But the fact was that neither Bowie’s mix nor my previous mix could do justice to the power of the band or even to the legibility of the vocal…I feel that now I have the wherewithal, the position, and the expertise at my disposal to give this thing its due sonically, and I didn’t have that before. “It led to a very ambitious piece of work, and that’s fine. It also gave Iggy Pop the creative push he needed: “I learned a helluva lot being over there in England and I started thinking differently,” recalled the singer when discussing the new mixes of Raw Power in 1997. Of course, more notable songs on the record include ‘Search and Destroy’ and ‘Gimme Danger’, but the album’s real value comes from its overall feeling, not the individual songs. Though the original mix was notoriously thin (something attested to when Iggy Pop re-recorded the album in far beefier circumstances), the album still had so much intense energy that it was difficult to contain it. The group only needed eight songs to make their impression. Iggy remembered the experience: “His concept was, ‘You’re so primitive, your drummer should sound like he’s beating a log!’ It’s not a bad job that he did…I’m very proud of the eccentric, odd little record that came out.” It is, without doubt, one of rock’s formative albums and deserves recognition is a deep-laid stone in the pantheon of music. Next up was his other favourite band and he brought Iggy Pop and James Williamson into the studio to record Raw Power. Not only had he become the biggest rock star in the universe but he had also sat behind the desk for Lou Reed’s Transformer for his breakthrough solo album. Of course, we mean David Bowie.ġ972 was Bowie’s year. One man would rescue the band deliver one last album before becoming a lifelong friend. It had seen them already begin to erode in the wind and their once sharp musical features were beginning to dull. Dave Alexander had been fired for being a drunk and the rest of the band’s heroin use had grown wildly out of control. Guns N' Roses sped up the tempo a little on their 1993 cover of the song, illustrating the song's influence as a punk rock/hard rock song along the lines of the Sex Pistols meets Motörhead.The Stooges may have only begun as a band in 1969 but just a few years later, by 1971, the group were ultimately finished. The true impact of "Raw Power" and the album as a whole would not be felt until the 1976 release of the Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks. "Raw Power" is mostly just a droning single-chord with a two-note melody, creating an aggressive hard rock trance setting for Pop to let himself go. His performances - recorded and live - seem to be approach rapture. Bowie is said to have written the song "Jean Genie" about Pop, containing the line "Jean Genie let yourself go," which is exactly what Pop does on "Raw Power" and most of his other songs. Williamson had just joined the newly re-formed band and later went on to collaborate with Pop on post-Stooges projects. There is other instrumentation that joins: the trademark Stooges one-note piano that is used for percussion-like effect the sleigh bells that hammer home the throbbing beat and spastic guitar soloing by James Williamson. The record was properly remixed and remastered in 1996, supervised by Pop and Bruce Dickinson. Pop blames budgetary concerns for the low quality of the original mix. ![]() The unrelenting and driving guitar is most prominent on the David Bowie-produced Stooges song, and the record of the same name, which is so poorly mixed that it is now considered charming in its lo-fi demo tape-like quality imagine if you let the guitar player/vocalist in your band mix an entire record by himself, and you get an idea of what "Raw Power" sounds like. ![]() Iggy Pop barks and croons out lyrics like "if you're alone baby and you got the shakes/So am I baby and I got what it takes" like an amphetamine-fed bastard son of Howlin' Wolf. ![]() A chunky riff that bridges Keith Richards and Johnny Thunders - and thus the Sex Pistols and beyond - propels this pummeling Stooges blues-rock anthem.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |