I’d briefly met Steve Mackay back in 2010, when The Stooges had played at Hammersmith. I’d asked about the chances of an interview and he gave me an email address, telling me to get in touch next time they were in London. Of course, I wasn’t expecting that to be two years later, so I wasn’t sure if he’d still be up for it, but I sent a message and fortunately received a very prompt reply. Yes, he had an evening-off while he was in London, before the Stooges gig in Hyde Park, and would be happy to meet up for a chat. I was really looking forward to this… much that the story of The Stooges has been told numerous times, Steve Mackay remains one of the more elusive elements… several biographies had even claimed that he’d died some time ago ! But although he was only a member of the original band for a relatively short period of time, it’s undeniable that his sax-playing on ‘Funhouse’ is one of the key elements, something that helped to elevate it to the masterpiece that it truly is.
Meeting up at Steve’s hotel, we share a bottle of wine and start the conversation right at the beginning… where did Steve originally grow up ?
‘I come from Michigan, I was born in Grand Rapids, 1949… My folks got divorced when I was about 4 or 5, so I kinda got shipped around. My Mom was from California and my Dad was from Michigan, but I spent most of my time growing up in Grand Rapids. I actually had a very, very good education. Even though we were living in Grand Rapids, proper, which was a little more blue-collar, my father made sure that I was able to go to school in East Grand Rapids, which was sorta like the Beverley Hills of Grand Rapids. So I got a really good education even though I was living with my Mom and we were on Child Support. My Dad would pay money every week and I’d be the first child at school every day. I’d get up early, when it was still dark out, and go and ride the bus with the working people, the three or four miles to where my school was. I had some great teachers, but especially the music teacher, Mr Warren Faulkner… I want to immortalise this guy ! He ended-up having to quit teaching because they didn’t pay him enough, but he was the guy who taught me to play saxophone. We had an interesting thing where the Elementary School actually shared the campus with the High School and I remember seeing the High School Stage band. One guy who played the baritone sax, and I thought that was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. To this day, I own a baritone sax and it’s my second favourite saxophone to play, after the tenor… So I got a good education there, but then I went to live with my father and step-mother, although I kept going to the same school through the whole thing, and eventually on to High School. There’s a lot of parallels with Iggy’s story, like, every time I turned around, someone was giving me an award or something like that. We were both gifted in some ways... While I was in High School, I tried to do everything. I never thought of myself as an athlete, but it turned out that I was good at running long distances, especially cross country. I was actually quite good at that, but at the same time, I was also in a rock band. We’d started a band around the same time as the British Invasion…’
Meeting up at Steve’s hotel, we share a bottle of wine and start the conversation right at the beginning… where did Steve originally grow up ?
‘I come from Michigan, I was born in Grand Rapids, 1949… My folks got divorced when I was about 4 or 5, so I kinda got shipped around. My Mom was from California and my Dad was from Michigan, but I spent most of my time growing up in Grand Rapids. I actually had a very, very good education. Even though we were living in Grand Rapids, proper, which was a little more blue-collar, my father made sure that I was able to go to school in East Grand Rapids, which was sorta like the Beverley Hills of Grand Rapids. So I got a really good education even though I was living with my Mom and we were on Child Support. My Dad would pay money every week and I’d be the first child at school every day. I’d get up early, when it was still dark out, and go and ride the bus with the working people, the three or four miles to where my school was. I had some great teachers, but especially the music teacher, Mr Warren Faulkner… I want to immortalise this guy ! He ended-up having to quit teaching because they didn’t pay him enough, but he was the guy who taught me to play saxophone. We had an interesting thing where the Elementary School actually shared the campus with the High School and I remember seeing the High School Stage band. One guy who played the baritone sax, and I thought that was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. To this day, I own a baritone sax and it’s my second favourite saxophone to play, after the tenor… So I got a good education there, but then I went to live with my father and step-mother, although I kept going to the same school through the whole thing, and eventually on to High School. There’s a lot of parallels with Iggy’s story, like, every time I turned around, someone was giving me an award or something like that. We were both gifted in some ways... While I was in High School, I tried to do everything. I never thought of myself as an athlete, but it turned out that I was good at running long distances, especially cross country. I was actually quite good at that, but at the same time, I was also in a rock band. We’d started a band around the same time as the British Invasion…’
What was the first music that you really got into?
‘Well, my mothers’ jazz records, you know, Stan Getz and Charlie Parker, things like that. She was a musician herself, she played piano and sang. She was a bar-pianist and she’d tell people, ‘I know 2000 songs!’… and she did ! So, of course, that rubbed off on me. Then, on the other side of my family, the Mackay’s, we had Mad Angus Mackay, who used to be Queen Victoria’s piper! Apparently, he died in 1848, from syphilis, as ‘the most violent mental patient in the UK…’ I can respect him for that, in fact, that’s the name of my music company, Mad Angus Music! So I come from a line of pipers on that side and I always wanted to be a musician, even though my father would just say, ‘oh, yeah, that’s a great hobby…’ Eventually, I went to University in Michigan, in the Fall of 1967, and it was a perfect time for a kid like me to go there. I remember my folks telling me, I should wait until at least after the first term before I got in a band. But it was just five days into it and all of a sudden, I’m in a Blues band and we’ve got Beatniks, pot-smokers, homosexuals and Hillbillies, all in the one band! But they really liked me… I mean, back in Grand Rapids, I’d been in a rock band and we just played covers, and I’d been in an R’N’B band with negroes, which was a real big deal back then. I’d be the only white guy at the gig, you know ? But I learned a lot from all of them. So, then I got to Ann Arbor in ’67 and started playing in this band, Billy C and the Sunshine. But then Billy C quit and he ended up becoming the lead singer in Commander Cody, so our band turned into the Charging Rhinoceros of Soul. We had two trumpet players and the tenor, and we did charts and all that stuff. I was kinda resistant to the charts, but we were really good at what we were doing. In fact, we were offered a record deal, but they wanted us to change our name, because Elektra Records already had a band called Rhinoceros… I mean, why wasn’t I there to say, ‘Change the name of the band!’ But then I started Carnal Kitchen, which was a sorta reaction to all of that. It was just me and a drummer, me and my buddy Marco Lampert, who is currently in San Diego… we were still able to do our Carnal Kitchen 40th anniversary reunion album, with just me and him from the original band. Mike Watt played bass on it and we also have a great guitarist and keyboard player, so we were able to do it down in Southern California. Anyway, when me and Marco started Carnal Kitchen, the basic thing was that there were no rules. Marco was an irrepressible, if sometimes inconsistent, drummer, but always with a lot of energy. We would just go out and set up on street corners to play, but our first high profile gig was with Commander Cody, when they were just starting to do their Country & Western thing. I also played with Charging Rhinoceros of Soul at that show, but the opening act was Carnal Kitchen. And who was sitting in the front row watching us that night? Iggy! I already sorta knew him, we were acquaintances. In fact, I was in a rock’n’roll covers band at one point, called Chaos Incorporated, and this guy tried to sign-up as our manager… well, to try to sell himself to us, he told us about this band he’d been managing, called the Iguanas, who had this crazy drummer-singer called Iggy… that was about 1965 or 1966, I guess. And then later on, I would go to some of those early Stooges show.’
