Iggy & The Stooges - Raw Power

1973’s Raw Power by Iggy & The Stooges may be the single most important punk album ever released. Scorned by critics and audiences upon its release, Raw Power has since gained notice as being the blueprint for all future punk music. While most music fans were being introduced to over-produced and spacey arrangements such as, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, The Stooges were playing what is essentially hardcore punk, but it was nearly an entire decade before that genre even had a real name.

The addition of James Williamson on guitar certainly adds a new aspect to The Stooges’ sound, with much more of a focus on wailing, screeching solos and licks, rather than repetitive riffs. This creates a much angrier and aggressive sound on many of the tracks, something that much of the music in the early 70’s was missing.

The album starts out with the blistering “Search and Destroy,” a song that sounds like what a band plummeting into the sun would play, knowing they only have moments to play the last noises their instruments will ever make. Using several terms taken from coverage of the Vietnam War, Iggy paints a bleak picture of anger and alienation with lines like “I am the world’s forgotten boy/the who’s searchin’/searchin’ to destroy”. After blazing through the first three-quarters of the song, James Williamson launches into an explosive guitar solo, combining the typical guitar prowess of many 70’s rock bands with the sneer and ferociousness of the punk movement. Along with Iggy’s yelps and barks, the amazing solo perfectly caps off what is probably the best song on the album.

Just because Raw Power starts out strong doesn’t mean that it looses its teeth over the course of the rest of the album. Even the two ballads, “Gimme Danger” and “I Need Somebody” are dark, weird, and crushingly powerful. “Gimme Danger” serves as the album’s calm before the storm, starting out brooding and slow, then slowly building while still restraining itself.

The calm doesn’t last long and the raging storm of “Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell” rolls in, and this song is just as viscous as the title would imply. Utilizing a mangled and deranged take on a guitar riff that The Rolling Stones might write, this is possibly the only other song on the album that could match the megaton-level force of “Search and Destroy.”

The title track, “Raw Power,” features a very clanky-sounding piano and blues guitar riff combo that sums up the album’s fierce and sloppy sound perfectly. “Shake Appeal” is the album’s throw-away track, but its chugging groove and Iggy’s howls make it something that could almost be considered danceable if it were slowed down a bit. The closer, “Death Trip,” as Iggy himself said, was chosen to be the last track just to show how doomed this album was when it was released. No critics enjoyed it and it sold horribly, and Iggy was convinced that people wouldn’t like Raw Power, even if they had the chance to hear it. Raw Power was just too radical of a change from music of the era for most to appreciate it.

However, five years later, Raw Power began to show its influence with the rise of The Ramones and The Sex Pistols, and even further into the 80’s with hardcore acts such as Black Flag and Bad Brains. No other band could put out material that would do justice to the intimidating title of Raw Power, and since then, very few have matched the incredible force that this punk masterpiece has upon its listener.