FEATURE:
Search and Destroy
Iggy & The Stooges’ Raw Power at Fifty
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ARRIVING three years after…
PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
their second studio album, Fun House, Iggy & The Stooges’ Raw Power was released on 7th February, 1973. It was a much-needed return from a band who were on the point of collapse prior to that. Less groove-oriented than their first two albums, this was a more direct and Hard Rock-influenced album that lives up to its title. It is raw and powerful throughout! This direction was inspired by new guitarist James Williamson, who co-wrote the album with Iggy Pop. It is no wonder Raw Power is seen as a forerunner to the Punk era. One of the most influential albums ever, it influenced everyone from the Sex Pistols, Johnny Marr of the Smiths and Kurt Cobain of Nirvana. Co-produced by David Bowie, the original was given a remaster by Iggy Pop in 1996. There has been some controversy about the 1973 original, and the fact that it does not really have that much grit and venom. Pop’s remaster rectified that and gave fans something they had been waiting on for years! There is no denying that, ahead of its fiftieth anniversary, Raw Power remains this colossal album that changed the face of music. I will end with a review for the album. First, there are a couple of features that explore Iggy & The Stooges 1973 masterpiece. Guitar.com wrote about an album that received huge praise from critics. Although some were not a fan of David Bowie’s mix, nobody can deny the incredible legacy and importance of Raw Power:
“By the time the Michigan band regrouped in England to record Raw Power they’d already hit rock bottom, splitting in 1971 due to a combination of Iggy’s voracious appetite for heroin, extreme poverty, dangerously violent gigs and the lukewarm response to their first two albums. David Bowie came to the rescue, finding Iggy a label and management deal and setting up the recording sessions in London.
Recording and mixing Raw Power was a suitably shambolic affair, with at least one member of the band by that point lucky to be alive. Unlike the first two Stooges albums, it was self-produced, resulting in a clueless Iggy mixing the whole band on one channel, the lead guitar on another and his vocals on a third of the 24-track desk. Handing the tapes to Bowie to sort out was the ultimate hospital pass. “He said ‘See what you can do with this’,” Bowie later recalled. “I said, ‘Jim, there’s nothing to mix’.” As Williamson remembers, “The fact of the matter is, when we made Raw Power, we really didn’t know what we were doing.”
In the circumstances, Bowie did a commendable job. Among his tweaks was feeding the guitar track on Gimme Danger through the Cooper Time Cube, a garden-hose based delay unit devised two years earlier, and of the several mixes of the album, Bowie’s is still widely regarded as the definitive version. Iggy was finally given the opportunity for some closure when he was invited to remix the album at New York’s Sony Music Studios in 1996, modern studio technology and all. While that incarnation has been dubbed “the loudest album ever made”, with every fader pushed deep into the red, it did little to halt the arguments, with Williamson complaining it “sucked” and Bowie saying his version had more “wound-up ferocity and chaos”.
Raw Power was a commercial flop, peaking at 182 in the Billboard Chart, but the reviews were positive, Rolling Stone’s Lenny Kaye praising the “ongoing swirl of sound that virtually drags you into the speakers”. It didn’t stop Iggy being dropped by both his label and management company, but the record’s legend has grown exponentially over the years. Kurt Cobain said Raw Power was his favourite album of all time, British rock critic Nick Kent called it “the greatest, meanest-eyed, coldest-blooded hard rock tour de force ever summoned up in a recording studio” and Ted Maider of Consequence Of Sound “by far the most important punk record ever”.
In 1973, Iggy Pop may have been, unjustly, the world’s forgotten boy, but today The Stooges’ influence looms large over a generation of guitar bands. When a topless Iggy and the surviving Stooges tore wantonly through Search And Destroy at their induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2010, it felt like long-overdue recognition of the ultimate rock’n’roll album. Raw power indeed”.
Boasting one of the most incendiary and impactful opening tracks in history, Raw Power opens fire with the magnificent Search and Destroy. Whilst I prefer the original (with Bowie’s mixing and production), I can appreciate why others lean towards Iggy Pop’s mix. Albumism looked inside some of the remarkable songs. I don’t think Raw Power will ever be forgotten. Its influence will continue to weave through the music of artists for generations more:
“The opening track “Search and Destroy” remains in the pantheon of the greatest rock songs ever recorded. A lyrical pastiche of Time Magazine buzzwords, Pop aims at the establishment, growling the chorus, “I'm the world's forgotten boy / The one who's searchin', searchin' to destroy.” From the first guitar licks, the song is an urgent manifesto, rejecting the party line. Though not explicit in politics, the message is strong, a battlecry for the anti-Vietnam War movement and an examination of the fallout of a generation awash with the damage of combat.
