Released 1973, reissued 1997
Search and Destroy
Gimme Danger
Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell
Penetration
Raw Power
I Need Somebody
Shake Appeal
Death Trip
My insanity bar was raised so high at that point that nothing sounded bent enough - ever. (Iggy)
I already talked about how, at 17, I was going against the grain of every putz at my high school, and blowing my allowance money on albums that were generally regarded as being good or important by the rock crit canon of the time (I had The Rolling Stone Record Guide, Christgau's book, and a few dozen others as road maps). This sometimes (increasingly) meant I was buying albums no one else at my h.s. (certainly not the meat-headed generation of Sammy Hagar fans I matriculated with) had ever heard of. What's more, most of them didn't want to hear them, or of them, anyway.
Which is how I came to pick up Raw Power, some time late in `83 (I think). (As I recall, I bought The Live Kinks and the first Pretenders album, and possibly Mott that day as well. If I did, I must've had some bucks on me).
Anyway, so I brought home Raw Power. And I stared at the cover for several days (as I recall, I listened to only one album per day, by choice. I wanted to savor them). I looked at its ghoulish-looking cover photo of Iggy, leaning on the microphone, and the back cover, of him scowling with his cheetah jacket, glaring in the mirror, or, bleached-blonde hair and lipstick, grimacing at the camera while (Scott Asheton?) stood in the background, holding a bass, looking on warily.
This album made me nervous.
I knew little about Iggy. I'd first heard of him in a little paperback bio of Alice Cooper (which I still have) which described him as some kind of raving madman. I'd once seen him do "Dog Food" on Tom Snyder and watched his bizarre, hyper behavior with Snyder - at the time, he just seemed like kind of an uneducated, deranged clod (I wasn't paying enough attention - you can see the interview here and see how wrong I was on all counts). All I knew about Iggy was that he was a hard-rocking madman who dwelt as far on the fringe as you could go (so I though, ha ha ha). And as I looked at Raw Power, I seriously wondered if I was going to get anything but a bunch of lunatic caterwauling.
But one day I came home from school, got up the nerve, drew the curtains (I liked - and still do, actually - to dance around the room when I listen to a record I dig, and I didn't care to have the neighbors watch me) and there, in my dim little teenage bedroom, I lowered needle to groove and got my first taste of The Stooges.
And I needn't have worried. Cuz by the time "Search and Destroy" was over I knew I liked them, and by the time the album was over, I knew it was a great one.
The music came crashing, ripping out of those cheap Sylvania speakers. Iggy yowled like a cat in heat. "I am the world's forgotten boy -" I had heard such adolescent angst before, sure, but never delivered with such fury, such defiance. Iggy sounded like he knew how much "they" (the straights of society, all those who didn't understand) loathed him - and he was determined to lash out, to do them harm, to make them afraid. Searching and destroying ... I will hurt you, I will show you fear, those who mock me.
The threat only continued on track two, with its gorgeous little arpeggio (how sophisticated for a band as brutal as this one). "Gimme danger, little stranger...." Doors-like crooning. This Iggy guy could really sing! What's more, he wrote fine lyrics, too - "there's nothing in my dreams, just some ugly memories .... kiss me like the ocean breeze..." This was clearly not the work of an uneducated clod. "Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell" was like the Stones cranked up to 12, all lust and and rage, while "Penetration" sounded like a nasty S&M masturbation fantasy (what did he want to be penetrated with, exactly?), wherein Iggy shrieked and mewled like an animal in agony (or ecstasy?). This was clearly beyond any hard rock I'd ever heard. Side two kicked off with a belch! That was something new! And then the band slammed into jumpy, nervous rhythm of the title track, the piano pounding away as the Ig exhorts us listeners "if you're alone and you got the shakes, so have I baby and I got what it takes". The psycho blues of "I Need Somebody" remains my favorite track to this day. Over a slow, ominous stomp (Dave Marsh once described it as sounding like Howlin' Wolf beating Mick Jagger to death with a stack of Yma Sumac albums - which doesn't remotely describe the track but is a great image anyway), Iggy extols his loneliness his need ... but as Marsh (again) suggested ... it sounds less like a paean to loneliness ... Iggy isn't saying "I need somebody, too" but "I need somebody to _________________" ... do something so unspeakable he can't even bring himself to say it. "Shake Appeal" rattles like a crazed punk rockabilly, Iggy howling at the moon, with a dick turning into a tree.
Then there's another set of slashing chords. But this time it's different. The sound is harsher, meaner. Williamson sounds like he's playing his guitar with shards of broken glass, slicing and dicing the chords cruelly into slashes of sound. The sound is atonal, harsh, clattering. The great albums tell stories. They have beginnings, middles, and ends. This is where it ends, The Stooges are saying, where all the sex and the sleaze and the madness will take you. Iggy is snarling. "Sick boy, sick boy ... I will steer you wrong"... the music continues to slash away, relentless, "I'll rip you, you rip me".. Iggy is shrieking "TURN ME TURN ME LOOSE ON YOU!!!" He sounds like the madman I took him to be. "Honey we're going down in history". Even as I first hear it, I knew this had been the band's final album. Hearing "Death Trip", it was obvious they knew it, too. "Death Trip" is goodbye. It's the sound of a car going over a cliff. But the Ig is taking you with him.
All I knew is ... after this, I could never listen to Sammy Hagar again...
(PS - there is one thing I disliked, though, about Raw Power - the sound. It sounded shrill, tinny, like a transistor radio turned up way too loud. I am an enthusiastic supporter of Iggy's remix, and am baffled that anyone could prefer Bowie's original disaster mix)
