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Raw Power

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Raw Power is a 1973 album by American protopunk group The Stooges.

The third studio album by The Stooges, Raw Power, was largely ignored upon its release, and the group broke up in obscurity a few years later. However, it was embraced by a small, rabid fanbase that included many younger musicians who would go on to help create punk rock in the mid-1970s, making Raw Power one of the most important protopunk documents.

Background and recording history

The Stooges had formed near Detroit, Michigan in the late 1960s. Their first two albums, The Stooges (1969) and Fun House (1970) were similarly unsuccessful, and the group broke up.

Singer Iggy Pop had been signed as a solo artist to MainMan Management, who also handled British singer David Bowie. The band was in disarray; they had officially broken up, Dave Alexander was fighting alcoholism, and Pop's heroin addiction was escalating prior to Bowie's intervention. However, Pop was determined for a reformation.

Signed to Columbia Records, he was sent to London to write and record their album with his new collaborator, guitarist James Williamson. Pop insisted that his fellow ex-Stooges Ron Asheton and Scott Asheton participate in the recording sessions. Williamson played all the guitar parts, Ron Asheton switched to bass guitar (having played guitar on the first two Stooges albums), and Scott Asheton played drums.

Pop said that Columbia executives insisted on two ballads, one for each side of the record. These two "ballads" were "Gimme Danger" and "I Need Somebody", both much more ominous and menacing than traditional ballads.

Pop produced and mixed the album by himself. Pop's botched first attempt mixed most of the instruments into one stereo channel, and the vocals into the other. Mainman demanded that the album be remixed, but Pop refused. When MainMan informed Pop that if Raw Power were not remixed by Bowie, the album would not be released, Pop agreed, but insisted that his own mix for "Search And Destroy" be retained. Due to budgetary constraits, Bowie remixed the other seven songs in a single day in an inexpensive Los Angeles studio.

"Search and Destroy" and "Shake Appeal" were both released as singles.

Response

Initially, sales of Raw Power were weak, and the album peaked at #182 on Billboard's Pop Albums chart. The group continued touring for about a year, but Columbia dropped their contract and The Stooges broke up.

Later reputation

Despite its weak initial reception, the reputation of Raw Power grew tremendously in subsequent years, and the album's volume and ferocity became benchmarks against which later albums were measured.

Singer and guitarist Kurt Cobain from the grunge band Nirvana wrote in his Journals numerous times that this was his favorite album of all time, while bassist Mike Watt of the Minutemen said about Dinosaur Jr's album You're Living All Over Me, "The guitar jumps out so big. It's almost like Raw Power." Henry Rollins has the words "Search and Destroy" tattooed across his shoulder blades.

Alternate versions

Such was the controversy over Bowie's mix that low-fidelity copies of Pop's original mixes circulated among fans for years. In 1995, a selection of these original mixes was released by Bomp Records as Rough Power. Fans and critics generally agreed that the original mixes were interesting, but not necessarily superior to Bowie's efforts.

In 1997 Columbia Records invited Iggy Pop to remix the entire album for re-release on CD. Pop says in the liner notes that had he declined, the studio would have remixed it without his blessing. Pop cited longtime encouragement from fans and peers, the existence of Rough Power, his distaste for how the original 1989 CD release of Raw Power sounded, and the fact that Columbia were going to release the new mix on its sublabel Legacy Recordings as factors that led him to go through with the new mix. On the other hand, some fans — guitarist Robert Quine among them — felt the new remix was as unfaithful to the material as the original 1973 mix, and further criticized the audible digital distortion in the new mix. In the reissued CD's liner notes, however, Pop points out that one of his intentions in doing the new mix was to keep audio levels in the red (which would deliberately cause such distortion) while at the same time making the music more powerful and listenable. Wrote Pop in the booklet for the 1997 edition, "Everything's still in the red, it's a very violent mix. The bottom line is that this is a wonderful album but it's always sounded fragile and rickety, and that band was not fragile and not rickety. That band could kill any band at the time and frankly can just kill any of the bands that built on this work since, just eat any of those poodles." This new version is arguably the loudest album ever, reaching RMS of -4 dB, rare even by today's standards.

Covers

The album's songs have been frequently covered. Prominent versions include the Dictators', Red Hot Chili Peppers' and Shotgun Messiah's versions of Search and Destroy; Guns N' Roses's cover of Raw Power (title track) on The Spaghetti Incident? and Ewan McGregor covering Gimme Danger for the film Velvet Goldmine, a movie telling the story of a character based around David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust during the 1970s glam rock era.

Track listing

All songs written by Iggy Pop & James Williamson.

Side one

  1. "Search and Destroy" – 3:29
  2. "Gimme Danger" – 3:33
  3. "Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell" – 4:54 (originally titled "Hard to Beat")
  4. "Penetration" – 3:41

Side two

  1. "Raw Power" – 4:16
  2. "I Need Somebody" – 4:53
  3. "Shake Appeal" – 3:04
  4. "Death Trip" – 6:07

Personnel

Recording credits

Original 1973 version

Recorded at CBS Studios, London.
Originally mixed by David Bowie at Western Sound, Hollywood

1997 reissue

Produced and remixed by Iggy Pop at Sony Studios, New York.
Executive Producer: Bruce Dickinson



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Last updated on Sunday March 02, 2008 at 09:40:24 PST (GMT -0800)
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