Raw Power

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Template:Album infobox Raw Power is a 1973 (see 1973 in music) album by hard rock band The Stooges, fronted by future icon Iggy Pop. Featuring blistering-fast guitar riffs and shouted vocals, Raw Power was not able to capture a mainstream market. In spite of the inaccessibility, a small number of listeners took the sound to heart, and many of these people soon became influential leaders in the early punk movement.

Iggy Pop had been signed by Mainman Management, who handled David Bowie, as a solo artist, but Pop was hellbent on reforming the Stooges. Signed to Columbia Records, he was sent to London to write and record their album with his new collaborator, James Williamson. Pop insisted that his fellow ex-Stooges Ron Asheton and Scott Asheton participate in the recording sessions. Ron Asheton was "demoted" to bass (having played guitar on the first two Stooges album) while Williamson played all of the guitar parts.

Pop produced and mixed the album by himself. Mainman demanded that the album be remixed, but Pop refused. When Mainman offered to let David Bowie handle the remix, Pop agreed -- having been told by Mainman that the album would not be released otherwise -- on the sole condition that his own mix for "Search And Destroy" be retained. Bowie reportedly remixed the other seven songs on the album in a single day in a cheap Los Angeles studio.

"Search and Destroy" and "Shake Appeal" were both pulled from the album and released as a singles.

Such was the controversy over Bowie's mix that low-fidelity copies of Pop's original mixes circulated among fans for years. In 1995, a selection of these original mixes was released by Bomp Records as Rough Power. Fans and critics, among them Cub Koda, generally agreed that the original mixes were interesting, but not necessarily superior to Bowie's efforts.

Raw Power peaked at #182 on Billboard's Pop Albums chart. Template:RS500

In 1997 Columbia Records invited Iggy Pop to remix the entire album for re-release on Compact Disc. Pop cited longtime encouragement from fans and peers, the existence of Rough Power, his distaste for how the original 1989 CD release of Raw Power sounded, and the fact that Columbia were going to release the new mix on its sublabel Legacy Recordings as factors that led him to go through with the new mix. On the other hand, some fans - Robert Quine among them - felt the new remix was as unfaithful to the material as the original 1973 mix, and further criticized the audible digital distortion in the new mix. In the reissued CD's liner notes, however, Iggy points out that one of his intentions in doing the new mix was to keep audio levels in the red (which would delibrately cause such distortion) while at the same time making the music more powerful and listenable.