‘Well, my mothers’ jazz records, you know, Stan Getz and Charlie Parker, things like that. She was a musician herself, she played piano and sang. She was a bar-pianist and she’d tell people, ‘I know 2000 songs!’… and she did ! So, of course, that rubbed off on me. Then, on the other side of my family, the Mackay’s, we had Mad Angus Mackay, who used to be Queen Victoria’s piper! Apparently, he died in 1848, from syphilis, as ‘the most violent mental patient in the UK…’ I can respect him for that, in fact, that’s the name of my music company, Mad Angus Music! So I come from a line of pipers on that side and I always wanted to be a musician, even though my father would just say, ‘oh, yeah, that’s a great hobby…’ Eventually, I went to University in Michigan, in the Fall of 1967, and it was a perfect time for a kid like me to go there. I remember my folks telling me, I should wait until at least after the first term before I got in a band. But it was just five days into it and all of a sudden, I’m in a Blues band and we’ve got Beatniks, pot-smokers, homosexuals and Hillbillies, all in the one band! But they really liked me… I mean, back in Grand Rapids, I’d been in a rock band and we just played covers, and I’d been in an R’N’B band with negroes, which was a real big deal back then. I’d be the only white guy at the gig, you know ? But I learned a lot from all of them. So, then I got to Ann Arbor in ’67 and started playing in this band, Billy C and the Sunshine. But then Billy C quit and he ended up becoming the lead singer in Commander Cody, so our band turned into the Charging Rhinoceros of Soul. We had two trumpet players and the tenor, and we did charts and all that stuff. I was kinda resistant to the charts, but we were really good at what we were doing. In fact, we were offered a record deal, but they wanted us to change our name, because Elektra Records already had a band called Rhinoceros… I mean, why wasn’t I there to say, ‘Change the name of the band!’ But then I started Carnal Kitchen, which was a sorta reaction to all of that. It was just me and a drummer, me and my buddy Marco Lampert, who is currently in San Diego… we were still able to do our Carnal Kitchen 40th anniversary reunion album, with just me and him from the original band. Mike Watt played bass on it and we also have a great guitarist and keyboard player, so we were able to do it down in Southern California. Anyway, when me and Marco started Carnal Kitchen, the basic thing was that there were no rules. Marco was an irrepressible, if sometimes inconsistent, drummer, but always with a lot of energy. We would just go out and set up on street corners to play, but our first high profile gig was with Commander Cody, when they were just starting to do their Country & Western thing. I also played with Charging Rhinoceros of Soul at that show, but the opening act was Carnal Kitchen. And who was sitting in the front row watching us that night? Iggy! I already sorta knew him, we were acquaintances. In fact, I was in a rock’n’roll covers band at one point, called Chaos Incorporated, and this guy tried to sign-up as our manager… well, to try to sell himself to us, he told us about this band he’d been managing, called the Iguanas, who had this crazy drummer-singer called Iggy… that was about 1965 or 1966, I guess. And then later on, I would go to some of those early Stooges show.’
Their earlier shows were a lot more free-form than the stuff they later recorded, weren’t they?
‘Oh yeah, they’d have a guy onstage with a 200 gallon oil drum, and they’d be banging on it with a sledgehammer. I missed some of the really early gigs, where they used things like a blender and stuff like that, but they were still like, ‘This song’s called ‘Dance of Romance’’, and they’d just go ‘Arrrggghhh’, then they’d say, ‘This song is called ‘Asthma Attack’’, and again it would just be ‘Arrrgggghhh !’ I thought it was right-on ! Anyway, he saw us play as Carnal Kitchen and then, later on, I was working at a record store in Ann Arbor, which was also where Iggy had worked at one time. Carnal Kitchen weren’t making any money, we were mostly just playing Communist fund-raisers or Stop the War benefits, things like that. Anyway, Iggy came into the shop one day and said, why don’t you come over to our house and jam with us? I went out there, they were working on ‘1970’ and ‘Funhouse’, and they were all set up waiting for me to play with them. That was his plan, Maceo Parker on Acid ! So I said, no problem !’
I remember, when I interviewed Ron Ashton a few years ago, he said that he’d always wanted to play guitar the same way that Coltrane played sax, so I guess that all makes sense…
‘I think a common link to all of this was John Sinclair, as he was the guy who turned me onto a lot of that stuff. And the nice thing is that, say 10 or 15 years ago, when John would come to San Francisco to do his poetry and stuff, I would back him up. Which was great, because he was the guy who turned a lot of people, including myself, onto Coltrane. He was actually friends with him and stuff, too. I don’t think very many people these days realise just how influential he was, except maybe the old Detroit people and stuff.’
The famous story is that you were asked to play with The Stooges only a few days before they were due to fly out to LA to record ‘Funhouse’… is that actually true ?
‘Well, it wasn’t exactly like that, but it was kinda like… they asked me to come over and jam with them, then they said, we’ve got a gig on Saturday, come with us and play these songs at the gig. Then there was another gig and maybe another one, and by then I already knew they were due to go to Los Angeles to record ‘Funhouse’, but no-one had said anything about me going with them. Then a couple of the roadies came into the record store one day and said, ‘Hey, man, aren’t you excited?’ I asked why, and they said, ‘Well, you’re going to LA !’ I said, no-one ever told me that ! But sure enough, a couple of days later, Iggy called me up and told me, so then I had to go and cancel some of my exams at college… As it turned out, that was actually the last term I was in college, which also left me having to figure-out how to avoid going to Vietnam. I mean, there’s many tales of people having to do that, and I respect anybody who did have to go, but thank God that I didn’t have to, in the end. Anyhow, the idea was that I would go to LA with them, it would be for six weeks, we’d record the album and we had a show at the Whiskey and another one in San Francisco. But six weeks ended up turning into six months. We started out macro-biotic, but by the end of the six months, it was candy bars and smack. By the time they finally let me go, I kinda wanted to quit because I didn’t like the way things were going, although at the same time I was a part of it. Iggy finally fired me, and I was like, Oh God, thank you ! So I guess it was kinda combination of things. I mean, I was once quoted in a Dutch magazine as saying that because I got fired from the Stooges, it saved me from becoming a junkie! But I was certainly doing it for just about long enough… although I wasn’t hitting it up, I only ever snorted it, so I got to see what happened to everybody else. You know, we’d started being late for shows and missing stuff…’
‘Oh yeah, they’d have a guy onstage with a 200 gallon oil drum, and they’d be banging on it with a sledgehammer. I missed some of the really early gigs, where they used things like a blender and stuff like that, but they were still like, ‘This song’s called ‘Dance of Romance’’, and they’d just go ‘Arrrggghhh’, then they’d say, ‘This song is called ‘Asthma Attack’’, and again it would just be ‘Arrrgggghhh !’ I thought it was right-on ! Anyway, he saw us play as Carnal Kitchen and then, later on, I was working at a record store in Ann Arbor, which was also where Iggy had worked at one time. Carnal Kitchen weren’t making any money, we were mostly just playing Communist fund-raisers or Stop the War benefits, things like that. Anyway, Iggy came into the shop one day and said, why don’t you come over to our house and jam with us? I went out there, they were working on ‘1970’ and ‘Funhouse’, and they were all set up waiting for me to play with them. That was his plan, Maceo Parker on Acid ! So I said, no problem !’
I remember, when I interviewed Ron Ashton a few years ago, he said that he’d always wanted to play guitar the same way that Coltrane played sax, so I guess that all makes sense…
‘I think a common link to all of this was John Sinclair, as he was the guy who turned me onto a lot of that stuff. And the nice thing is that, say 10 or 15 years ago, when John would come to San Francisco to do his poetry and stuff, I would back him up. Which was great, because he was the guy who turned a lot of people, including myself, onto Coltrane. He was actually friends with him and stuff, too. I don’t think very many people these days realise just how influential he was, except maybe the old Detroit people and stuff.’
The famous story is that you were asked to play with The Stooges only a few days before they were due to fly out to LA to record ‘Funhouse’… is that actually true ?
‘Well, it wasn’t exactly like that, but it was kinda like… they asked me to come over and jam with them, then they said, we’ve got a gig on Saturday, come with us and play these songs at the gig. Then there was another gig and maybe another one, and by then I already knew they were due to go to Los Angeles to record ‘Funhouse’, but no-one had said anything about me going with them. Then a couple of the roadies came into the record store one day and said, ‘Hey, man, aren’t you excited?’ I asked why, and they said, ‘Well, you’re going to LA !’ I said, no-one ever told me that ! But sure enough, a couple of days later, Iggy called me up and told me, so then I had to go and cancel some of my exams at college… As it turned out, that was actually the last term I was in college, which also left me having to figure-out how to avoid going to Vietnam. I mean, there’s many tales of people having to do that, and I respect anybody who did have to go, but thank God that I didn’t have to, in the end. Anyhow, the idea was that I would go to LA with them, it would be for six weeks, we’d record the album and we had a show at the Whiskey and another one in San Francisco. But six weeks ended up turning into six months. We started out macro-biotic, but by the end of the six months, it was candy bars and smack. By the time they finally let me go, I kinda wanted to quit because I didn’t like the way things were going, although at the same time I was a part of it. Iggy finally fired me, and I was like, Oh God, thank you ! So I guess it was kinda combination of things. I mean, I was once quoted in a Dutch magazine as saying that because I got fired from the Stooges, it saved me from becoming a junkie! But I was certainly doing it for just about long enough… although I wasn’t hitting it up, I only ever snorted it, so I got to see what happened to everybody else. You know, we’d started being late for shows and missing stuff…’
Ron’s story was that he’d turn up at rehearsal and the amplifiers would be missing…
‘Well, me and Marco ended up buying some drums. I mean, $20 for a set of drums, that’s a good deal !’
