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] ~ Mark Deming