10 Most Rock N' Roll Things That Have Ever Happened

5. Iggy Pop Fights With Bikers

Iggy Pop has always been a polarising figure in the music industry. Along side his band The Stooges, he made a name for himself as a nihilistic, extreme performer in the 60s and 70s, frequently whipping audiences up into a frenzy with his own particular brand of sarcastic wit. However, it was to be the last Iggy And The Stooges gig in 1974 which would go down in infamy and become a legendary rock n' roll moment: In February 1974, the Stooges were booked to play the Michigan Palace in Detroit and Iggy had been his usual offensive self and wound up annoying a group of bikers. When the band came to play on the night, the hostility between the audience and the band was unprecedented (though there was usually some level of hostility from the audience due to Iggy's antics), largely due to the majority of the audience being members of a local biker gang called the Scorpions. The majority of the gig was spent with the audience pelting the band with ice, eggs, bottles... anything they could lay their hands on, basically while all the time Iggy fed off the hostile atmosphere and baited them into reacting. Halfway through a song, Iggy stops the band and is quoted as saying to the audience "You a**holes wanna hear 'Louie, Louie,'?! We'll give you 'Louie, Louie.'" They then played a 45 minute version of the song as Iggy made up new lyrics and taunted the audience even more. One of the bikers in particular had Iggy's back up with his constant heckling, to which near the end of the show he threatened to jump into the audience and fight the man, to which the biker was more than happy to accept. Iggy jumped into the audience and went straight for the biker in question... only to have it backfire on him and result in Iggy being the one who had his rear-end handed to him. The whole incident was captured and released as the live album Metallic K.O.