“Gimme Danger” is one of the tracks that feels dramatically different on the Iggy Pop mix. On the original album, it is quiet and creepy, a song The Rolling Stones wished they had written. The Iggy Pop mix is brash and American, literally titled the “violent” mix. The contrast is especially dramatic post-bridge, Pop’s version with frenzied guitars, Bowie’s a muted solo.
“Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell” is a hip-shaking rock and roll anthem, rooted in Chuck Berry. “Penetration” is dirty and raw, even on the cleaned up Bowie mix (with silly bell tones in the background). The lyrics are sparse, and the opening lines are delivered with a rasping Jim Morrison-quality. There are echoing hums, backing the yelps and sighs Pop delivers writhing around until the end of the track.
The title track “Raw Power” is fun and jangling, a tribute to Pop’s beloved heroin. The thrill of addiction and living a dose or two away from death gets a glamorous send-up. The drug held a tight grip on most members of the band, contributing to their erratic behavior and “rock and roll lifestyle.” They were all fortunate to shake it (eventually), though its devastating effects would keep the band from releasing new music or performing together for several years to come.
“I Need Somebody” brings The Stooges back to their bluesy roots, full of twang and vibrato. When Pop sings “I’m only living to sing this song,” you feel his listlessness, the blues guitar wailing loud enough to keep him alive for another line. Throughout the thinly-veiled drug metaphors, you understand the dire circumstances around the band’s health. But it’s also made clear that they just really loved drugs. There’s no desire to find a different path, just resignation to their new master. Armed with the knowledge of their lives post-Raw Power, it’s easier to listen to the album, but the darkness is still often acute and overwhelming.
A wild, groovy track, “Shake Appeal” would later be described by Pop as his as a way to “get to my dream of being Little Richard for a minute.” The howling intensity and double time drumming feels incredibly punk—it’s a track you can feel in the DNA of The Ramones or The Clash years later. “Death Trip” closes the album out with a winding guitar solo, a flashy signature from Williamson leaving his mark. It captures the ferocity of a live Stooges performance, Pop screaming to the point where his voice fries and fades”.
I will finish up with a review from AllMusic and their take on the masterful and explosive Raw Power. I am not sure whether anything is planned for its fiftieth anniversary, but it would be nice if there was a new vinyl release or something special! It is the least such an incredible and important album deserves:
“In 1972, the Stooges were near the point of collapse when David Bowie's management team, MainMan, took a chance on the band at Bowie's behest. By this point, guitarist Ron Asheton and bassist Dave Alexander had been edged out of the picture, and James Williamson had signed on as Iggy's new guitar mangler; Asheton rejoined the band shortly before recording commenced on Raw Power, but was forced to play second fiddle to Williamson as bassist. By most accounts, tensions were high during the recording of Raw Power, and the album sounds like the work of a band on its last legs -- though rather than grinding to a halt, Iggy & the Stooges appeared ready to explode like an ammunition dump. From a technical standpoint, Williamson was a more gifted guitar player than Asheton (not that that was ever the point), but his sheets of metallic fuzz were still more basic (and punishing) than what anyone was used to in 1973, while Ron Asheton played his bass like a weapon of revenge, and his brother Scott Asheton remained a powerhouse behind the drums.
But the most remarkable change came from the singer; Raw Power revealed Iggy as a howling, smirking, lunatic genius. Whether quietly brooding ("Gimme Danger") or inviting the apocalypse ("Search and Destroy"), Iggy had never sounded quite so focused as he did here, and his lyrics displayed an intensity that was more than a bit disquieting. In many ways, almost all Raw Power has in common with the two Stooges albums that preceded it is its primal sound, but while the Stooges once sounded like the wildest (and weirdest) gang in town, Raw Power found them heavily armed and ready to destroy the world -- that is, if they didn't destroy themselves first. [After its release, Iggy was known to complain that David Bowie's mix neutered the ferocity of the original recordings. In time it became conventional wisdom that Bowie's mix spoiled a potential masterpiece, so much so that in 1997, when Columbia made plans to issue a new edition of Raw Power, they brought in Pop to remix the original tapes and (at least in theory) give us the "real" version we'd been denied all these years. Then the world heard Pop's painfully harsh and distorted version of Raw Power, and suddenly Bowie's tamer but more dynamic mix didn't sound so bad, after all. In 2010, the saga came full-circle when Columbia released a two-disc "Legacy Edition" of the album that featured Bowie's original mix in remastered form]”.
One of the all-time great albums, I have been listening back to Raw Power a lot over the last few days. This historic work from Iggy & The Stooges has lost none of its spark and edge! The glorious Raw Power is fifty on 7th February. Considering the fact The Stooges dislocated and there was this reformed and rebuilt Iggy & The Stooges, Raw Power could have been a mess. As it is, it is one of the best albums of the ‘70s. I first heard Raw Power when I was a teenager, and it impacted me heavily then. It still blows my mind years later. To me, this phenomenal 1973 album…
HAS few equals.