“Honey gotta help me, please, somebody’s gotta save my soul.” Soul? Iggy had a soul? Really, nobody thought he had one. At least, that’s what he spent his first two albums with the Stooges trying to convince everyone. Unless you count anarchy, what moments of humanity did the lead Stooge display?
But it’s all there, in Raw Power. In black and white, rip-roaringly loud and volatile in a way that only a nightmare could be – “the proof is in the pudding,” as Iggy himself says in the liner notes of the remixed CD of the famed final album by the infamous and groundbreaking Stooges (of course, because of the release of last year’s The Weirdness, Raw Power is no longer their last studio album).
Overview
It went practically unnoticed, this statement, selling at a pace just above inertia. The attention of the populace in 1973, instead, was on that blockbuster, Dark Side of the Moon, by Pink Floyd, and their seedy underbelly fusion of blues and psychedelia. It wasn’t until long after the death toll had been sounded for the Stooges that anybody outside of David Bowie and Lester Bangs started listening to the ferocity, when the live bootleg Metallic K.O. was released, a document that captured their audience at its most hostile while Iggy and the brothers Asheton slaved on the stage like it was some twisted Oz that only the Grimm Brothers could’ve conjured.
The monuments that the Stooges built were distorted fun houses. The playfulness of Lou Reed and the Velvets seems small by comparison, like maybe just one or two of the mirrors in the mansion that Iggy would later erect. John Cale’s contributions to their self-titled debut aside, the Stooges’ sound was all their own, in a class that mixed tenacity and nihilism and self-hatred and righteous fury into something worthy of a chemistry lab explosion. And by the end of Raw Power, after the rattle and hum of “Death Trip,” it would seem just that has happened. This is not their best, nor is it a perfect work, but it is them at their most (not to state the obvious, but) raw, and vicious.
James Williamson’s guitar burns furiously, melting the metal and burning whatever bridges are on the scattered landscape. The drums pound and snare, reared like a cobra to attack, and the bass injects the poison into the bloodstream. But in front of it all is the barking, howling Iggy Stooge and his lyrics, which manage to say nothing new and yet burst with intense heat.
Analysis
The opener, “Search and Destroy,” teases and plays with itself, testing a listener’s stamina, to see if he can endure the ensuing onslaught. It’s that perfect song on the album, an equivalent to “Loose” off 1970’s Fun House. “Gimme Danger” is a thesis statement, one that is as poignant and serious as the Stooges would ever get.
The world’s forgotten boy has more to say, and he delivers the vitriolic venom in spades on “Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell,” a fairly laconic line, to paraphrase, that warns the girl that, while she may have a pretty face now, one day it’s going to be ugly – and then after that it’s going down to join the devil himself. In Stooges terms, this might almost be a love song; and in Iggy’s language, he might be that devil.
Beyond the creepy and breathy “Penetration,” the title track looms, with a monster riff and Iggy singing, “Raw power, well it just won’t quit/ Raw power, I can feel it.” Somewhat stiff but never robotic, “Raw Power” is just attitudinal displacement, manufacturing abandon to summarize the platform of the Stooges’ inbred politicking.
“I Need Somebody” is the best song on the album. It’s not as catchy as the some of the others, but it gets under the skin eventually because it’s less about posturing and more about positioning.
“Shake Appeal” is the throwaway – it has all the hallmarks and trademarks of the band, but it just doesn’t fit. It’s filler, though it’s well above-average by comparison to most filler. At the least, it provides the backdrop for the entrance of “Death Trip,” which as a closer is something of a blowup. “L.A. Blues” was harsh, like a chainsaw cutting through a monster truck tire while fireworks went off in the background (do you agree with that analogy?), but “Death Trip” is just a rotten good time, with excellent guitars and drumming.
Conclusion
To clarify the statement above about posturing as opposed to positioning – the truth about this album is that it is not a bare, honest, and (for lack of a better word) vulnerable work. It is a power play that prides itself on the regalia of degeneracy. But it does admit this fact, and, like any person, occasionally seeks penance. And for the volume of its vices, and the conviction of its principles, it stands as a cathartic proto-punk experience.
And who knows? With Raw Power, Iggy’s soul may have been saved after all.
Rating: 4.5 out 5
