The promoter behind the 1970 Goose Lake International Music Festival near Jackson, Michigan promised a good time. His newspaper ad announcing the three-day event wished “peace” to all the “brothers and sisters” who wanted to see Jethro Tull, Chicago, Faces, Bob Seger, the MC5, and a dozen other bands for $15. It wasn’t quite the nightmare that Altamont had been the previous year, but government officials in Michigan decried it as, essentially, a shitshow. The 200,000 in attendance more than tripled the expected capacity, and they were all prohibited from leaving the grounds’ barbed-wire fence enclosure. Sketchy drugs were everywhere, which caused over 500 people to be treated for bad trips on the first day alone; multiple reports emerged of people ingesting “cocaine” or “PCP” that turned out to be horse tranquilizer. The governor later made a public speech decrying the “deplorable” Goose Lake problem and the promoter was indicted for promoting the sale of narcotics.
This was the fittingly chaotic scene of what turned out to be the Stooges’ final show with their original lineup. The band’s Goose Lake set took place one month after the release of Fun House, and that entire summer, they performed their brand new masterpiece in its entirety while Iggy Pop built his legend as an unhinged performer in front of bigger and bigger crowds. In Cincinnati earlier that summer, he was filmed in his dog collar and long silver gloves smearing peanut butter on his chest, mid-crowd-surf. Consider what it must have felt like to see the Stooges perform “1970” in 1970 at a sweaty outdoor music festival—heaving forward with the current of the crowd when Iggy thrashes into the front rows, hearing him repeatedly scream “I feel alright” while Ron Asheton rips through one of his best hooks. Then, with the adrenaline sky high, you can feel the kick of Scott Asheton’s bass drum in your chest as Steve Mackay’s freeform sax solo folds chaos and frenzy into the band’s hypnotic “Fun House” groove. It’s psychedelic music with wild menace, and it’s all anchored by the lithe little Michigan goblin flailing unpredictably somewhere near the front of the stage.
It absolutely rules that Third Man is putting out a live Stooges album from this period, and at the same time, it makes perfect sense why Iggy voiced hesitation about officially sanctioning the newly unearthed Goose Lake audio. It’s an infamous night in Stooges lore. The Jim Jarmusch documentary Gimme Danger, for example, mostly distills this event into two distinct story beats: the bad drugs that Iggy took right before the set and the firing of bassist Dave Alexander right after the set. The legend goes that Iggy went into a tent “with some wild people,” took what he thought was cocaine, and suffered temporary amnesia just moments before he went onstage. He pulled it together, but looked over at Alexander, who was apparently too fucked up to play anything. Iggy said Alexander froze and didn’t play a note; Scott said someone unplugged Alexander’s amp. Either way, Iggy fired the bassist immediately after the show, closing the book on the lineup that made The Stooges and Fun House.
So the biggest surprise about Live at Goose Lake is that the Stooges’ performance transcended the long-held narrative that this wasn’t a great show for them. If you’ve ever loved a Ron Asheton guitar solo or hook, know that this album’s brimming with those. If your love of Fun House is defined partially by Mackay’s sax performance, absolutely buy this record and listen to his work on the B-side first. Iggy, meanwhile, delivers all the nuances required of performing the music from Fun House. He sings gently, he shouts with authority, and—why not—he even incites a minor riot. Iggy briefly flouts “TV Eye”’s actual lyrics, and in apparent frustration about festival security not allowing him to stage dive, he starts singing about the “big ol’ wall” and screaming “RAM IT.” A security guard, interviewed by Creem’s Jaan Uhelszki for the Goose Lake liner notes, confirmed that this was the moment people in the massive crowd started to rip planks off the front of the stage.
As for Alexander, his presence on the album is a major selling point of Third Man’s Live at Goose Lake LP. The late bassist’s supposed non-performance has been the gospel of biographies, documentaries, and Iggy interviews for years, but you can hear Alexander’s bass all through this newly released audio. So yes, he was playing and he was plugged in, but no, he did not play a perfect set. There are stretches of “Loose” with palpable gaps where there should clearly be bass, and there are other sections where Alexander is either behind the beat or playing the wrong notes entirely. And to his credit, he often shows up when it counts most. “Dirt” hinges entirely on Alexander’s trudging, climbing bassline, and he’s absolutely there, doing the work of establishing the song’s foundation. But then he’s spotty for significant chunks of two crucial numbers: “1970” and “TV Eye.”
That void is disorienting and distracting—especially when you stack these performances next to his work on Fun House. Goose Lake is not the careful work of the Stooges in Elektra’s L.A. studio, and it doesn’t have the luxury of the standard crisp production quality of most ’70s live albums (like Bob Seger’s Live Bullet and Neil Young’s Live Rust). The Goose Lake tapes were found recently in a festival sound engineer’s basement, and frankly, they sound like some old tapes you’d find in a Michigan basement after five decades. While the audio is in largely good shape, the vocals wipe out every other instrument as soon as Iggy screams (which happens pretty often here), and there are a couple brief moments during the closing “Fun House” and “L.A. Blues” freakout where the audio drops out completely.
The impressionistic and imperfect sound quality of Goose Lake ultimately feels fitting for a record that captures some of the band’s less performative and more human moments. The flubs, stage banter, audience chatter, and interstitial tuning all make it feel like a breathing historical document in a way that even the Stooges’ studio albums can’t capture. Turn up the volume for everything that happens between the fuzz and the screaming—the moments when everybody on stage is catching their breath—and you can imagine what it was like to watch this unbelievable band on a Michigan summer night somewhere in the sea of bodies and drugs.
Buy: Rough Trade
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