Wednesday, February 22, 2017

133. Iggy & The Stooges - Raw Power


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The original album cover art is a photo of Iggy Pop on stage, lithe, bare-chested, grasping the microphone and staring off at some unseen distant object.
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In 1972 Iggy Pop & The Stooges flew into London to record a new LP, Raw Power.  With David Bowie as executive producer, Raw Power proved to be an instant classic.
During this time The Stooges, perpetually wasted,  performed a single concert in London’s Kings Cross. This whole crazed period of Iggy’s phenomenal career was
captured on camera by one man, Mick Rock. An unparalleled of Iggy at the height of both his musical powers and his legendary excesses, Raw Power also
serves as a unique visual diary of the heady times which produced one of rock music's most enduring recordings whose famous cover shot
captured my Mick Rock is now indelibly established in modern pop iconography. Mick Rock  


Shown below is one of these shots, with notes by Pop himself, like several others in the series of photos, done perhaps during one of his crazed trips.
He looks more serious and sober on the album cover than on this one,  where he is uninhibited and more contemporaneous with the persona
of the Pop who performs in the album. I did my own thing without minding the Pop in his more candid self. 

James Newell Osterberg, Jr. is well-known for his outrageous and unpredictable stage antics. 


This is the original album cover art design.



No. 70, Entertainment Weekly, The 100 Greatest Albums Ever; No. 128, Rolling Stone, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time;
No. 302, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000 


Photo by Mick Rock. Album produced by Iggy Pop & David Bowie. Columbia 1973.


Has an album ever had a more perfect title than Raw Power? What words could more accurately describe the contents of this classic by the Stooges –
released in the U.S. on February 7, 1973 – than “Raw” and “Power”?

That was the essence of the Stooges. They removed all the unnecessary pomp and fluff of rock and roll by boiling the music down to an exquisite
primordial sludge. It’s so basic, it’s brilliant. How appropriate that Iggy Pop and company took their name from the Three Stooges.

The history behind Raw Power is a little more complicated. It both was and wasn’t the third album by the Stooges. A few years earlier, the
band out of Ann Arbor, Michigan, had recorded a pair of albums (The Stooges and Fun House) for Elektra, but gained more notoriety
than record sales. Breakup and drug addiction ensued.

Enter Ziggy Stardust. David Bowie was a huge fan of their first two records and discovered a kindred spirit in Iggy after meeting
him in New York. With Pop untethered to the Stooges and spiraling down the path of substance abuse, Bowie brought him
to London. The newly minted glam superstar got Pop to sign to a management contract (with the same firm that
handled Bowie) and landed him a deal as a solo artist with Columbia Records. Ultimate Classic Rock


(A) Search and Destroy - Gimme Danger - Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell - Penetration

(B) Raw Power - I Need Somebody - Shake Appeal - Death Trip



"Search and Destroy" live from Argot Nauta on YouTube