There’s A “Riot” Goin’ On (On Record)

Rock ‘n’ roll is filled with songs of peace and love.  But there are plenty about being in the middle of a riot—or starting one.

Rock ‘n’ riots have been around since the dawn of the rock age, notably a May 20, 1958 show in Boston put on by DJ Alan Freed. It caused Boston’s mayor, John Hynes, to not-so-presciently pronounce: “These so-called musical programs are a disgrace. As far as I’m concerned, Boston has seen the last of them.”

Freed had become fed up watching cops stop the teens from dancing in the aisles and announced from the stage: “It looks like the police in Boston don’t want you kids to have any fun.”  He almost got a prison sentence from a Suffolk County grand jury for inciting a riot.

Eight years later, Los Angeles cops violently tried to stop teenagers from rampaging after a 10 pm curfew on the Sunset Strip. It was reported that actor Bob Denver (Gilligan’s Island) saw “deputies spat on a woman in his group, then charged down the street to baton some harmless teen.”  Those events were captured in songs like “Daily Nightly” by Mike Nesmith and the Monkees, “Riot on the Sunset Strip” by the Standells, and Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth.”

In 1971, Stills’ future bandmate, Graham Nash, had a #35 song with “Chicago/We Can Change the World” which offered a sketch of the unrest at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

While Nash insisted that his generation can “rearrange the world,” the Stones sang of peace officers rearranging faces in “Street Fighting Man.”  UK political activist Tariq Ali was friends with Mick Jagger and John Lennon and was a key organizer of anti-war demonstrations in England. This included one at London’s Grosvenor Square on March 17, 1968, which featured Jagger among 30,000 protestors and mounted police.  The result was 17 policemen injured, 246 protesters arrested, and a song that made Billboard’s top 50.

Ali remembered: “Jagger used to come to our demonstrations and he was very ultra-left.  Once in a private talk on a demonstration, he was extremely militant. I said, ‘Calm down, already they’re attacking us for fighting the cops outside the US embassy.’ So he wrote the song and recorded it.”

When the single was released two days after Chicago’s Democratic National Convention, America’s radio stations, not wanting to be blamed for inciting any violence, refused to play it.  Jagger recalled: “The radio stations that banned the song told me that ‘Street Fighting Man’ was subversive. ‘Of course, it’s subversive,’ we said. It’s stupid to think you can start a revolution with a record. I wish you could!”

But while Jagger’s record was the result of a riot, The Stooges recorded their live album (Metallic K.O.) while lead singer Iggy Pop tried his level best to incite one.  In 1974, before two concerts at Detroit’s Michigan Palace, Iggy appeared on a local radio station. He challenged “the Scorpions [a motorcycle club] to come down and do their worst at my big show in Detroit. Which they proceeded to do.”

The Stooges had to dodge eggs thrown at them by unenthusiastic fans, but Iggy reveled in causing a panic in Detroit. To hear Metallic K.O. is to hear pure punk performance art.  Iggy slurred and hurled insults from the stage like:

“You can throw anything in the world at me and your girlfriends will still love me!… Anybody with any more ice cubes? Jelly beans? Grenades, eggs they want to throw on the stage?…C’mon. I won’t f__k you when I’m working…Listen, I’ve been egged by people better than you…Is it time for a riot, girls? Riot!… Light bulbs too? Paper cups? My! We’re getting violent!… I think a good song for you would be a 55-minute ‘Louie, Louie…’I never thought it’d come to this baby!… I’m proud to introduce the next song, co-written by my mother entitled ‘I Got my “C**k in my Pocket’…Thank you very much to the person who threw this glass bottle at my head.  You nearly killed me but try again next week.”

Iggy, who dove into the audience to beat up a fan only to get pummeled himself, fondly recalled: “Our lady fans in the front rows threw a lot of beautiful underwear, which I thought was sweet.”

Even though the band never made money from the bootleg record, some critics were duly impressed.  Brit critic Nick Kent noted: “I’m convinced that side two is a masterpiece” and American critic Lester Bangs chimed in: “It’s the only rock album I know where you can actually hear hurled beer bottles breaking against guitar strings.”

The Stooges broke up after the shows and didn’t appear on a stage for 29 years. Iggy wisely didn’t hire the Scorpions at any of his later concerts.  For his part, Jagger sadly witnessed some deadly “street fighting” as the out-of-control Hell’s Angels beat up concert goers and killed a teenager at the Stones’ Altamont Speedway concert in 1969.

-Mark Daponte

Photo: Iggy Pop (Getty Images)