RAW
POWER
It Is What It Is
press article for the AuGoGo records re-release of Iggy
& The Stooges' RAW POWER LP, 1988
1973. We can only be talking about one thing - Glam. Anglo,
Trans Atlantic, it doesn't matter. If it wasn't glam it
was either West Coast Rock or Symphonic Rock. The book of
Glam hasn't been written yet - which is pretty amazing considering
that Glam is the definitive epoch for everything that has
mattered in the eighties. Like Iggy's Raw Power.
Yes
- Glam ; not the Detroit sound. I'm not talking denim and
dirt - I'm talking all that glitters. You see 1972/74 marks
the peak period of Glam, not only because of what was happening
(Bowie., Sweet, Gary Glitter, T Rex, Roxy Music, Alice Cooper
, et al) put because of what was being uncovered. Things
like Lou Reed & 'The Velvet Underground and Iggy Pop
& The Stooges.
The
great myth of the Velvet Underground probably didn't need
Glam to put it back in vogue in the early seventies, but
Glam's dark side found most of its imagery prefabricated
in the Velvet's neo gothic, proto nihilistic, pseudo decadent
lyrical imaging and musical evocation. If you think I'm
making the Velvet Underground sound contrived, you're right
: they were. Capital 'A' arty. That's what attracted Glam
to them in the first place. Reed's resurrection during this
period is well known. Just about every album he's made since
Transformer (1972) is a painfully cynical yet poetic rejection
of his ponderings and posturings in the Velvet Underground.
Reed wasn't just the aesthetic corpse waxing lyrical on
smack he was a necrophile with a love-hate fix on his own
mythical image. And Glam was responsible for the myth being
reborn.
The
Velvet Underground's rebirth - image and lyric wise, at
least - is marked on Transformer. This album is also acknowledged
as being Bowie's 'saving' of Reed, getting him out of the
underground and into the mainstream through his (and Mick
Ronson 's) quintessentially Glam production on the album.
The title presumably referred to Reed's transvestite predilections.
It could just as easily have referred to Bowie. That album
is Lou Reed transformed - glam-erized. Reed got a kink out
of selling his soul to Glam, but when his next album Berlin
(1973) was canned and panned - presumably too low on the
camp factor for the Glam cult - Reed turned sour. He wouldn't
fully redeem himself in his own eyes until, the cathartic,
polemical release of Metal Machine Music (1975) which is
essentially Reed returning into the sonic maelstorm of the
Velvet Underground and exorcising himself of Glam, Bowie,
Mainman and RCA all at once.
Bowie
had written a song a few years earlier on his 'hard rock'
album The Man Who Sold The World (1971) called The Saviour
Machine. What prophetic titles. And with the self enveloping,
mytho meglomaniac scenario of The Rise & Fall Of Ziggy
Stardust & The Spiders From Mars (1972) he was on a
roll. After Transformer, that 'saviour machine' went corporate
and developed into Mainman Enterprises, set up by lawyer
Tony DeFries and Bowie. The name 'Mainman' salaciously suggested
smack, but in reality it pushed Glam. It was the ultimate
Glam machine, producing and nurturing (or saving and transforming)
acts like Mott The Hoople (All The Young Dudes, 1972), Jobriath
(Jobriath, 1973), Mick Ronson (Slaughter On 10th Avenue,
1974), Dana Gillespie (Weren't Born A Man, 1974) and even
LuLu (the single The Man Who Sold The World/Watch That Man,
1974). Oh yes, and Iggy Pop.
Bowie
didn't produce Raw Power (1973). But perhaps he produced
Iggy or at least reproduced him. Trace Bowie's career and
you'll trace a lot of these mergers and collaborations.
The guy - in his heyday - always had his finger on every
pulse going. Just as he picked up on the pulsing of Reed's
veins, he picked up on the pounding of Iggy's body. Iggy
was ripe for saving in true Mainman style. If Reed was the
razor edge of Glam, Iggy was to be its shattered glass.
And Raw Power is shattered glass. It's pure noise compared
to everything else Mainman and/or Bowie touched. This is
not to say that it is anti Glam. Far from it. Iggy's presence
- his body, his movement, his; variety of vocal screechings,
his acid-punk beatnik one liners - is not just mindless
energy. It's style as well. Not as effete as the stylings
from London art colleges or Boston English departments,
but incredibly stylized and stylistic all the same.
