9/13/2023 0 Comments Iggy pop raw powerWilliamson’s final flourish comes as his virtuosic yet barbarous soloing envelopes the six-minute closer Death Trip, the album’s longest track. Iggy thought it sounded like the inside of “a bordello” and his celesta part is a seductive counterpoint. The album’s other ballad is the Doors-esque I Need Somebody, a moody blues vamp in G written on an acoustic guitar by Williamson. As slow songs go, it’s pretty demonic, simmering with sexual tension as Iggy broods, “there’s nothing left alive but a pair of glassy eyes” before careering into the bloodthirsty chorus, Williamson’s lead playing and an insistent piano tangling lustily before the guitar wins out with a corking solo. Gimme Danger, with Williamson’s menacing acoustic riff in E♭ tuning, is there to fulfil the label’s demand for a ballad on each side of the album. You can hear the influence of Chuck Berry on Williamson’s rock-solid rhythm and histrionic soloing on Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell, while the heroin horrors of the title track and the swaggering Shake Appeal also have their roots firmly in 50s rock’n’roll, the latter enabling Pop to “get to my dream of being Little Richard for a minute”. Iggy may have overdosed and been out cold for 14 hours at one point while writing the lyrics for Raw Power, but how about Search And Destroy’s “I’m a streetwalking cheetah with a hide full of napalm, I’m a runaway son of a nuclear A-bomb” for an opening couplet? And the frantic lead playing from Williamson, based around the C♯ minor pentatonic scale, is nothing short of blistering, the song a furious rallying cry for the anti-Vietnam war movement. David Bowie came to the rescue, finding Iggy a label and management deal and setting up the recording sessions in London. Plugged into a cranked Vox AC30, it sounded like… well, raw power.īy the time the Michigan band regrouped in England to record Raw Power they’d already hit rock bottom, splitting in 1971 due to a combination of Iggy’s voracious appetite for heroin, extreme poverty, dangerously violent gigs and the lukewarm response to their first two albums. Throughout the narcotic mayhem of the Raw Power sessions, Williamson played a Cherry Red Les Paul Custom that Iggy had encouraged him to trade in an SG and Jaguar to buy. His raw, bluesy style was instrumental in Raw Power having a harder edge and more adrenal tempo than predecessor Funhouse, and he co-wrote all eight songs – much to the chagrin of Asheton, who felt he’d been usurped. Born in Texas, Williamson joined The Stooges in 1970 aged 19, initially as second guitarist, before Ron Asheton switched reluctantly to bass.
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