The Stooges have announced that they will be performing Raw Power at The Hammersmith Apollo in May. I don't need an excuse to wax lyrical about the album but this does seem like the perfect opportunity. Virtually ignored on its release in 1973, Raw Power's perfect encapsulation of anger, disillusion and self-destruction went on to become the template for a generation of punk albums to come.
Never has an album been more aptly titled than Raw Power. Iggy's searing vocals combined with James Williamson's lead guitar, Ron Asheton's distorted bass riffs and Scott Asheton's drums make for one of the most explosive albums of all time. Raw Power begins with the track Search and Destroy and from the very first line 'I'm a street walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm' Iggy and the boys begin to drop aural bombs.
The second track on the album is Gimme Danger and true to their word, The Stooges deliver danger by the bucket load. Themes of sexual involvement are laced with self-destruction in Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell, Penetration and I Need Somebody where Iggy explains, 'I'm losing a lot of my feelings and I'm running out of friends'
In Shake Appeal Iggy hollers 'baby with your fists so tight...realize you gotta fight' and in the eponymous Raw Power he delivers the line 'Everybody's always tryin' to tell me what to do... Don't you try to tell me what to do' which is a simple defiant precursor to all punk.
Exploring themes of passion and violence, this is the kind of music that strikes terror into the heart of repressed middle class suburbanites. This is Iggy, at the height of his heroin addiction, sublimating his volatile state in order to create a powerful, exciting and provocative new sound.
Like all things avant-garde it took the rest of the world a while to catch on and that's why thirty-six years on this album still sounds so original. I for one can't wait to see them at The Hammersith Apollo in May.
http://www.wegottickets.com/event/59937
Iggy in his own words:
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