In a party at Max’s Kansas City, Iggy Pop met a young British musician named David Bowie who would become one of Iggy’s lifelong friends. He met up with fan and proto-punk icon Lou Reed who was helping Iggy try to score the deal that would change his life. After the Stooges disbanded, Iggy went back home to Ann Arbor, Michigan where he cleaned himself on heroin with methadone and wrote some songs with Stooges guitarist James Williamson.Īfter regaining his health in late 1971, Iggy decided to go to New York City to score a record deal. Drug abuse, poor album sales, and boredom drove the Stooges to break up as singer Iggy Pop’s heroin addiction was taking its toll. For the Detroit proto-punk band the Stooges, the 70s started on a down note after making two influential albums that would provide the blueprint for punk rock that would come to realization in the mid-70s. The 1970s would hail as a new era in rock n’ roll where the rules would be broken by bands and artists who wanted to challenge people perceptions on how rock music can sound like. Whoever rips off a bass line from Pharaoh Sanders just rules in my book(Little Doll is a rip off of 2nd part of Upper & Lower Egypt from Pharaoh Sanders 1967 LP Tauhid.Those famous words by Phillip Seymour Hoffman as legendary rock critic Lester Bangs in the movie “Almost Famous” says it all about one of the greatest rock albums ever made, the Stooges “Raw Power”.Īs the 1970s arrived, the psychedelic indulgence of the 1960s was on its way to fade into history. He is actually the person I miss most on Raw Power as his bass playing on the first two records is completely overlooked and underrated. Raw Power as a two guitar lineup with Dave Alexander on bass would have been best, but Dave was too far gone by that point. I like all of the songs on all three records and have listened to them countless times now. Of the first three Stooges albums, Funhouse has the best mix. The remix everything sounds distorted and in not a good way. The original mix has a poor perspective, but the sounds aren't awful. That didn't become standard until the late 70's, so that could explain some of the distortion(misaligned tape deck). Perhaps the original master tapes had no reference tones to align the tape machine. It sounds like it was mixed from a analog transfer to digital multitrack which would be the fashion in the late 90's. I wonder what the state of master tapes were by the time of the remix. Iggy tried to rectify the problem to only make it worse. Lots of James & Iggy but not much of the Brothers Asheton. It was when I heard the Iggy mix that I realized Ron had some killer bass parts that weren't audible on the original. I agree about Williamson's guitar playing, but Ron Asheton's bass parts are totally lost in that first mix. On at least four or five songs that was the situation, including "Search and Destroy." That's got such a peculiar sound because all we did was occasionally bring the lead guitar up and take it out. So we just pushed the vocal up and down a lot. Out of 24 tracks there were just three tracks that were used. He had the band on one track, lead guitar on another and him on a third. He wanted me to mix Raw Power, so he brought the 24-track tape in, and he put it up. the most absurd situation I encountered when I was recording was the first time I worked with Iggy Pop. Tony DeFries, the head of MainMan, informed Pop that the album would be remixed by Bowie. 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. The album was recorded in London's CBS Studios, from September 10 – October 6, 1972, with staff engineer Mike Ross-Trevor. Funny story abaut the production of the "Raw Power" album:
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