Freddi Meets Iggy (For the First Time)

• Posted by Lauren Griffin April 23, 2010 - 351 views
  
  When Freddi first saw Iggy Pop perform it was actually at the Municipal Auditorium; however, seeing that he was only fourteen or so he didn't meet him on that occasion. The Richards show was a different matter: before Iggy went on Freddi met him backstage and supplied him with an assortment of downers. Freddi thinks that Iggy must have already been up on something because he immediately took a handful (the "size of a baseball", according to Freddi)... or perhaps he just had an extraordinary tolerance! I asked Freddi what he gave him and Freddi replied, "Seconals, Tuinals, Nebutals, Blacks, Yellows, and maybe a Quaalude or two..." Of course Iggy threw them all back indiscrimnately and was pretty far gone by the time he got on stage.
  Freddi and his best friend Keith Atcheson had a table front and center that night and here's what happened in Freddi's own words:
  
  FREDDI GRIFFIN: When you walked into Richards there was a bar to the far left a couple of steps up from the main floor and there were booths around the walls... then you had the main floor with the tables. There was also another bar to the right, what we called the back bar, with a few more tables and V.I.P. booths. There was a kind of alley that ran from the front door to the dressing rooms and bathrooms. The stage was only about four feet off the ground. The ceiling was low, somewhat like The Earl [an Atlanta club], with rafters from which hung the tracks for the lights and speakers and whatnot. From the stage it wasn't very far to the rafters and tracks. Iggy leapt up there (he must have gotten to the tracks because the rafters were too thick) and tried to swing back and forth like a monkey but he was so fucked up on the downers that he didn't make it very far. He landed flat on his back on our table, sending drinks everywhere. Keith was absolutely furious and has hated him ever since, hahaha! Keith, not to be daunted by Iggy, yelled, "You owe me some drinks, motherfucker!"
  
  "Fuck you, motherfucker!" Iggy replied. Then he jumped back onstage, never missing a lick, and finished the show.
  
  Freddi and Keith left and it was not for several years that Freddi learned how Iggy ended up that night: apparently he was so wasted that his mates threw him into the shrubbery next to the Days Inn!