The song Iggy Pop “stole” from Time magazine
Before terms like punk and metal arrived in the 1970s, we had to make do with descriptors such as light, dark, heavy, dirty, melodic and unrefined to sort songs and artists into their correct slots in the filing cabinet of rock music. Iggy Pop and his group of proto-punk misfits, The Stooges, positioned themselves on the dark, heavy and unrefined side of the spectrum when they released their debut album in 1969.
Teaming up with producer John Cale, formerly of The Velvet Underground, The Stooges made a huge impact with their eponymous debut album. Most memorably, its lead single, ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’, oozed with the salacious depravity and social nonconformity with which the band were associated as the years wore on. If The Beatles smiling on the cover of Please Please Me set a precedent for the 1960s, The Stooges pouting with hostility on their debut did the same for the 1970s.
Besides their provocative, energising music, The Stooges became known for wild antics on and off stage. Iggy and his brigade of hedonists paved the anarchistic road to punk with a sense of moral abandon that made the hippies’ countercultural activity seem somewhat tepid. On stage, Iggy’s controversial antics ranged from indecent exposure and self-mutilation to property destruction and assault à la fruit.
By the time The Stooges reached full swing in the early 1970s, following the release of their second album, Fun House, drug addictions ran rampant, and fans became increasingly hooked on the chaos. When the band started to wear Nazi uniforms on stage during concerts, it became clear that they had only one agenda: all-out alienation and social destruction.
In July 1971, Elektra Records dropped The Stooges after enduring one calamitous show too many. The group had developed a severe heroin problem, and, at times, Iggy struggled to remain upright while performing on stage. A much-needed break ensued for several months, during which Iggy met one of his famous fans, David Bowie, for the first time.
The rising British star encouraged Iggy to reform The Stooges for one more album, offering his production expertise to the project. This third record would feature some of the band’s most critically acclaimed material yet, driven by a militant urgency and dripping with the blood, sweat and tears of rock ‘n’ roll excess.
A major influence on Iggy while creating this third album was the ongoing conflict between the US and communist forces in Vietnam. While the hippies called for peace with flowers and acoustic guitars, Iggy entered the hurt locker to glorify violence in a blistering work of satire. He called this slice of genius Raw Power, after the title of its second single.
Iggy reflected on his work on the album in a 2013 interview with Entertainment Weekly, noting the name’s link to the divisive conflict. “I stole the title from a heading in Time magazine about how they were planning to win the Vietnam War,” he said. “I wanted to be the baddest band in the universe. I was thinking, ‘What phrase would sum up being the most invulnerable, heavy unit?'”
At the time of writing, Iggy and The Stooges were stopping over in London to record at CBS Studios. “I left the band house so I had privacy to write the lyrics, and I was staying in a very chic hotel in London,” Iggy continued. “I was trying to get to the idea that if you can set aside all prosaic concerns, you can find a way to connect to a universal energy. That’s what it was supposed to be about, but who would have thought that was in the head of this weird-looking delinquent in silver leather pants?”
Iggy opened the album with the words, “I’m a street walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm / I’m a runaway son of the nuclear A-bomb,” consolidating the military associations. Elsewhere, ‘Gimme Danger’, ‘Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell’ and ‘Death Trip’ enhanced the brutal side of “Raw Power”. The term, of course, also pertains to the attractive lack of refinement in the heavy musical style, which would soon inspire the rise of punk.
