The Kid who narrates this was the prototype Iggy fan, so that's his excuse for puking out this whole gilgamush of how he struggled up to and beyond Iggy & the Stooges' "Raw Power," one of the most culture-crushing albums of all time, released this week in 1973. Here goes.
A 1972 Rolling Stone article blabbed about the Stooges, whose first two albums in 1969 and '70 the Kid, stranded in Spokane, had missed. The story suggested that the quartet's hard-rock Michigan factory roots aligned with those of Alice Cooper and Grand Funk, which scored them points with the Kid. Their first drop was produced by John Cale of the Velvet Underground. Check. They had a song called "I Wanna Be Your Dog." Check. They wanted to be on the Doors' label. Check. The insane frontman, Iggy, crawled on broken glass. Good idea. This was music for poets who hated poetry. This was music for young shits who loved women and didn't have girlfriends. This was music for hot-rod engines lacking cars. Go, go, all systems go.
The Kid trawled for the Stooges' cut-outs and netted them with difficulty. He smiled at the ridiculous San Francisco fuzztone guitar on the somewhat too tidy "The Stooges," even tolerating Cale's 10 minutes of soporific viola as these smokestack earthlings chanted a Hindu prayer ("We Will Fall"). He preferred the chaotic rock and free jazz of 1970's "Fun House," jumping to the rhythmic surge of "Down in the Street." Crude crap it was, but so compelling, and the Kid glued ears to the Stooges as much as the Stones. Iggy was a doom-crooning, howling, primitive juggernaut of self-destructive intelligence, just what a draft dodger needed in the simpering wake of "You've Got a Friend." The Kid was pissed to hear the Stooges had broken up.
Luckily, another Stooges fan had twigged to the split -- a fan who could do something about it. David Bowie was riding a phenomenal wave, having launched his own "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars," produced Mott the Hoople's "All the Young Dudes" and produced Lou Reed's "Transformer, all in 1972. He was about to knock out his 1973 masterwork "Aladdin Sane," but first he wanted to squeeze in a bout with Iggy, whom he worshiped as the Dionysian opposite of his own Apollonian calculationism.
The modular version of the Stooges that Bowie flew to London consisted of Iggy and sometime Stooge James Williamson, a Texan whose nervous, aggressive ax murdering stood in stark contrast to the simpler, sludgier style of his predecessor, Ron Asheton. Often described as metallic, Williamson's hard-edged riffs and dirty arpeggios would soon bend the fingers of proto-punk guitarists such as Brian James of the Damned and Cheetah Chrome of the Dead Boys.
Though James & Jim (Osterberg, a.k.a. Iggy Pop) had packed little in the way of material, they threw together some tunes & words and tumbled into the studio. And as so often happened when David Bowie was around, magic transpired.
Most important is the sound, which can't have been anything but an accident of necessity. A listen to the 1997 Iggy mix is instructive: It just sounds like a good, loud, sloppy band. The original Bowie mix (now found on the Legacy Edition), on the other hand, shows clearly why "Raw Power" stands out as the WEIRDEST rock album of the '70s. Unable to squeeze much level from the drums & bass that had been recorded before he arrived, Bowie turned the soundscape into a rollercoaster of guitar overdubs, riding the faders with wild abandon, plenty of echo and no pretense of a "band" sound. Iggy's bark and his loathing moan, hitting hard and in time like the drummer he'd once been -- yeah, you could hear that real well.
While this sound collage did not delight founding Stooges Ron Asheton (now demoted to blurry bass) and Scott Asheton (bashing kit in the distant background), it made for a most distinctive listening experience. In 1973, the Kid felt he was eavesdropping on Williamson, cranked up on something unspeakable, abandoning the metronome, his headphones falling off, inventing many of his parts on the spot, which is probably just what was transpiring. No one but Bowie could have gotten away with a mix so unbalanced, and in the end we can thank Lou Reed: Its most immediate ancestor is the Velvet Underground's rambunctious 1968 "White Light/White Heat" album, whose title song Bowie was known to cover frequently and whose "I Heard Her Call My Name" could have slotted right into "Raw Power."
Not that Bowie the pop craftsman takes a walk. The percussive acoustic chords on "I Need Somebody" really kick the song out of the sludge. The single-note electric piano and echoing guitar fade on "Gimme Danger" add an inevitable quality to its lugubriousness. What would "Penetration" be other than a loop-loop-loop, if not for the almost silly keyboard tinkle accompanying its riff, and the hypnotic group vocal whoops? And the mere two chords of "Death Trip"? Williamson cuts loose Lou-style, so it's . . . fun!