When you were recording ‘Funhouse’, how much of what you were playing was improvised ?
‘My playing was pretty much entirely improvised. I mean, it took them weeks and weeks to record that stuff and most of the time, I was on the other side of the glass with the producer and the engineer. So I like to think that I had something to do with those things, because I would say, Oh, keep that thing, and they would follow my advice a lot of the time. I think that was great but I probably only played on a half-dozen sessions during the whole time. I mean, when you get to the box-set, songs like ‘Sliding the Blues’ or ‘Lost in the Future’, none of us even remember doing those things ! But I was given a lot of freedom with what I played, they’d just say things like, ‘play like Maceo on Acid’, and I’d say okay.’
But it certainly worked out well… the sax on ‘1970’ went on to influence so many people…
‘But, you know what… they brought me in for a second session, like, ‘Let’s try that again…’, and I think there’s actually two saxophones on the final track. I think they may have used bits and pieces, especially at the end, where all the cacophony is happening. It sounds as if there’s two of me ! But that’s cool, because it’s nice to think that I may have opened the door for other people, in some way. I mean, when I first started playing in bands, it really wasn’t cool to have a sax player, but now, if I go to play at independent gigs around San Francisco and stuff, half the bands will have horns in them. I’m not saying that it’s all because of me, but every once in a while, someone like James Chance will tell me, the reason he wanted to play sax was because of me, and that’s real good.’
As far as ‘Funhouse’ is concerned, I do think that the saxophone is one of the key elements that makes it so memorable, and that’s also why it was so cool that you were asked to be part of The Stooges reunion…
‘Oh yeah, and I think Iggy recognises that, too. I mean, when Ronnie was still around, I pretty much played half the set. I started just playing the two songs, and gradually they added this and that, but I was still waiting in the wings half the time. But now we’re playing with Williamson, I end up sorta playing a supportive, rhythm guitar part on saxophone, which helps to kinda hold things together and bring it all out. So it’s not like I’m solo-ing the whole time…’
You were only in The Stooges, originally, for around six months. Was there much touring during that time ?
‘Oh yeah, all over the States. We did Washington DC, St Louis, New Orleans, things on the West Coast, Michigan, Ohio… But what we used to do was, we would only play on weekends, because even then Iggy realised his limits. So Friday would roll around, we would go to the airport and fly to wherever we were going. Then we’d do the show and come home. I remember we played at a festival in Wisconsin, just after Altamont, and it was another thing where they’d hired the local version of the Hells Angels, although they weren’t actual Hells Angels… I don’t want to give those guys a bad name for this one ! But these guys in Wisconsin ran amok and it ended up with three people being killed, two hippies and one biker, I think. We got out of there pretty quickly, so we didn’t know about all this stuff until the next day, when the police started asking stuff. You’re talking about total anarchy… 50,000 people, twenty-five miles from anywhere else, and only one cop sitting down at the end of the road... But it was all good fun. Like, the Cincinnati Pop Festival, which has been pretty well-documented. I particularly remember seeing this guy, Jack Lescoulie, who was a sports-caster, quite a well-known figure in early American television. We were leaving the gig and passing by as fires were burning, and there was a police car with its’ windshield smashed-out… and there was Jack Lescoulie standing there in front of a camera, talking about it as it’s happening! We were just, like, Let’s get out of here ! But, you know, that took place in an arena in the poorest part of the town, and Cincinnati was almost like an apartheid kinda place at that point in time. Once the hippie thing started happening, then everybody else decided to make a proper riot out of it!’
‘Well, me and Marco ended up buying some drums. I mean, $20 for a set of drums, that’s a good deal !’
When you were recording ‘Funhouse’, how much of what you were playing was improvised ?
‘My playing was pretty much entirely improvised. I mean, it took them weeks and weeks to record that stuff and most of the time, I was on the other side of the glass with the producer and the engineer. So I like to think that I had something to do with those things, because I would say, Oh, keep that thing, and they would follow my advice a lot of the time. I think that was great but I probably only played on a half-dozen sessions during the whole time. I mean, when you get to the box-set, songs like ‘Sliding the Blues’ or ‘Lost in the Future’, none of us even remember doing those things ! But I was given a lot of freedom with what I played, they’d just say things like, ‘play like Maceo on Acid’, and I’d say okay.’
But it certainly worked out well… the sax on ‘1970’ went on to influence so many people…
‘But, you know what… they brought me in for a second session, like, ‘Let’s try that again…’, and I think there’s actually two saxophones on the final track. I think they may have used bits and pieces, especially at the end, where all the cacophony is happening. It sounds as if there’s two of me ! But that’s cool, because it’s nice to think that I may have opened the door for other people, in some way. I mean, when I first started playing in bands, it really wasn’t cool to have a sax player, but now, if I go to play at independent gigs around San Francisco and stuff, half the bands will have horns in them. I’m not saying that it’s all because of me, but every once in a while, someone like James Chance will tell me, the reason he wanted to play sax was because of me, and that’s real good.’
As far as ‘Funhouse’ is concerned, I do think that the saxophone is one of the key elements that makes it so memorable, and that’s also why it was so cool that you were asked to be part of The Stooges reunion…
‘Oh yeah, and I think Iggy recognises that, too. I mean, when Ronnie was still around, I pretty much played half the set. I started just playing the two songs, and gradually they added this and that, but I was still waiting in the wings half the time. But now we’re playing with Williamson, I end up sorta playing a supportive, rhythm guitar part on saxophone, which helps to kinda hold things together and bring it all out. So it’s not like I’m solo-ing the whole time…’
You were only in The Stooges, originally, for around six months. Was there much touring during that time ?
‘Oh yeah, all over the States. We did Washington DC, St Louis, New Orleans, things on the West Coast, Michigan, Ohio… But what we used to do was, we would only play on weekends, because even then Iggy realised his limits. So Friday would roll around, we would go to the airport and fly to wherever we were going. Then we’d do the show and come home. I remember we played at a festival in Wisconsin, just after Altamont, and it was another thing where they’d hired the local version of the Hells Angels, although they weren’t actual Hells Angels… I don’t want to give those guys a bad name for this one ! But these guys in Wisconsin ran amok and it ended up with three people being killed, two hippies and one biker, I think. We got out of there pretty quickly, so we didn’t know about all this stuff until the next day, when the police started asking stuff. You’re talking about total anarchy… 50,000 people, twenty-five miles from anywhere else, and only one cop sitting down at the end of the road... But it was all good fun. Like, the Cincinnati Pop Festival, which has been pretty well-documented. I particularly remember seeing this guy, Jack Lescoulie, who was a sports-caster, quite a well-known figure in early American television. We were leaving the gig and passing by as fires were burning, and there was a police car with its’ windshield smashed-out… and there was Jack Lescoulie standing there in front of a camera, talking about it as it’s happening! We were just, like, Let’s get out of here ! But, you know, that took place in an arena in the poorest part of the town, and Cincinnati was almost like an apartheid kinda place at that point in time. Once the hippie thing started happening, then everybody else decided to make a proper riot out of it!’
