![\"Iggy](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Iggy-Pop-and-The-Stooges-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credit: Michael Markos)<\/p>\n
Thu 1 January 2026 4:00, UK <\/p>\n
By 1973, The Stooges<\/a> had already cemented their status as the foundational punk pioneers.<\/p>\n Burnished amid Detroit\u2019s garage rock maelstrom toward the 1960s\u2019 tail-end, the Motor City\u2019s blue-collar edge proved the perfect petri dish for the gaggle of countercultural misfits too unrefined for New York\u2019s artistic aloofness and favouring booze and speed over the West Coast\u2019s LSD psychedelia. Somehow, the likes of MC5 and Alice Cooper spotted the decade\u2019s tumultuous close from a mile off, scoring a bruising garage attack at the hippy idyll that was swiftly turning into a bad trip.<\/p>\n Despite the stiff competition, no one touched The Stooges. A potent surge of Jim Morrison\u2019s violent theatre, James Brown\u2019s pumped sexuality, and The Sonics\u2019 riffing heft, Iggy Pop took his frontman duties to explosively volatile realms, virtually inventing the stage dive and invasion, as well as routinely indulging in bouts of self-mutilation and sheer abandon to his well-being. Wrapped in notoriety, fans were gripped, witnessing a garage whirlwind completely out of step with anything in rock during the 1960s\u2019 final throes.<\/p>\n The Stooges\u2019 live reputation was matched by their studio efforts. 1969\u2019s eponymous debut starkly captured their dark sensuality and snarled skulk, but the following year\u2019s Fun House surpassed as their defining document, an incredible groove of chaos bottling as close as possible the frenzied air hung across their on-stage spectacle.<\/p>\n Yet, it all appeared to be over as soon as they\u2019d started. Scant record sales, gnawing heroin habits, and a fracturing line-up saw The Stooges kicked off the Elektra label. In came David Bowie<\/a>. Meeting at the famed Max\u2019s Kansas City in September 1971, Bowie\u2019s connections resulted in a two-album deal with CBS\/Columbia Records, and a second roll of the dice for his fraught Detroit band. Corralling founding members Scott and Ron Asheton and newcomer James Williamson on guitar \u2013 a narked Ron reluctantly picking up the bass this time around \u2013 a rejuvenated Stooges headed to London to begin work on their third LP.<\/p>\n Dropped in February 1973, while glam was at its glitteriest and prog wizardry was selling out arenas, Raw Power\u2019s miscreant energy stuck like a sore thumb amid the rock charts. Swapping slacker groove for Williams\u2019 riffing fury, not even New York Dolls were able to clamour toward The Stooges\u2019 primal rock strut, teeming with acidic proto-punk spit whose influence on the imminent new wave would only grow more fiercer. Among a cluster of fantastic cuts, from the queasy \u2018Penetration\u2019 to \u2018I Need Somebody\u2019s bluesy shuffle, visceral lightning was harnessed for Raw Power\u2019s sledgehammer opener.<\/p>\n Blowing the doors down within its first half-second, \u2018Search and Destroy\u2019 hurtles with turbo charge beyond any of the garage rock crowd and harder-end of glam at the time. Inspired by a Time article on the ongoing Vietnam War, Pop\u2019s lyrical shrapnel of a \u201cstreet walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm\u201d clashing with a \u201crunaway son of the nuclear A-bomb\u201d demanded a suitably gargantuan fret bludgeon to score such comic dystopian visions.<\/p>\n \u2018Search and Destroy\u2019s raw power leaps straight out of Williamson\u2019s borrowed Vox AC30 amp like an animal. Veering between terse laceration underneath the verses and nuclear hook clinging onto the radiating chorus, US Army choppers and napalm jungles seem to burn out of his Gibson Les Paul, conjuring a mean, nasty, yet infectious riff sweeping aside the pretenders and firmly forging the stripped-down punk template without even releasing it.<\/p>\n Standing as the album\u2019s only single outside of Japan, Raw Power failed to make a commercial dent, barely scraping the Billboard 200, and testing management\u2019s patience on a drug habit soaking up much of the budget, Columbia dropped The Stooges in 1974. Pop would join forces with Bowie and embark on a solo renewal for 1977\u2019s The Idiot<\/a> and Lust for Life double-whammy, but never quite unleash such a smoking, steaming crater of a proto-punk blast as \u2018Search and Destroy\u2019s immortal clarion call to imminent danger.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credit: Michael Markos) Thu 1 January 2026 4:00, UK By 1973, The Stooges had already cemented their status…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346006,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,133935,31109,133936,128,9656,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-346005","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-iggy-and-the-stooges","10":"tag-iggy-pop","11":"tag-james-williamson","12":"tag-music","13":"tag-the-stooges","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}