The Stooges, The Who & The Cavern

Dave Alexander and Ron Asheton later of The Stooges see The Who in 1965.

'Dave tells me, "Hey I'm going to England, you wanna go?' So I sold my motorcycle. I had a Honda 305 that I got instead of geting a car, when I got my driver's license. So we sold the bike and flew to England.

We went to see The Who at The Cavern. It was wall to fucking wall of people. We muscled through to about ten feet from the stage, and Townshend started smashing his twelve-string Rickenbacker.

It was my first experience of total pandemonium. It was like a dog pile of people, just trying to grab pieces of Townshend's guitar, and people were scrambling to dive up onstage and he'd swing his guitar at their heads. The audience weren't cheering;  it was more like animal noises, howling. The whole room turned really primitive - like a pack of starving animals that hadn't eaten in a week and somebody throws out a piece of meat. I was afraid. For me it wasn't fun, but it was mesmirizing. It was like, "The plane's burning, the ship's sinking, so let's crush each other." Never had I seen people driven so nuts - that music could drive people to such dangerous extremes. That's when I realized. This is definitely what I wanna do.'

Scott Asheton, Please Kill Me