After you left The Stooges, you continued playing music but to a lot of people, you seemed to have disappeared. In fact, at one point it was even rumoured that you had died…
‘Well, that came about because of a journalist called Nick Kent. He got me confused with a guy called Zeke Zettner, who was another blond guy who was in the band after me. He actually did die, of a drug overdose, in 1973… Nick Kent wrote his book and said that I had died, but the first I heard about it was when I joined the Violent Femmes, and they asked me, ‘Hey, man, did you know that you’re dead?’ I hadn’t been hired by the Violent Femmes because I’d been in The Stooges, but because they’d known one of my friends and they’d asked him if he knew any horn players who could sit-in with them… it was like, love at first note! So I ended up playing with them, full-time, for a couple of years, and doing a couple of albums with them… and I remember, when I was with the Femmes, we went to Ann Arbor in 1984, and Ronnie and Scott came along to hang out out at the soundcheck, so they certainly knew that I was alive! But if you go on the internet and look up ‘Steve Mackay’, you’ll find enough different people. Even if you narrow it down to ‘Steve Mackay musician’, there’s still plenty of us… I mean, there’s enough Steve Mackay’s who are musicians, to start our own band, and there’s enough of us who aren’t musicians, to be in the audience ! I think it’s a pretty common name… there’s even a whole clan on Mackay’s in the Philippines ! But anyway, there was one guy in particular, in San Francisco, called Steve Mackay. He was actually African-American, he was marathon-runner and he died of Aids… so, people would do a quick search on Google, see that this Steve Mackay died in San Francisco, and thought, this figures, this confirms the story. All I knew about it was when the Credit Card company called me on the ‘phone, telling me I owed them money ! I asked them, what have you got for my address, and they came back with some place in the Castro… So I tell them, that’s not me, I’m just another guy with the same name… So anyway, it seems there were two different rumours about my death and people just thought, they must be true, without really trying to find me.’
At what point did you actually move out to San Francisco ?
‘Well, at the moment, I live in the San Francisco area, in a town called Pacifica, which is about ten miles to the south. I’ve been there for about eleven years, but I spent the previous 25 years or so in San Francisco or the Bay Area. I was touring with Commander Cody and stuff, and then in late ’83-’84, I was playing with Snakefinger. It’s really sad that he’s no longer with us, but I’m still good friends with his daughter and his widow. In fact, his daughter, Lani Lithman, has a band called Girls With Guns, which you should really check out ! She's a foul-mouthed little bitch, totally outrageous and stuff ! But, yeah Phillip Lithman was a great guy to work for. We did a tour called ‘History of the Blues’, in 1983. We rehearsed in San Francisco, we had a three-piece horn section and we were playing Blues covers so I got to play pretty-much all the soloes. But it proved to be a very difficult tour, probably similar to the one that ended-up killing him… He was a great band leader, but he had a congenital heart problem. In fact, previous to the ‘History of the Blues’ thing, he’d had a severe heart attack when they were touring it in Australia, and he’d had to bust that tour off. Then he went on tour in Europe with Eric Feldman, who was his best friend, and he was telling people, ‘Don’t tell anyone I’ve had a heart attack…’ He’d been advised that if he quit touring, quit smoking and quit eating spicy Thai salads, maybe he’d live a few more years, but that wasn’t going to be. I’ve been so fortunate in my life to work with people like him.’
‘Well, that came about because of a journalist called Nick Kent. He got me confused with a guy called Zeke Zettner, who was another blond guy who was in the band after me. He actually did die, of a drug overdose, in 1973… Nick Kent wrote his book and said that I had died, but the first I heard about it was when I joined the Violent Femmes, and they asked me, ‘Hey, man, did you know that you’re dead?’ I hadn’t been hired by the Violent Femmes because I’d been in The Stooges, but because they’d known one of my friends and they’d asked him if he knew any horn players who could sit-in with them… it was like, love at first note! So I ended up playing with them, full-time, for a couple of years, and doing a couple of albums with them… and I remember, when I was with the Femmes, we went to Ann Arbor in 1984, and Ronnie and Scott came along to hang out out at the soundcheck, so they certainly knew that I was alive! But if you go on the internet and look up ‘Steve Mackay’, you’ll find enough different people. Even if you narrow it down to ‘Steve Mackay musician’, there’s still plenty of us… I mean, there’s enough Steve Mackay’s who are musicians, to start our own band, and there’s enough of us who aren’t musicians, to be in the audience ! I think it’s a pretty common name… there’s even a whole clan on Mackay’s in the Philippines ! But anyway, there was one guy in particular, in San Francisco, called Steve Mackay. He was actually African-American, he was marathon-runner and he died of Aids… so, people would do a quick search on Google, see that this Steve Mackay died in San Francisco, and thought, this figures, this confirms the story. All I knew about it was when the Credit Card company called me on the ‘phone, telling me I owed them money ! I asked them, what have you got for my address, and they came back with some place in the Castro… So I tell them, that’s not me, I’m just another guy with the same name… So anyway, it seems there were two different rumours about my death and people just thought, they must be true, without really trying to find me.’
At what point did you actually move out to San Francisco ?
‘Well, at the moment, I live in the San Francisco area, in a town called Pacifica, which is about ten miles to the south. I’ve been there for about eleven years, but I spent the previous 25 years or so in San Francisco or the Bay Area. I was touring with Commander Cody and stuff, and then in late ’83-’84, I was playing with Snakefinger. It’s really sad that he’s no longer with us, but I’m still good friends with his daughter and his widow. In fact, his daughter, Lani Lithman, has a band called Girls With Guns, which you should really check out ! She's a foul-mouthed little bitch, totally outrageous and stuff ! But, yeah Phillip Lithman was a great guy to work for. We did a tour called ‘History of the Blues’, in 1983. We rehearsed in San Francisco, we had a three-piece horn section and we were playing Blues covers so I got to play pretty-much all the soloes. But it proved to be a very difficult tour, probably similar to the one that ended-up killing him… He was a great band leader, but he had a congenital heart problem. In fact, previous to the ‘History of the Blues’ thing, he’d had a severe heart attack when they were touring it in Australia, and he’d had to bust that tour off. Then he went on tour in Europe with Eric Feldman, who was his best friend, and he was telling people, ‘Don’t tell anyone I’ve had a heart attack…’ He’d been advised that if he quit touring, quit smoking and quit eating spicy Thai salads, maybe he’d live a few more years, but that wasn’t going to be. I’ve been so fortunate in my life to work with people like him.’
I also read an article that said you’d worked with Andre Williams at one point…
‘Oh yeah, Andre and I have a big history. There was another band I was in at one time, called the Mojo Boogie Band, out of Ann Arbor. I think it was back when I was playing in the Billy C band, someone played me this record by Andre, called ‘Jailbait’, and I just thought, wow, I want to get every record by this guy ! A little while later, maybe 1973 or ’74, I’m in the Mojo Boogie Band and we’re in a bar playing one of his songs, called ‘Cadillac Jack’, when a woman walks in and tells us that she works for Andre Williams. Well, next thing you know, he’s at the gig, we get to know him, and he helps out producing our stuff. We became very, very close with him. But then I didn’t see him for a really long time, until he came down to San Francisco. So I went down to where he was playing and brought my horn, and he was like, ‘Oh, brother, I love ya, where have you been ?’ I ended up playing with him there and also down in Los Angeles, until I had a big old meltdown, in a recording studio, and completely… well, I was thrown out of the hotel at 2 AM ! I’m real sorry that it happened, it’s one of the least-favourite moments of my career, that’s for sure. So, I haven’t really seen him since then, but I still know people who know him and at some point maybe we’ll get back together. But he’s still doing his thing, he’s just turned 75 and he’s releasing a new album, with a band called The Sadies. It’s great… I mean, there were times when he was begging for spare change in Chicago, a real crack freak, shit like that. When I was with him, he didn’t do that stuff anymore, but never try to match him drink-for-drink, cos you’ll end up in trouble!’
