OLD DOGS, NEW TRICKS More than 35 years after the original dissolution of IGGY & THE STOOGES, guitarist JAMES WILLIAMSON was tapped on the shoulder to leave his lucrative day job and get the band back together. He tells STEVE BELL how his initial trepidation quickly turned to exaltation.
A
brief overview, if you will. In 1971, four years and two albums into their turbulent career, notorious Michigan-bred rockers The Stooges underwent a tumultuous transformation that eventually saw them rebranded as Iggy & The Stooges. Original bassist Dave Alexander had been fired the year before after one riotous indiscretion too many (the thought of anyone being kicked out of The Stooges for hedonism at the time beggars belief), so – after a string of temporary line-up changes – original guitarist Ron Asheton (unhappily) moved to bass and recently-added second guitarist James Williamson took over main guitar duties, with the band being rounded out by drummer Scott Asheton (Ron’s younger brother) and, of course, frontman Jim Osterberg, better known to all and sundry as Iggy Pop.
1973 and was titled Raw Power. Mixed by David Bowie and marred by controversy from the outset, the record was a commercial flop at the time – despite containing such incendiary numbers as Gimme Danger, Search And Destroy and the title track – and the band eventually hit the wall, disbanding for good in 1974.
This new incarnation of the seminal outfit released one album – co-written by Pop and the theninexperienced Williamson – which dropped in
The Stooges could be no longer, but in a move that mirrored history Pop once more looked to its offshoot Iggy & The Stooges as the vehicle to continue expressing his nihilistic vision. Williamson, who post-Stooges worked sporadically on a couple of other projects with Iggy Pop, including the pair’s 1974 Kill City album, had left the music industry completely, forging an incredible career in the field of electronics, which eventually found him holding down the role of Vice President Of Technology Standards at Sony. When the inevitable call came through, however, it wasn’t long before he found himself dusting off his electric guitar and preparing to take a step back into his own, long-forgotten past.
History, however, was kind to The Stooges. Ignored or even reviled during their original tenure, over the years their powerful and innovative music gradually began to receive the recognition that it so richly deserved. The band’s burgeoning legacy eventually warranted – nay, demanded – a reunion and in 2003 the original line-up (minus the long-deceased Alexander, replaced on bass by Minutemen legend Mike Watt) re-formed and began touring the globe, introducing people to the music of their first two albums (1969’s self-titled debut and 1970’s Fun House). Then more tragedy struck in January 2009, when Ron Asheton passed away suddenly from a heart attack.
“I’m having a ball, you know,” the laid-back Williamson tells of his rejuvenated rock’n’roll career. “We’re playing good and we’re having fun, everything’s good. We’re not young guys any more and we had a lot of water under that bridge, but I think we’re over all that now and it’s just kinda fun to be hanging out and playing with your old buddies from when you’re in your 20s.” Williamson admits that, despite enjoying having the band back together, it initially wasn’t a clear-cut decision to revisit his past, the reconnection with former bandmates merely friends mourning the passing of a long-term friend and ally. “No, it wasn’t easy, actually. It was series of things that enabled it to actually happen at all,” he recalls. “At first we weren’t even talking about [getting back together], we were just talking about the funeral arrangements and all that kind of stuff. And then a couple of phone calls after that Jim started talking about whether I’d be interested in playing – at the time I was still working for Sony, so despite being flattered by the offer I wasn’t available. Then in a kind of strange alignment of the planets, I guess, with Sony not being immune to the economy, they started handing out early retirement packages – they were voluntary but it was a sweet package, so I just said, ‘Okay, I’ll take it.’ Then I called Jim back up and said, ‘You know what, I’m available’, so there you go.” And of course there was the small issue of Williamson not having played guitar for a couple of decades. Fortunately, it came back easily, almost – but not quite – like riding a bike. “It’s a little tougher than that,” he laughs. “Luckily I had the luxury of having several months to get back in shape, and I had some help – I had a local band here where I live that offered to rehearse with me, because it’s different rehearsing with a band than by yourself. So we got all of that going and then The Stooges started rehearsing, so we kind of had a target – our first job was San Paulo, Brazil in September of 2009, so we had to kind of whip everything into shape for that. You know, by the time we did it we were rolling. “In my career back in the day I never played for more than maybe 2,000 or 2,500 people. I actually did a live show – a warm up show – in September 2009 with this other band and there were probably only 300 people there, because it was a really small place. Then my next show jumped to 40,000! It was kind of like whiplash, but it was fine – when you’re playing in The Stooges you don’t have time to think about the crowd, there’s too much going on. You’ve got to pay attention to what you’re doing.” Equally strange for Williamson must be the gradual canonisation of Raw Power, which stiffed at the time but has since been gifted legendary status. “Well, it was very difficult for me because I didn’t have any context,” he mulls. “That was my first album ever, so I hadn’t been in a studio before except to record a couple of demos and stuff. I always believed in all of our songwriting and we believed in ourselves – that was an important part of being able to sustain all of that ridicule for all those years – but I couldn’t have known the impact of what we were doing would still resonate all this time later. But like I say, we always believed in what we were doing, so it’s fortunate for us that people agree with us all these years later.” Now, Iggy & The Stooges are looking to establish themselves as something more than just a nostalgia act, although anyone who has seen their powerful shows over the last 12 months will attest that there is nothing at all lacking from their current persona. “I’ve been writing a lot of riffs – I’m about to head back into the studio to mix some more of them,” Williamson reveals. “Our basic agreement between the three of us – myself, Jim and Scott – is that we want to record some stuff, but unless all three of us agree that it’s up to par with the things that we’ve done in the past then we’re not going to release them. So we’re just going to try and see if we can’t come up with a song or two. Albums are sort of meaningless in this day and age, so we want to start out just with a single – a song or two – and release that and take it from there. We’ll see what happens. We’re trying hard and if we can come up with something we like then we’ll definitely put it out.”
WHO: Iggy & The Stooges WHEN & WHERE: Sunday 30 January, Big Day Out, Flemington Racecourse
30
twitter.com/inpressmag