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| photos, 2003, Mojo (www.mickhutson.com) |
A largely unknown part of a book like Detroit Rock City is the portion that is
never seen. In movies, it’s called the cutting room floor, and these days you
can see what ended up on that floor through DVD extras. We aren’t smart enough to come up with that in the book
world, and “updated” has little of the panache of an "extra." So what didn't make it into Detroit Rock City for any number of reasons? I'll be running some of these extras once a week or so over the summer.
Check it out.
IGGY POP (on Jack White producing a post-reformation Stooges recording) : It was one of these things, it went back and forth two or
three times. I heard he [White] wanted to do it and I thought that could work in the
group’s favor for a couple of reasons, but I didn’t want to do a whole record,
I just wanted to do a few tracks. That was mostly because I had already
recorded some of that record, that record, this was around the time we did
Skull Ring, and I needed to respect the fact that I had already recorded half
of that record with my touring band, The Trolls.
I wasn’t going to tell them, or call them up “Hey I’m going
to work with a bigger star than you and fuck all your work.” I can’t do that to an artist. So I
offered him a few tracks and Jack being Jack, said, “well I don’t want to do
that, I want to do a whole thing.”
Yes, of course and he wouldn’t want to be a part of something
else, being a Jack White production. Let’s just say I felt where he was coming
from.
At one point I felt I was just about ready to do it and
we were having a conversation and the last thing he had to say was, “Okay I’ll
call you up when I have time.”
I put down the phone and part of me was like, “fuck you
kid.” I didn’t say anything because I’m not a confrontational person, so we
didn’t do it at that point. And he had some good concepts, it would have been
interesting. But I think what we would have ended up with would be a kinda
indie reality show. He wanted to lock us in a house together and record the
results. The idea was nobody would leave until we had an album done. I think
had we agreed that very quickly cameras would have come into it.
It would have been interesting... At one point there was a lot of
pressure from the record company, “What are you crazy, you’re not going to play
with Jack White?” Blah blah blah. At one point I was ready to do it and I think
he wasn’t. Then much later he was ready to do it and we had a lunch about it in
Australia. But at that point I had a meeting with Ron and Scott and Ron said,
“Look, for me that would be like all of the glory of it would be about Jack
White and not about me.” And he made a gesture if someone was sitting on his
head. And Scott said to me, “Yeah the way I see it, Jack White is a pot of gold
and we don’t want to be part of his pot of gold.”
What I said to the guys is, “Hey look, that is
absolutely fine with me. But as the leader of the group,” which I finally did
become in this century, “I gotta let you know that if you do it with Jack,
you’re going to sell more and get more attention, but it’s also true, due to
market forces, the result will emphasize Jack’s participation.” I told them, “I
have no opinion at all, I could go either way.” And so we didn’t, we ended up
not doing it, which was fine with Jack and we’re friendly.