You’ve also been involved with the Bay Area Boat Club for some time… I visited the place once, when I was over there with one of my friends from Flipper…
‘I ended up finding out about the place through a Czech guy, and he turned me onto this place. The third Thursday of every month, this guy Mike Dingle puts on a jam session. It’s a private club and you have to sign-in, so he doesn’t publicise it broadly. He doesn’t want to let too many people know, but I try to play there every month. We’ve ended up with a core band, which we call the ‘Third Thursday Band’, and we also play at other clubs, like The Condor in North Beach.’
‘Oh yeah, Andre and I have a big history. There was another band I was in at one time, called the Mojo Boogie Band, out of Ann Arbor. I think it was back when I was playing in the Billy C band, someone played me this record by Andre, called ‘Jailbait’, and I just thought, wow, I want to get every record by this guy ! A little while later, maybe 1973 or ’74, I’m in the Mojo Boogie Band and we’re in a bar playing one of his songs, called ‘Cadillac Jack’, when a woman walks in and tells us that she works for Andre Williams. Well, next thing you know, he’s at the gig, we get to know him, and he helps out producing our stuff. We became very, very close with him. But then I didn’t see him for a really long time, until he came down to San Francisco. So I went down to where he was playing and brought my horn, and he was like, ‘Oh, brother, I love ya, where have you been ?’ I ended up playing with him there and also down in Los Angeles, until I had a big old meltdown, in a recording studio, and completely… well, I was thrown out of the hotel at 2 AM ! I’m real sorry that it happened, it’s one of the least-favourite moments of my career, that’s for sure. So, I haven’t really seen him since then, but I still know people who know him and at some point maybe we’ll get back together. But he’s still doing his thing, he’s just turned 75 and he’s releasing a new album, with a band called The Sadies. It’s great… I mean, there were times when he was begging for spare change in Chicago, a real crack freak, shit like that. When I was with him, he didn’t do that stuff anymore, but never try to match him drink-for-drink, cos you’ll end up in trouble!’
You’ve also been involved with the Bay Area Boat Club for some time… I visited the place once, when I was over there with one of my friends from Flipper…
‘I ended up finding out about the place through a Czech guy, and he turned me onto this place. The third Thursday of every month, this guy Mike Dingle puts on a jam session. It’s a private club and you have to sign-in, so he doesn’t publicise it broadly. He doesn’t want to let too many people know, but I try to play there every month. We’ve ended up with a core band, which we call the ‘Third Thursday Band’, and we also play at other clubs, like The Condor in North Beach.’
After all this stuff, how did it come about that you became involved with The Stooges reunion, back in 2003 ?
‘Well, I’d been back in touch with Ron and Scotty from when they’d toured with J Mascis, so then in 2003, Iggy called me and said, ‘Do you want to do this with us ?’ Of course, I said yes, so they flew me down to Palm Springs, I did the gig at Coachella, and they gave me a bunch of money! But right then, I had a feeling that there was a buzz that wasn’t going to let it stop. I mean, Iggy has his career, he’s always gonna be working, but I just felt, let’s wait and see what happens. Next thing we know, we were going to Jones Beach, outside of New York City, and then we were going to Spain for another festival, and over to Japan… At first, it was pretty sporadic, so I was still working at my job as an electrician, which I’d done for, like, twenty years or something. It’s only been in the last few years that I haven’t had to do that kinda work… which is good because I’m too old to be crawling around in the mud under a house… or maybe I’m not, maybe I’ll have to do that again, some day…’
Were you aware of the reputation that ‘Funhouse’ had gained over the intervening years, even though it was hardly a commercial success at the time of its’ release ?
‘Well, eventually, yeah. I mean, I moved to California in 1977 because I knew the Commander Cody guys and I thought, well, they’re my best connection, so they’ll help me get a gig. And I ended up playing in their band, so that was all good. But I remember one day, going down to Tower Records on Sunset Strip, because I realised that I didn’t have a copy of ‘Funhouse’ anymore, so I ended up buying a French import copy, which I still have. Anyway, I was telling the girl at the counter that I played on the album, and she said, okay, we’ll give you the employee discount… so I even saved a couple of dollars ! But, you know, I’d kinda dropped-off the radar for a long time. ‘Funhouse’ had really been ahead of its’ time, and Iggy had really had this whole concept of, you know, Free Jazz-meets-Punk Rock… and it’s kinda fun now, because we can say, We started that ! I mean, that was the sorta thing I’d always wanted to do, anyway, even before I met Iggy. I kept telling people, we ought to play a sorta rhythm’n’blues or rock’n’roll groove, so all the hippies can dance to it, but it’ll be like jazz, or kinda rock’n’roll-jazz. No-one else was doing that.’
Probably the ultimate version of ‘Funhouse’ is the Complete Sessions boxset. How did you feel about that, and have you ever listened through the entire set ?
‘No, I haven’t listened to all of it, but I remember things like the 32 takes of ‘Down On The Street’. I was there for all of that, so I don’t need to hear them all again ! I was lucky to get a copy of the boxset… I’m not sure who made it happen, maybe it was Ron, but someone said, well, Steve’s gotta get one. So they sent me the boxset, and I thought it was great. And, of course, in about 2005, they did the Redux versions of the first two Stooges albums. I thought they were great, and they did a good marketing job as well. They were sorta like the poor mans’ boxset, which I thought was fine, because the Complete Sessions is probably more than anyone’s ever gonna listen to, anyhow ! It was good, and I feel kinda proud about that, you know, just that it happened.’
During the first period of the Stooges reunion, the band were mostly playing songs from the first two albums only. Was that something that you all agreed on ?
‘Yeah, although I’d say a lot of it was Ronnie. I think it was a sore point for him, and it’s all been documented. After ‘Funhouse’, he’d seen Williamson come in, and then he and Iggy had taken-over the band. But when they came to record ‘Raw Power’, they decided to hire the Ashetons again, because no-one else could play the way they wanted… and, of course, they then told Ron that he’d be playing bass… although there was a brief version of The Stooges that had both James and Ronnie on guitars. That was actually the time when I ended up playing drums for them ! This is a great story… Ronnie had a completely different take on it, but basically, they were playing a gig in Detroit, maybe a year and a half after I’d been in the band. Anyway, they were coming back from another gig, I think maybe Scotty was driving. It was a 12 feet tall U-Haul truck, but the Washington Street railroad bridge was 10 foot 6”… Blam ! Anyway, the windshield popped out, they all got concussions, bit-lips and stuff, but nobody died, thank God. But there was a gig the next night in Detroit, so they called me up and said, well, remember that time in New York when Scotty didn’t show up for one of the practices ? You knew all the drum parts and were able to play ‘em… Well, I used to get so fucking bored because I’d only play on certain songs, so I got to know all the drum beats, and they figured, well, if he knows all of that, he can play the show. So they got me upstairs at their house, that afternoon, and I played along with drumsticks on top of a little amplifier, while Ronnie played these riffs for songs that I’d never heard before! But he said, yeah, okay, that’s good, so we go to the gig, somewhere in East Detroit, and people are yelling out, ‘Hey, fuck you Iggy ! Let’s see you puke, you fucking junkie!’, and they’re throwing beer bottles at the stage… a really lovely crowd ! So Iggy would want to start a song and he’d come to the drums, grab the sticks and beat out the rhythm to show me want he wanted. I’d play that for the whole song and then he’d have to show me the next one, all the way through the set. I remember one of the roadies telling me, ‘This is the hardest gig you’ll ever play !’ But I got my $50… and then later on, Ronnie said something about us rehearsing real hard and then I let them down, but that’s what really happened, the one time I played drums for the Stooges !’
‘Well, I’d been back in touch with Ron and Scotty from when they’d toured with J Mascis, so then in 2003, Iggy called me and said, ‘Do you want to do this with us ?’ Of course, I said yes, so they flew me down to Palm Springs, I did the gig at Coachella, and they gave me a bunch of money! But right then, I had a feeling that there was a buzz that wasn’t going to let it stop. I mean, Iggy has his career, he’s always gonna be working, but I just felt, let’s wait and see what happens. Next thing we know, we were going to Jones Beach, outside of New York City, and then we were going to Spain for another festival, and over to Japan… At first, it was pretty sporadic, so I was still working at my job as an electrician, which I’d done for, like, twenty years or something. It’s only been in the last few years that I haven’t had to do that kinda work… which is good because I’m too old to be crawling around in the mud under a house… or maybe I’m not, maybe I’ll have to do that again, some day…’
Were you aware of the reputation that ‘Funhouse’ had gained over the intervening years, even though it was hardly a commercial success at the time of its’ release ?
