“Raw Power”, fifty years of raw power

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In February 1973 Iggy Pop and the Stooges released Raw Power, an album that anticipated punk and, decades later, is still capable of seducing listeners with its blend of sonic violence, captivating singing and desperate lyrics. The hand of David Bowie guarantees its immediate impact and longevity.

Eight tracks and thirty-four minutes are enough to make an album made with “drugs, youth, attitude and a record collection” – as Iggy Pop himself recalls – a milestone of rock capable of influencing the attitude, sound and themes of an entire subsequent generations, despite being a commercial flop, stalling at number 182 on the Billboard charts.

Sex Pistols to Kurt Cobain

In fact, there are artists who praise it ranging from the Sex Pistols to Kurt Cobain, passing through rappers and producers. The album is the result of a rather complicated period and a Spartan working method. In 1972 the Stooges were left on the street by the Elektra record label following the failure of the Fun House album. The band, having returned to their native Detroit, is in full crisis, made even more uncertain by some line-up changes, and remains in limbo until David Bowie calls Iggy Pop and colleagues in London.

David Bowie

Here, in a bare, cold and inhospitable rehearsal room, Pop and guitarist James Williamson work for four hours a day, churning out a song for each session. After just over a week the album was ready to be recorded. A few seconds and you are already hit by the uncontrolled power of Search And Destroya wall of sound made of acid guitars that anticipates the dark Gimme Dangerthe pyrotechnics Your pretty face is going to hell and the erotic ride Penetration. Not even the time to catch his breath and the second side opens with the title track, raw poweronly to run into the sinister blues of I Need Someonein the hypnotic rough riff of Shake Appeal and in the final and desperate Death Trip.

The album is also ignited by the lyrics of Iggy Pop, nihilistic anthems of a restless soul that for Search And Destroy he was inspired by an article in Time on the strategy of the US army in Vietnam consisting, precisely, in “searching for and annihilating” any enemy soldier. Disappointed by yet another failure and abandoned again by the record industry, to Iggy Pop and the Stooges all that remains is to take refuge again in a spiral of pessimism fueled by drugs. Thankfully, though, punk’s pioneers rip raw power from oblivion and make it the pivot on which to build the newborn rebel genre.