By Danny Fields
(Interviewers note: Natalie and I met when I was working at Elektra Records in the late 1960’s. I’d just persuaded my reluctant bosses to sign Iggy and the Stooges, based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to a recording contract by presenting them as part of a “package deal.” The aim of Elektra was really to get the MC5, who were EXPLODING in the Midwest, signed to the label. The MC5 were sort of the Stooges “Big Brother” band, we all claimed.
The Critic's Choice Documentary Awards have announced their nominations for 2016. In the category of Most Compelling Living Subject of a Documentary they nominated Brendan Toller's Danny Says, and Jim Jarmusch's Gimme Danger.
BY LEGS McNEIL - This is Part Two of an interview Legs did with record industry veteran Steve Harris for Please Kill Me. Read how the MC5 fucked up their promising career, how Iggy was always misunderstood, and how Danny Fields lost his job… and more...
Interview by Danny Fields -
Fifteen years after Please Kill Me was first published, we continue to meet people who say that our book changed their lives. Always curious about the why when and where, we wanted details. And who better to ask the hard questions than the guy we dedicated our book to, the Danny Fields, “the coolest guy in the room”? When Danny was in Berlin for an exhibit of his photos at the Ramones Museum he encountered a bright young man named Joscha Blankenburg, 20, (seen Mohawked in top photo at the age of 15), himself ein Berliner who was born a few years after the re-unification of Germany, which certainly qualifies him as innocent of the events re-counted in our book.