‘Well, eventually, yeah. I mean, I moved to California in 1977 because I knew the Commander Cody guys and I thought, well, they’re my best connection, so they’ll help me get a gig. And I ended up playing in their band, so that was all good. But I remember one day, going down to Tower Records on Sunset Strip, because I realised that I didn’t have a copy of ‘Funhouse’ anymore, so I ended up buying a French import copy, which I still have. Anyway, I was telling the girl at the counter that I played on the album, and she said, okay, we’ll give you the employee discount… so I even saved a couple of dollars ! But, you know, I’d kinda dropped-off the radar for a long time. ‘Funhouse’ had really been ahead of its’ time, and Iggy had really had this whole concept of, you know, Free Jazz-meets-Punk Rock… and it’s kinda fun now, because we can say, We started that ! I mean, that was the sorta thing I’d always wanted to do, anyway, even before I met Iggy. I kept telling people, we ought to play a sorta rhythm’n’blues or rock’n’roll groove, so all the hippies can dance to it, but it’ll be like jazz, or kinda rock’n’roll-jazz. No-one else was doing that.’
Probably the ultimate version of ‘Funhouse’ is the Complete Sessions boxset. How did you feel about that, and have you ever listened through the entire set ?
‘No, I haven’t listened to all of it, but I remember things like the 32 takes of ‘Down On The Street’. I was there for all of that, so I don’t need to hear them all again ! I was lucky to get a copy of the boxset… I’m not sure who made it happen, maybe it was Ron, but someone said, well, Steve’s gotta get one. So they sent me the boxset, and I thought it was great. And, of course, in about 2005, they did the Redux versions of the first two Stooges albums. I thought they were great, and they did a good marketing job as well. They were sorta like the poor mans’ boxset, which I thought was fine, because the Complete Sessions is probably more than anyone’s ever gonna listen to, anyhow ! It was good, and I feel kinda proud about that, you know, just that it happened.’
During the first period of the Stooges reunion, the band were mostly playing songs from the first two albums only. Was that something that you all agreed on ?
‘Yeah, although I’d say a lot of it was Ronnie. I think it was a sore point for him, and it’s all been documented. After ‘Funhouse’, he’d seen Williamson come in, and then he and Iggy had taken-over the band. But when they came to record ‘Raw Power’, they decided to hire the Ashetons again, because no-one else could play the way they wanted… and, of course, they then told Ron that he’d be playing bass… although there was a brief version of The Stooges that had both James and Ronnie on guitars. That was actually the time when I ended up playing drums for them ! This is a great story… Ronnie had a completely different take on it, but basically, they were playing a gig in Detroit, maybe a year and a half after I’d been in the band. Anyway, they were coming back from another gig, I think maybe Scotty was driving. It was a 12 feet tall U-Haul truck, but the Washington Street railroad bridge was 10 foot 6”… Blam ! Anyway, the windshield popped out, they all got concussions, bit-lips and stuff, but nobody died, thank God. But there was a gig the next night in Detroit, so they called me up and said, well, remember that time in New York when Scotty didn’t show up for one of the practices ? You knew all the drum parts and were able to play ‘em… Well, I used to get so fucking bored because I’d only play on certain songs, so I got to know all the drum beats, and they figured, well, if he knows all of that, he can play the show. So they got me upstairs at their house, that afternoon, and I played along with drumsticks on top of a little amplifier, while Ronnie played these riffs for songs that I’d never heard before! But he said, yeah, okay, that’s good, so we go to the gig, somewhere in East Detroit, and people are yelling out, ‘Hey, fuck you Iggy ! Let’s see you puke, you fucking junkie!’, and they’re throwing beer bottles at the stage… a really lovely crowd ! So Iggy would want to start a song and he’d come to the drums, grab the sticks and beat out the rhythm to show me want he wanted. I’d play that for the whole song and then he’d have to show me the next one, all the way through the set. I remember one of the roadies telling me, ‘This is the hardest gig you’ll ever play !’ But I got my $50… and then later on, Ronnie said something about us rehearsing real hard and then I let them down, but that’s what really happened, the one time I played drums for the Stooges !’
The reformed line-up also went on to record ‘The Weirdness’ LP, which met with a rather mixed response. Looking back at it now, what’s your opinion of the album ?
‘In a lot of ways, it kinda deferred to Ronnie… a lot. I kept asking to be included in the creation of the album, but I got shut-out… probably mostly by Ron. He got so paranoid about his music and what was going to happen to it, until it was like he didn’t even want me to know what it was. They had Ron, Scotty and Mike Watt going to Florida to practise with Iggy, and they had, like, 33 songs that they were working on. By the time I got together with them, they were going on about this song and that song, and I was saying, What the Fuck, what songs are those ? I went to Chicago to record for a day and a half, and I had not heard any of the songs before then. It was great working with Albini, but I pretty much got mixed out of everything and I really had very little to do with it. I mean, it was good for a US tour and we got some work out of it, and the more we would play those things live, the more I would try to insinuate myself into them. So I think it kept getting better and better… I think songs like ‘My Idea of Fun’ were great and I loved them. A lot of the songs got better as they developed, but because they tried to record them cold, before they’d played them live… I mean, that was the thing about ‘Funhouse’, they developed it from live material.’
Yeah, I think that was the problem, it ended up sounding too much like a ‘studio-project’, rather than having the kinda visceral quality that you’d expect from The Stooges… Did you get to play much of that material live ?
‘We toured in the States and played some shows in Europe, too, but it ended up pretty minimal. I had a conversation with Iggy about it, and all he said was, Well, you’ve heard the record, right ? He didn’t say anything more about it, he knew what it was…’
I think it could’ve been a really good album, but it was as if the songs were never given a chance to have a life of their own…
‘Yeah, I mean, a song like ‘She Took My Money’, I really loved that one, but, I only got to play on four songs or something. I came in one afternoon, straight from the airport, played on three songs, and then did another one the next day.’
What has it been like playing with Mike Watt ? He’s quite renowned in his own right, but he’s the new boy in this band…
‘Oh man, he’s the greatest ! He’s my Brother Watt, this guy ! He’s been very supportive of me and what he calls ‘the work’. You know, he did all of these sessions with me, so then he wants to know, where’s the finished record ? He shows up on about 50% of my CD, with all these different people. He also played with me on the Carnal Kitchen 40th Anniversary record, which is called North Beach Jazz even though it was recorded in Southern California. He’s on that whole thing, and he’s playing with me in a band called Willie Waldman’s Mouthful. That’s stuff we recorded in Memphis back in January, and a lot of it was Watt’s compositions. Willie Waldman is a trumpet player, he’s played with Snoop Dogg and other people…’
‘In a lot of ways, it kinda deferred to Ronnie… a lot. I kept asking to be included in the creation of the album, but I got shut-out… probably mostly by Ron. He got so paranoid about his music and what was going to happen to it, until it was like he didn’t even want me to know what it was. They had Ron, Scotty and Mike Watt going to Florida to practise with Iggy, and they had, like, 33 songs that they were working on. By the time I got together with them, they were going on about this song and that song, and I was saying, What the Fuck, what songs are those ? I went to Chicago to record for a day and a half, and I had not heard any of the songs before then. It was great working with Albini, but I pretty much got mixed out of everything and I really had very little to do with it. I mean, it was good for a US tour and we got some work out of it, and the more we would play those things live, the more I would try to insinuate myself into them. So I think it kept getting better and better… I think songs like ‘My Idea of Fun’ were great and I loved them. A lot of the songs got better as they developed, but because they tried to record them cold, before they’d played them live… I mean, that was the thing about ‘Funhouse’, they developed it from live material.’
Yeah, I think that was the problem, it ended up sounding too much like a ‘studio-project’, rather than having the kinda visceral quality that you’d expect from The Stooges… Did you get to play much of that material live ?