Iggy
and The Stooges might not get space in Rock histories which
list the members of Fleetwood Mac, but their critical place
has always been assured - from the Velvet Undergound's John
Cale producing their first album in 1969 to rock critic
Lester Bangs dropping their name whenever he could. Bowie's
groundwork was clearly laid out for him in 'saving' Iggy.
Furthermore, that groundwork always held The Stooges in
an arty light - that special kind of light where intellectuals
herald the real and the definitive in rock'n'roll. The point
is that The Stooges were ' real rock'n'roll' only to arty
types. The real rockheads took them as a joke (check the
grins on the audience in photoss from their 'seminal' performances)
and preferred the 'reality' of Iron Butterfly's In A Gadda
Da Vida (who were just as contrived as the next band, anyway).
Bowie
mixed Raw Power. He didn't produce it. Iggy presumably did
all that - arranging it, structuring it, giving it its wall-of-noise
sound. But the mix is like the final wash and rinse. It's
what determines the ultimate outcome (as opposed to the
production, which is like the conceptualization and formation
of the sound). And let's face it it's probably one of the
most savage final mixes committed to record. Sheets and
shivers of guitar fuzz all clashing into one another ; erratic
volume bursts and jumps ; assorted sonic explosions and
tone effects; desecrated drums - hang on - that description
sounds like ... the first two Velvet Undergound albums.
Was Bowie conducting a bit of V.U. appreciation here? Was
he trying to loop back Iggy through the Cale connection
to cement the Velvet Underground's status as the original
noise stylists of whom The Stooges were the 'sonic sons'?
Who
knows. And who knows exactly what happened during the recording
of Raw,Power once you try to decipher cryptic credits like
"produced by Iggy Pop for Mainman" and sift through stories
like Bowie controlling the whole show; Iggy being so out
of it Bowie was forced to bring it together to save face
for Mainman in front of CBS ; Iggy disliking Bowie's final
mix ; etc. But we do have the album left as it is - and
its similarity in sound to The Velvet Underground Nico (1967)
and White Light/White Heat (1968) is uncanny. Furthermore,
the sound of Raw Power isn't that far removed from Reed's
own return to the Velvet's wall of noise on his own Metal
Machine Music. Raw Power in a sense initiated such a return
to noise, such a confusion of sound. Gone is the clarity
of Cale's production on The Stooges (1969) and gone is the
solidness of Funhouse (1970). Equally absent are all the
camp musical flourishes of the Bowie/Ronson/Visconti stylings.
It somehow lacks everything it ought to have.
And
that's one of its beauties : it sets itself up to be classic
Glam, only to smash such expectations. Hold the covers of
Transformer and Raw Power together : two rock'n'roll animals
in mascara. Two proto-Glam figureheads reclaimed by the
godhead of Glam : Bowie. And listen to those albums - one
the rebirth of a rock myth, the other the living-death of
such Myths. Raw Power despite its title is the sound of
Iggy's death drive. Reed used words to flaunt his death
wish ; Iggy used sound. Perhaps that's the difference between
a death wish and a death drive. Perhaps that's why Ray Manzarek
was so keen to have Iggy replace Jim Morrison in the new
Doors - not for the Ig's liveliness, but for his deadly
appeal.
Raw
Power isn't The Stooges, with their tightly knotted compound
of fuzz guitars striking and stroking to a steady beat,
that streamlined Detroit Sound. This album is Iggy - pushed
up front - by Bowie, like a contortionist screaming at his
audience ; bursting, exploding his bodyand then diving into
them. Bursting, exploding his voice out of the speakers
into your ears. It's all in the mix : Raw Power is the breakdown
of the Detroit sound, just as Transformer is the transformation
of the Velvet's sound. It's the sound of raw power, of the
peculiar negative energy which drives Iggy Pop - an energy
which isn't made positive again until four years later with
the opening garage-drums-boom of the title track from the
Pop/Bowie collaboration Lust For Life (1977).
While
Iggy with The Stooges has a frighteningly undeniable appeal,
that other Iggy - the Glam Iggy, friend of Ziggy should
not be denied. For this is the Iggy whose gambles and changes
mark the Detroit sound as a phase more than a legacy ; a
style rather than a state. The Iguana picked up tricks from
the Chameleon, and has since generated a series of changes
of which Raw Power is the first and most important. As the
scientific edict goes, power and energy are indestructible,
only transformable. Iggy Pop's power and energy is fully
present in the state it's in on Raw Power. It is what it
is - raw power.
