First off, one would have to be insane to say anything bad about Iggy Pop. I mean, forget Elvis, Iggy is the King. Without him there would have been no Sex Pistols, no Ramones, and no Marilyn Manson. In fact, if anyone has any doubts who inspired the punk revolution of the late seventies, they need only take a listen to Iggy Pop and the Stooges’ classic record Raw Power.

So here is the band in its raging glory. Raw Power features the Stooges in their prime. The CD, freshly remixed by Iggy himself, finally captures the edge and execution of the group as it must have sounded to scores of disaffected Detroit youth some 25 years ago.

The material sounds fresh, barely dated. With the exception of James Williamson’s tinny guitar tone and oft-sloppy licks, the tracks on Raw Power could very well have been released among the current crop of today’s rock & roll products. Come to think of it, I suppose it has...

As Iggy explains in the liner notes, "I really don’t like the idea of going backwards and exhuming my own work... [but] I heard ‘Sony’s gonna do it with you or without you’ ... that was the impetus right there."

The history of the original release’s flat, bottomless mix goes something like this: The Stooges had just released a couple of poor-selling records (1969’s self-titled debut and 1970’s Fun House), got dropped from Elektra, broke up, reformed, and then – while under the influence of disastrous quantities of drugs and liquor – went back into the studio to record Raw Power for Columbia. The label rejected the album’s preliminary mix and contracted David Bowie to remix the record in a day’s time in a dimly, lo-tech studio in the bowels of Los Angeles.

No matter. For whatever reason, the sound quality on the album was infamously poor, resulting in one of the most scorned mixes in the music business. Hence, the re-release was almost inevitable. The new recording is masterful, with all due credit to Iggy for a job well done. Fan or not, you could do worse than to part with a few bucks for this CD. It’s a shining piece of rock & roll history, reissued and resurrected along with an eight-page booklet and additional pictures by legendary photographer Mick Rock.

May 1997