‘We toured in the States and played some shows in Europe, too, but it ended up pretty minimal. I had a conversation with Iggy about it, and all he said was, Well, you’ve heard the record, right ? He didn’t say anything more about it, he knew what it was…’
I think it could’ve been a really good album, but it was as if the songs were never given a chance to have a life of their own…
‘Yeah, I mean, a song like ‘She Took My Money’, I really loved that one, but, I only got to play on four songs or something. I came in one afternoon, straight from the airport, played on three songs, and then did another one the next day.’
What has it been like playing with Mike Watt ? He’s quite renowned in his own right, but he’s the new boy in this band…
‘Oh man, he’s the greatest ! He’s my Brother Watt, this guy ! He’s been very supportive of me and what he calls ‘the work’. You know, he did all of these sessions with me, so then he wants to know, where’s the finished record ? He shows up on about 50% of my CD, with all these different people. He also played with me on the Carnal Kitchen 40th Anniversary record, which is called North Beach Jazz even though it was recorded in Southern California. He’s on that whole thing, and he’s playing with me in a band called Willie Waldman’s Mouthful. That’s stuff we recorded in Memphis back in January, and a lot of it was Watt’s compositions. Willie Waldman is a trumpet player, he’s played with Snoop Dogg and other people…’
Do you think your ongoing work with The Stooges has actually given you more scope for your own music ?
‘Oh yeah… I mean, I was recording in Memphis in January, then I was recording in Belgium in February, and then I was playing in Beijing with a band called Sikhara in March ! The Stooges reunion has given me a whole new life, in a lot of ways. Before it happened, to be fair, I was already playing with the Radon guys, and they’d taken me to play in places like Portugal. But now that the Stooges thing has happened, I’ve tried to tie it all in, and it’s been fabulous. It’s something that I never expected to happen, not after 30 years. You just think, well, I had my day, I was in these great bands and I did this and that, maybe I should write the book? Well, I still want to write the book, it’s just that there isn’t any time to do it, yet !’
After Ron died, there was some debate as to whether The Stooges would continue at all, let alone in what form…
‘Well, it’s one of the things about Iggy… when he needs to change gears, he goes to family. That’s why he came to me back in 2003, and then when he needed to, he turned to Williamson. James hadn’t played in 25 years so we had to kinda help him back into it. But right now, he’s shredding that motherfucker !’
Yeah… when I saw you guys at Hammersmith, James just strode out on the stage, grabbed his guitar and started nailing the opening riff even before he’d turned to face the audience… he really wanted to be playing that thing !
‘It’s all part of our plan... if we’re opening with ‘Raw Power’, you should be running out on to that stage ! But then I have to jump to the side so that Iggy doesn’t knock me over when he runs out !’
How does it feel to be playing material from the ‘Raw Power’ era, especially as you weren’t involved with that album ?
‘Well, it was an interesting thing… Ronnie died in 2009, and then a while later I heard James’ name come up in conversation and this and that. Sometime later, I got a call from Iggy, and he told me they were trying to figure out what to do next and, frankly, he wasn’t sure if I was going to be in it. So I said, okay, well, thanks for being upfront with me. But then, the next thing I know, I was getting emails from James Williamson telling me where to show up ! I was like, ahhh, looks like I got it ! So he and I did a couple of rehearsals together and then he found a band in San Jose called the Careless Hearts and we ended up doing a gig with them, playing a bunch of Stooges songs. That was the big event to start getting James back into the groove of stuff. After that, we drove down to LA on about four or five different occasions… James would come and pick me up, as we lived quite close to each other. Once we got to LA, I would stay with Watt or another friend of mine, James would stay at some other place, but we’d get together and rehearse for a whole week or so. Then, eventually, Iggy came in and we put it all together. The end result was our first show as this version of the band, in Sao Paolo. It was all pretty cool… I mean, obviously, the focus of the band had shifted. Not only were we doing ‘Raw Power’, we were also doing ‘Kill City’, as well as bits from the first two albums, but it was all good. I mean, we only get to play about two-thirds of the songs that we worked on, but we still have all of them. I’ve really enjoyed it, especially the stuff from ‘Kill City’, because there’s actually saxophones on that record. I get to be the link with that kinda stuff.’
The other thing about the ‘Kill City’ album is that the material on that LP was never really completely finished, so it’s great to get to hear it live, the way that it was intended to sound…
‘That’s right, it’s good that people get to see that. There’s been some great shows.’
‘Oh yeah… I mean, I was recording in Memphis in January, then I was recording in Belgium in February, and then I was playing in Beijing with a band called Sikhara in March ! The Stooges reunion has given me a whole new life, in a lot of ways. Before it happened, to be fair, I was already playing with the Radon guys, and they’d taken me to play in places like Portugal. But now that the Stooges thing has happened, I’ve tried to tie it all in, and it’s been fabulous. It’s something that I never expected to happen, not after 30 years. You just think, well, I had my day, I was in these great bands and I did this and that, maybe I should write the book? Well, I still want to write the book, it’s just that there isn’t any time to do it, yet !’
After Ron died, there was some debate as to whether The Stooges would continue at all, let alone in what form…
‘Well, it’s one of the things about Iggy… when he needs to change gears, he goes to family. That’s why he came to me back in 2003, and then when he needed to, he turned to Williamson. James hadn’t played in 25 years so we had to kinda help him back into it. But right now, he’s shredding that motherfucker !’
Yeah… when I saw you guys at Hammersmith, James just strode out on the stage, grabbed his guitar and started nailing the opening riff even before he’d turned to face the audience… he really wanted to be playing that thing !
‘It’s all part of our plan... if we’re opening with ‘Raw Power’, you should be running out on to that stage ! But then I have to jump to the side so that Iggy doesn’t knock me over when he runs out !’
How does it feel to be playing material from the ‘Raw Power’ era, especially as you weren’t involved with that album ?
‘Well, it was an interesting thing… Ronnie died in 2009, and then a while later I heard James’ name come up in conversation and this and that. Sometime later, I got a call from Iggy, and he told me they were trying to figure out what to do next and, frankly, he wasn’t sure if I was going to be in it. So I said, okay, well, thanks for being upfront with me. But then, the next thing I know, I was getting emails from James Williamson telling me where to show up ! I was like, ahhh, looks like I got it ! So he and I did a couple of rehearsals together and then he found a band in San Jose called the Careless Hearts and we ended up doing a gig with them, playing a bunch of Stooges songs. That was the big event to start getting James back into the groove of stuff. After that, we drove down to LA on about four or five different occasions… James would come and pick me up, as we lived quite close to each other. Once we got to LA, I would stay with Watt or another friend of mine, James would stay at some other place, but we’d get together and rehearse for a whole week or so. Then, eventually, Iggy came in and we put it all together. The end result was our first show as this version of the band, in Sao Paolo. It was all pretty cool… I mean, obviously, the focus of the band had shifted. Not only were we doing ‘Raw Power’, we were also doing ‘Kill City’, as well as bits from the first two albums, but it was all good. I mean, we only get to play about two-thirds of the songs that we worked on, but we still have all of them. I’ve really enjoyed it, especially the stuff from ‘Kill City’, because there’s actually saxophones on that record. I get to be the link with that kinda stuff.’
The other thing about the ‘Kill City’ album is that the material on that LP was never really completely finished, so it’s great to get to hear it live, the way that it was intended to sound…
‘That’s right, it’s good that people get to see that. There’s been some great shows.’
Obviously, the band recorded ‘The Weirdness’ with Ron, so is there any chance that there might be some new material with James ?
