostile crowd, the band launched into Louie Louie and played the blues hit for three-quarters of an hour. Pop would even change the lyrics to badmouth the bikers.
Naturally, this did not go down well. The bikers in the crowd were infuriated by Pop’s insults across Louie Louie and were riled up even further. Pop decided that was the right time to jump into the crowd and fight a biker, though it turns out The Passenger hitmaker is no match for a crowd of angry bikers.
Credit to Pop, he returned to the stage after his scuffle with The Scorpions gang and continued the performance. He and The Stooges, however, decided to badmouth the group even further, daring them to show up for their show on February 9 at the Michigan Palace in Detroit.
That performance would lead to the release of Metallic K.O., a live album recorded just a short while before The Stooges called it quits. An incomplete setlist for the show can be found below.
- Raw Power
- Wet My Bed
- Heavy Liquid
- I Got Nothin’
- Rich Bitch
- Gimme Danger
- Cock in My Pocket
- Louie Louie (Richard Berry and The Pharaohs cover)
The band would not perform together again until they reformed in 2003. They did not play Louie Louie during their reunion tour.
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