By Matt Mitchell, Paste Magazine | After The Velvet Underground & Nico and Marquee Moon, the Stooges’ Raw Power is the most influential rock album ever recorded. It came out on a Wednesday, which feels odd now, though release days were much more lawless back then. The recording of Raw Power was a mess; touring for the album was even messier. By the time 1973 came around, the Stooges—or Iggy and the Stooges, or the Psychedelic Stooges—were pioneers, the definition of proto-punk. Peers like MC5 and the Sonics were excellent at making garage rock raucous, but they didn’t abolish the foundations of musical presentation like the Stooges had. In retrospect, they were the blueprint of punk rock. And, under the leadership of Iggy Pop, the Stooges brought theatricality to rock ’n’ roll that wasn’t avant-garde or esoteric. Like a cauldron of blood, sex and anger, Raw Power is the antithesis of delicate. A monolith of brash.
There’s a reason that the entire band graced the cover of The Stooges in 1969 but only Pop is featured on the cover of Raw Power four years later: By that point in their career, Pop was the muscle of the band, hence why they changed their name to Iggy and the Stooges. Original bassist Dave Alexander had bounced after Fun House in 1970, and James Williamson and Ron and Scott Asheton became set pieces behind Pop’s kaleidoscope of chaos. Pop was the shirtless, psychotic wonder on stage, baring his toned-yet-scrawny torso to all of his disciples before transforming into some mythical kind of crucifixion. He won the favor of Miles Davis by puking on stage and dragging Geri Miller across the excrement. Later he’d arouse concert-goers in Cincinnati by tossing peanut butter on them. While touring for Raw Power, there was an incident where Pop got all carved up after falling on a table of glass while wading through the crowd. When he returned to the stage, every contortion he made with his body sprayed blood on fans. The story goes that medical staff tried to patch up the cuts with gaffer tape, but he almost bled out by the night’s end.
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Read the full history here:
https://www.pastemagazine.com/music/iggy-pop/the-stooges-raw-power-50-year-anniversary/
Matt Mitchell is Paste’s assistant music editor, and a poet, essayist, and culture critic from Northeast Ohio. Find him on Twitter @matt_mitchell48.
Photo: Iggy and the Stooges
https://www.facebook.com/iggyandthestooges/photos
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