With Bowie watching like a stoned God, Iggy sings with great variety and writes about what's on his mind. Having avoided Vietnam service by getting a boner during induction, he nevertheless feels an affinity for addicted, forgotten boys with a heart full of napalm. His music life seemed over until he met a partner -- "I need somebody; you need somebody too," and Iggy/Bowie would be a friend/work relationship for years. Still, he feels that whatever he seeks he destroys, and those who travel with him are passengers on a death trip (though one may look elsewhere to explain Bowie's quickly deteriorating health). Don't ask him for inspiration, he advises, because his dreams are just ugly memories.
"Raw Power," of course, despite sticking on many Top 100 lists today, was a commercial flop in 1973 -- unlike Lou Reed's far inferior Bowie-produced "Transformer" from the previous year, which did sport "Walk on the Wild Side" and "Satellite of Love," so give props where deserved, but anything previous by the Velvet Underground beats it to hell. Ask any punk, ask anyone who values energy in rock -- "Raw Power" rules.
But back to the saga.
* * *
The Kid moved to Los Angeles in hopes of meeting Bowie. Instead he met Iggy. For a minute.
It was 1974. The Kid found an apartment near Hollywood Boulevard, not caring that the neighborhood was a hotbed of male prostitution because, y'know, the rent was cheap. And it's nice to be appreciated.
On Sunset Boulevard 1.3 miles west stood Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco (a term soon to acquire new meaning), which had a purple sign and cursive script. Glam was king at Rodney's, and the Kid heard Bowie went there sometimes, but it was closed. Then it was open, then closed again, then open. The Kid went sometimes. Not much was going on. The whole L.A. music scene was dead.
One of the times it was open, the Kid put on his black corduroy pants and black corduroy jacket and a red bucket felt hat he found somewhere, and walked. The hat looked stupid.
The tiny, dark place was made to look bigger by a mirror covering the back wall. Along the side stood a bar that served Watney's ale on draft. The bartender, a tall dude with a blond shag, would pull out a baseball bat and slam it on the wood whenever somebody acted out. This night there was nobody acting anything, just a few skinny underage girls in tight clothes huddled in the back booth. How many times can you hear Suzi Quatro and Nick Gilder? The Kid nursed his Watney's.
Then Iggy appeared. Where'd he come from? Iggy was wearing a long, filmy, cream-colored gown. His hair was short and brown, with a streak. He slunk slowly to the back and began wriggling, admiring himself in the mirror. Then he turned around and undulated while gripping both sides of the gown below the waist. Slowly, he lifted the gown past his knees and beyond, until you could just see the lower extremity of his dick and balls.
Years later, the Kid would hear Iggy's song "Lust for Life" and the line "I know he's gonna do another striptease," and realize that Mr. Pop must pull this act all the time. And the non-reaction of the non-crowd indicated the probability that he was witnessing a rerun.
So Iggy figured he would up the ante. Snatching up a red glass candle holder from a table, he waved it near the hem of his dress. Now at last he raised some reaction, but it wasn't so much "Please, Iggy, don't set yourself on fire!" as a grumble of "Do you know how much my mom paid for that thing?"
The Kid remembered back to when he'd been in a college cover band singing the Stones' "Play With Fire," and he used to ignite his shirt with matches. He thought, "Did I know about Iggy then? Did I set myself on fire because of Iggy? Or is Iggy setting himself on fire because he read my mind? Or is it all because of that Buddhist monk immolating himself in Vietnam?"
Iggy reluctantly backed off on the pyromania, but held out his hands toward the booth, beckoning to the jailbait by name. "Come. Come. Dance. Daaaaance!" He received nothing but icy silence. Iggy had been in L.A. too long. Less than two years after the release of "Raw Power," his stock was in the toilet.
Not with the Kid, though. Having primed himself with a few Olympias before wasting his paycheck on expensive Watney drafts, he was sufficiently indelicate to attempt dancing, yes, dancing, with Iggy, who took one squint at the red hat and sensed an opportunity to enliven a dull evening at the expense of an available rube.
Iggy leaned in to the Kid's ear and whispered huskily, "Pretend to hit me, and I'll fall down."
Well, the Kid was not sufficiently drunk that he was unable to visualize the impact of the shag bartender's bat upon his stupid red hat. So he did a nice little disco spin and trotted right out of there. Rodney's English Disco closed for the last time not long after.
* * *
By way of making a living at the time, the Kid worked as a proofreader at a script service. Chatting with other employees about music, the Kid mentioned that he liked the Stooges.
"Oh," said a dude in the mimeograph department. "A guy who had something to do with that band quit working the machines here just before you got hired. Quiet fella named James."
"James . . . Williamson?"
"That's the guy."
* * *
James Williamson has made music sporadically with Iggy and has had a successful career in technology.
Iggy Pop has continued to make music and to act. In Los Angeles, he plays the Regent April 20 and the Orpheum April 24.