Raw Power is the third studio album by American rock band the Stooges (credited as Iggy and the Stooges), released on February 7, 1973, by Columbia Records. The album departed from the "groove-ridden, feel-based songs" of the band's first two records in favor of a more anthemic hard rock approach inspired by new guitarist James Williamson, who co-wrote the album's eight songs with singer Iggy Pop.
Pop produced the recording sessions himself with David Bowie assisting in post-production work, though the team were allotted only one day to mix the album and the resulting fidelity was poor. Later reissues have attempted to either correct or enhance the original mix, most notably Pop's 1997 remix, which became notorious for its extreme volume and compression.
Though not initially commercially successful, Raw Power gained a cult following in the years following its release and is considered a forerunner of punk rock alongside its predecessors, The Stooges (1969) and Fun House (1970). The Guardian wrote that "it has since been acknowledged as one of the most influential records in rock history". Williamson's raw guitar sound deeply influenced acts of different music genres such as the Sex Pistols, Johnny Marr of the Smiths, and Kurt Cobain of Nirvana.
Background After their first two albums The Stooges (1969) and Fun House (1970) were released to little commercial success, the Stooges were in disarray: the band had officially broken up, bassist Dave Alexander was fighting alcoholism, and singer Iggy Pop's heroin addiction was escalating prior to the intervention of David Bowie. Pop later recalled, "Very few people recognized the quality of the Stooges' songwriting, it was really meticulous. And to his credit, the only person I'd ever known of in print to notice it, among my peers of professional musicians, was Bowie. He noticed it right off." Having signed on as a solo artist to Columbia Records, Pop relocated to London, where he was to write and record an album with James Williamson, who served as the Stooges' second guitarist from November 1970 until the band's initial dissolution in July 1971. When they failed to find a suitable English rhythm section, Williamson suggested that former Stooges Ron Asheton and Scott Asheton fly over and participate in the recording sessions, leading to the band's reformation under the new name of "Iggy and the Stooges". Although he was the band's founding guitarist, the elder Asheton reluctantly agreed to switch to electric bass.
Recording Initial demo sessions were held at RG Jones Recording Studios in Wimbledon with sound engineer Gerry Kitchingham and at Olympic Studios in Barnes with sound engineer Keith Harwood, with most of the songs rejected by the band's management. Pop said that Columbia executives insisted on two ballads, one for each side of the album: "Gimme Danger" and "I Need Somebody". The album itself was recorded at CBS Studios in London with staff engineer Mike Ross-Trevor from September 10 to October 6, 1972. Pop produced and mixed the album by himself; unfortunately, his botched first attempt mixed most of the instruments into one stereo channel and the vocals into the other, with little regard for balance or tone quality. Tony Defries, the head of Bowie's management company MainMan, informed Pop that the album would be remixed by Bowie. Pop agreed to this, saying that "the other choice was I wasn't going to get my album out. I think Defries told me that CBS refused to release it like that, I don't know", but insisted that his own mix for "Search and Destroy" be retained. Due to budgetary constraints, Bowie remixed the other seven songs in a single day at Los Angeles' Western Sound Recorders in October 1972. Pop said of the production:
Bowie later recalled:
When Morgan Neville's documentary film on Raw Power was released in 2010, they demonstrated that each individual instrument was indeed recorded on its own track on the original multi-track tapes, suggesting that Bowie was either mistaken or working with a copy that had mixed down the instruments on to the same track.Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine:
Alternate mixes
Low-fidelity copies of Pop's original mixes circulated among fans for years. In 1993, a selection of these original mixes was released by Bomp Records as Rough Power. Fans and critics generally agreed that the original mixes were interesting, but not necessarily superior to Bowie's efforts. Of the Rough Power release, Pop has remarked that "what David and I came up with at these sessions was better than that."
In 1996, Columbia Records "invited" Pop to remix the entire album for re-release on CD. Pop said in the liner notes that had he declined, the studio would have remixed it without his blessing. Pop cited longtime encouragement from fans and peers, the existence of Rough Power, his distaste for how the original 1989 CD release of Raw Power sounded, and the fact that Columbia would release the new mix on its subsidiary Legacy Recordings as factors that led him to go through with the new mix, which was undertaken at New York's Sony Music Studios in 1996. The remixed edition was released on April 22, 1997. In the album's accompanying liner notes, Pop states the following:
American music journalist and essayist Robert Christgau wrote approvingly of Pop's Raw Power remix. Upon reviewing the 1997 edition of Raw Power, Christgau – who in the past had complained about how Bowie had mixed the original album "down till it's thin as an epicure's wrist" and inflicted "ruinous underbassing" – wrote,
On the other hand, some fans – among them guitarist Robert Quine – felt that the new remix was as unfaithful to the material as the original 1973 mix, and further criticized the audible distortion in the new mix. Quine said, "[Iggy's] one of the greats but I wonder about what he did to that record with the new [Raw Power] remix, which is atrocious. 'With this remix, I think this can stand up with the latest Smashing Pumpkins.' Wow." In the reissued CD's liner notes, however, Pop points out that one of his intentions in doing the new mix was to keep audio levels in the red (which would deliberately cause such distortion) while at the same time making the music more "powerful and listenable". This new version is arguably the "loudest album ever", reaching RMS of -4 dB, rare even by today's standards.
