SOD: Iggy & The Stooges: Gimme Danger

Iggy Pop was (is) the driving force behind The Stooges, but in my opinion, James Williamson was the driving force behind their sound (at least on one album). The album Raw Power features him as the lead guitarist for the first and only time, moving Ron Asheton, the groups original guitarist, over to Bass Guitar. I think it's their best album, and it's raw power is literally tangible. It's so stripped down, and if it weren't for solid songwriting, it would probably be a complete mess. But the more you listen to it, the more you realize how unique and special the album is. It was a forerunner to the emerging punk scene in the mid-seventies and you can literally hear how punk could evolve from this gritty sound.

David Bowie noticed it, and he got involved on this album too. That was huge. Iggy was in London with Williamson, and they wrote the entire album together. They then brought in the Asheton brothers as a rhythm section, and recorded it, down and dirty. One of the best descriptions of the session comes from Bowie himself who actually mixed the album. He said it was the first time he worked with Iggy, and the situation was ridiculous. Apparently they used 3 of the available 24 tracks: one for the band, one for Iggy's voice, and one for lead guitar. Not a lot of mixing to do on that, and thus, you get the sound of the album. Bowie said they "just pushed the vocal up and down a lot."

Nonetheless, it goes to show that sometimes the music can speak for itself. You can produce and mix things to high-hell, and sometimes that's what an album needs, but sometimes all you need is the idea. And the album's sound is very imperfect, but that adds to the rawness of it, and it certainly directly inspired the generation of punk that was itching to burst onto the scene. That music was also very intentionally imperfect at times, obviously picking up cues from the likes of MC5 and Iggy, among others.