There’s no saving Raw Power. David Bowie’ 1973 mix of the Stooges’ classic has never been loved – too wimpy – and in 1990, Iggy “remixed” the album, turning everything up, so much so that you feel like you’re onstage with all the amps turned toward you and Iggy singing mere inches from your face.
Recently, Sony Legacy reissued a remixed version that is an improvement, but there doesn’t seem to be any way around the extreme, fundamental nature of the album. Iggy’s voice and James Williamson’s lead guitar are in your face, then there’s a rhythm guitar in the moderate distance behind it, then the bass and drums are another few yards behind them. For a long time, I wasn’t certain that Ron Asheton’s bass was audible at all. That’s rectified (sort of), but really, the best thing to be said about this mix is that it gets a great album back in front of people again.
The 2-CD Legacy edition pairs the album with the reason for fans to pick it up: Disc 2, “Georgia Peaches.” This live set recorded in Atlanta for King Biscuit Flower Hour was never aired, and after a muddy sonic start, the sound is pretty good for a set that includes a number of songs the Stooges never officially released – “Head On,” “Heavy Liquid,” “Cock in My Pocket” and “Open Up and Bleed.” In fact, fans of Raw Power may be disappointed by how little of the album they play live in the set, but most of what’s there pays off. The stretched out, druggy “Head On” foreshadows the sort of extended musical monologues he’d engage in a decade later.
Iggy, though, is in fine fightin’ form, calling out “Hey there little cracker boy!” and confronting the audience after each song. As entertaining as Iggy’s abuse, though, is a table of girls seated near the audience mic. Their responses to Iggy’s antics are hysterical and revealing at a point when the band was more of a curiosity than something loved. They giggle after one rant, then one observes later, “I don’t think he likes us.” It’s easy to imagine that they’re everything that Iggy hated and loved, and getting a tepid response from the audience was all the more damning because of that.
There’s also a four-disc configuration that includes a disc of outtakes that’s unnecessary for most Stooges fans because most of the songs have been endlessly released and re-released on ambiguously legal recordings, or on the Iggy remix of Raw Power.
The fourth disc is a DVD on the making of Raw Power, and it’s a workmanlike effort that shows what happens when cavemen from Michigan meet the star maker machinery of Tony DeFries’ MainMan management. As usual, I trust Iggy the performer more than Iggy the historian, but there’s enough in it to tell Stooges fans a few things they didn’t already know. And, by giving James Williamson a fair amount of screen time, one of the enigmas of the Stooges story is slightly less enigmatic.
When the DVD was over though, the one thing that stayed with me was that for the first time for me, Iggy seemed old. Physically, he’s occupied some strange, indeterminate place for years, his body carved by some combination of age, exercise and genetics. At times on the DVD, his speech is slightly affected, and stories that once rambled appealingly have a touch of Abe Simpson in them. For me, that adds a note of drama to the documentary. After all, for years Iggy seemed too crazy to live, then too crazy to die, and perhaps too crazy to obey the laws of nature. I know I’m not ready for the mind to go slack on the man who ripped a yawning fan during the Stooges’ show at Voodoo, “You suck like the bands you like!”