James Williamson and Ron Asheton have both stated that they prefer Bowie's original mix of the album over Pop's remixed version. Williamson stated:
Asheton stated:
In 2002, Bowie said that his original mix of Raw Power is "the version I still prefer over the later remix – it has more wound-up ferocity and chaos and, in my humble opinion, is a hallmark roots sound for what was later to become punk."
In 2010, Pop remarked,
Pop and Bowie's mixes were both remastered in 2012 for a Record Store Day double LP by Kevin Gray and Mark Wilder, respectively; this remastering was free of clipping.
In 2023, both mixes of the album were once again remastered, free of clipping, along with the release of a new edition of the album to commemorate its fiftieth anniversary.
Musical style Raw Power has often been classified as a proto-punk or garage rock album. According to Brett Callwood, it abandoned the "groove-ridden, feel-based songs" of the band's first two albums in favor of a more anthemic hard rock approach inspired by Williamson, who co-wrote the album's eight songs with Pop. Similarly, music critic Joe S. Harrington said that the hard rock album demonstrated a "totally overpowering" sound, "a sledgehammer attack of brutal ill will", while author Dave Thompson noted Pop's "nihilistic hard rock bellowing" throughout. In another analysis, PopMatters writer Iain Ellis said the album can be seen in retrospect as punk metal, while Tucson Weeklys Jarret Keene deemed it "garage-punk-metal" fusion.
Marketing and sales
Raw Power was released on February 7, 1973 under the moniker of "Iggy and the Stooges", in contrast to the band's first two albums, which were credited to "the Stooges". The cover is a photograph of Pop taken by rock music photographer Mick Rock. The songs "Search and Destroy" and "Shake Appeal" were both released as singles (the title track was released as a single in Japan only). According to Robert Hilburn, the album was "far too radical for the corporate-rock sensibilities of radio" in 1973, and as a result it only charted for three weeks on the Top 200, peaking at number 183. The group continued touring for about a year, but Columbia dropped their contract. The Stooges were also dumped by MainMan – Tony Defries lost patience with the band after the large sum of money he advanced to them was spent on drugs. The Stooges broke up in February 1974. After spending time in a drug-fueled stupor in L.A. – and later rehab at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, during which he would record the album Kill City with Williamson whilst on day release – Pop re-joined Bowie's entourage by the spring of 1975, and emerged as a solo artist in 1976.
Critical reception
Raw Power received much praise from contemporary critics. Dave Marsh proclaimed that it was already "the best album of the '70s", as Pop had "summed everything up and it took him only nine songs to do it." Ben Edmunds from Phonograph Record called it "an experience so overpowering that it forces new definitions for even the most familiar things", arguing in March that it will undoubtedly be the album of the year. According to Lester Bangs, the "by-now banal words 'heavy metal' were invested for this group", while "the ferocious assertiveness of the lyrics is at once slightly absurd and indicative of a confused, violently defensive stance that's been a rock tradition from the beginning". In Stereo Review, he called the album a "comeback of major proportions" and "monomaniacal fury so genuine" that it may be too overwhelming for listeners, concluding that, "whether you laugh at them or accept their chaotic rumble on its own terms, they're fascinating and authentic, the apotheosis of every parental nightmare." Reviewing Raw Power for Rolling Stone, Lenny Kaye praised its uncompromising music and said, "for the first time, the Stooges have used the recording studio as more than a recapturing of their live show, and with David Bowie helping out in the mix, there is an ongoing swirl of sound that virtually drags you into the speakers". Longtime Stooges fans were less receptive to Bowie's mix for the original album; Robert Christgau later wrote of the original fan response, "first-generation Iggyphiles charged just as indignantly that David Bowie had mixed the real thing way too thin, before it was anointed the Platonic idea of rock and roll by desperate young men who didn't have much else to choose from".