‘I actually just did a recording session with James, but he was the producer. The singer was a woman called Wendy James, who I think is British, but she lives in Berkeley, California, now. I played baritone sax and harmonica on her album and it was James’ production. She did a cover of a Bob Dylan song called ‘It’s Alright, Ma’ and James played some slide guitar, very, very brilliantly. I was just adding some texture with baritone sax, but they gave me one pass when they just told me, play whatever I want. So I’m all over it, and that’s what I really like to do. I give people more than what they want, and they end up using me a lot. That was cool… but, yeah, he’s been working on some stuff with Iggy. I’ve heard some songs and some material that he’s been working on, but there’s nothing that I could tell you is happening with any of it. Who knows what might happen? Sometimes it just turns into a job and you end up playing the same shit again and again, until you die. But then again, a musician is also very fortunate to be able to do stuff like that… there’s not many other trades or professions where you can carry on playing until you’re dead ! Iggy is out there now, singing cabaret songs in French, but when he goes onstage, even now, he puts everything into it and he fucking loves it… and the audience love him. He would rather not do it at all rather than just do it half-assed.’
As the Stooges reunion has proved to be an ongoing project, it means that you’ve now been a member of the band for a considerably longer period than you ever were back in the Seventies. I doubt you ever thought that would happen…
‘No ! I’ve now been in the band for nine years, as opposed to the six months that I was part of it back then. Someone like Ron was due a sense of entitlement, given what his thing was with it. So you can understand why, for years, he wanted to get like the band back together. For years it wasn’t going to happen, but then, eventually, it started to come together with his things and the ‘Velvet Goldmine’ movie. He was actually in that band, The Wylde Rattz, with Mike Watt and Thurston Moore, and they recorded some of the music for the movie, so he had something going on where things were finally starting to come back to him. I think it was more important for Ron than it was for me, because, in my case, I could always look back and think, well, I’ve played with The Stooges, I’ve played with Violent Femmes and Commander Cody, so whatever happens, I’ve had a good shot at a bunch of stuff. In my case, when The Stooges reunion happened, there was a certain sense of vindication, but nowhere near what Ronnie must’ve felt. And I’m really so glad that he was able to feel that, and that he was able to buy his beach house in Michigan at long last, and all that other stuff. He got a good run out of it… maybe someone will say that about me, one day, but they can’t say it yet… and hopefully not for many years !’
‘I actually just did a recording session with James, but he was the producer. The singer was a woman called Wendy James, who I think is British, but she lives in Berkeley, California, now. I played baritone sax and harmonica on her album and it was James’ production. She did a cover of a Bob Dylan song called ‘It’s Alright, Ma’ and James played some slide guitar, very, very brilliantly. I was just adding some texture with baritone sax, but they gave me one pass when they just told me, play whatever I want. So I’m all over it, and that’s what I really like to do. I give people more than what they want, and they end up using me a lot. That was cool… but, yeah, he’s been working on some stuff with Iggy. I’ve heard some songs and some material that he’s been working on, but there’s nothing that I could tell you is happening with any of it. Who knows what might happen? Sometimes it just turns into a job and you end up playing the same shit again and again, until you die. But then again, a musician is also very fortunate to be able to do stuff like that… there’s not many other trades or professions where you can carry on playing until you’re dead ! Iggy is out there now, singing cabaret songs in French, but when he goes onstage, even now, he puts everything into it and he fucking loves it… and the audience love him. He would rather not do it at all rather than just do it half-assed.’
As the Stooges reunion has proved to be an ongoing project, it means that you’ve now been a member of the band for a considerably longer period than you ever were back in the Seventies. I doubt you ever thought that would happen…
‘No ! I’ve now been in the band for nine years, as opposed to the six months that I was part of it back then. Someone like Ron was due a sense of entitlement, given what his thing was with it. So you can understand why, for years, he wanted to get like the band back together. For years it wasn’t going to happen, but then, eventually, it started to come together with his things and the ‘Velvet Goldmine’ movie. He was actually in that band, The Wylde Rattz, with Mike Watt and Thurston Moore, and they recorded some of the music for the movie, so he had something going on where things were finally starting to come back to him. I think it was more important for Ron than it was for me, because, in my case, I could always look back and think, well, I’ve played with The Stooges, I’ve played with Violent Femmes and Commander Cody, so whatever happens, I’ve had a good shot at a bunch of stuff. In my case, when The Stooges reunion happened, there was a certain sense of vindication, but nowhere near what Ronnie must’ve felt. And I’m really so glad that he was able to feel that, and that he was able to buy his beach house in Michigan at long last, and all that other stuff. He got a good run out of it… maybe someone will say that about me, one day, but they can’t say it yet… and hopefully not for many years !’
So finally, I know you’ve recently released a new album of your own…
‘Yeah, I’ve got an album, ‘Sometimes Like This I Talk’, and there’s also a single from it called ‘The Prisoner’, which has Iggy on vocals. He actually volunteered to do that, although I think he may have been feeling bad because he couldn’t get me inducted into the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame. I mean, I was pretty crushed by that… you know, the committee said ‘No’ because I was just the fucking sax player ! I saw the letters that Iggy wrote to them, and he was saying they should include Mike Watt too, and Scott Thurston… These guys are all Stooges, so they should all get it. But the committee just said ‘No’. So, I don’t know, maybe he was trying to make it up to me by singing on my record, but either way, it was a nice gesture. I recorded the track with my buddy Kamilsky, then we sent the tapes over to Iggy’s studio in Miami. He recorded his vocals and sent them back. It’s a great song… and the whole album is all my shit, playing with all these different bands and different people. You get to hear all this different stuff, almost like a sampler. And I’ve also just played on an album with Sonny Vincent. I met him because Scotty had played with him, before. When I was there, it was with Glen Matlock and Rat Scabies, but I think Sonny’s still working on mixing it. He’s something of a perfectionist. When I heard about it, I said, I’ve gotta be on this record…’
The questions come to an end, but I’ve still got some time before I have to rush for my train, so we decide to go out for a few drinks. I’m not really familiar with the Marble Arch area, but we eventually find a nice little place and decide to indulge in a few glasses of Jameson’s. Irish whiskey, good conversation and a sneak preview of one of Steve’s new compositions, ‘I’ve Got a Hangover’… It’s definitely a classic in the making, one that most of us can relate to !
It was a real pleasure to spend an evening with Mr Mackay. He’s a really nice guy, modest but very inspirational, and my only regret is that I hadn’t heard his new album beforehand. If I had, I would’ve had even more questions to ask…
www.stevemackay.org
www.iggyandthestoogesmusic.com
‘Yeah, I’ve got an album, ‘Sometimes Like This I Talk’, and there’s also a single from it called ‘The Prisoner’, which has Iggy on vocals. He actually volunteered to do that, although I think he may have been feeling bad because he couldn’t get me inducted into the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame. I mean, I was pretty crushed by that… you know, the committee said ‘No’ because I was just the fucking sax player ! I saw the letters that Iggy wrote to them, and he was saying they should include Mike Watt too, and Scott Thurston… These guys are all Stooges, so they should all get it. But the committee just said ‘No’. So, I don’t know, maybe he was trying to make it up to me by singing on my record, but either way, it was a nice gesture. I recorded the track with my buddy Kamilsky, then we sent the tapes over to Iggy’s studio in Miami. He recorded his vocals and sent them back. It’s a great song… and the whole album is all my shit, playing with all these different bands and different people. You get to hear all this different stuff, almost like a sampler. And I’ve also just played on an album with Sonny Vincent. I met him because Scotty had played with him, before. When I was there, it was with Glen Matlock and Rat Scabies, but I think Sonny’s still working on mixing it. He’s something of a perfectionist. When I heard about it, I said, I’ve gotta be on this record…’
The questions come to an end, but I’ve still got some time before I have to rush for my train, so we decide to go out for a few drinks. I’m not really familiar with the Marble Arch area, but we eventually find a nice little place and decide to indulge in a few glasses of Jameson’s. Irish whiskey, good conversation and a sneak preview of one of Steve’s new compositions, ‘I’ve Got a Hangover’… It’s definitely a classic in the making, one that most of us can relate to !
It was a real pleasure to spend an evening with Mr Mackay. He’s a really nice guy, modest but very inspirational, and my only regret is that I hadn’t heard his new album beforehand. If I had, I would’ve had even more questions to ask…
www.stevemackay.org
www.iggyandthestoogesmusic.com
Thanks for everything, Steve. I owe you. We'll get together again and this time, the Jameson is on me.