Rewind album: Raw Power, by The Stooges (1973)
"Gimme danger, little stranger/And I'll feel your disease," Iggy Pop croons on Gimme Danger, the second track of Raw Power, The Stooges' third album. But in reality, the American band were mostly a danger to themselves.
The Stooges
Columbia Records
"Gimme danger, little stranger/And I'll feel your disease," Iggy Pop croons on Gimme Danger, the second track of Raw Power, The Stooges' third album. But in reality, the American band were mostly a danger to themselves.
Formed in Detroit in 1967, The Stooges had quickly fallen prey to alcoholism and drug abuse, which forced them to split up two years before this album was recorded.
The danger that surrounded the musicians didn't stop with the drugs, either.
Band leader Iggy Pop (real name James Newell Osterberg), who channelled the primal, primitive instincts seen in some of the best rock'n'roll, abused himself on stage, gouging his flesh with broken glass, flinging himself off speaker stacks and, unusually, smothering himself in peanut butter.
But those who listen to Raw Power for the first time, with this in mind, will be in for different kind of shock. Noisy, loud and chaotic it certainly is. But it's also poetic and lyrical, in the manner of a modern-day Baudelaire. Osterberg - one of rock's great survivors - claims his show always disguised a craftsman at work, and more than 40 years later, the album supports that.