Iggy And The Stooges Guitarist Bags 'Raw Power' Record, Hints Breakup

Before his Bluesfest appearance with  Iggy & The Stooges, the band's guitarist James Williamson has slammed their 1973 classic record Raw Power, saying the bad production of the album lead to its initial poor commercial reception.
 
In a recent interview, Williamson linked the album's disappointment to him leaving music altogether, as well as his reluctance to accept it's later success.

“It was very, very poorly recorded,” Williamson admits. “Part of that was our inexperience; Iggy's not a particularly technical-type guy and he was kinda running the show because he had made two albums and I had made none. I think our engineer was competent, but he was just the staff engineer at CBS Records in London – I'm not even sure what his name was – he was competent but we made him do a bunch of stuff that he usually would not have done, so the net result is that the recording is not as good as we would have liked it to be, in hindsight. But on the other hand it has a unique sound and nothing else really sounds like it.”

And on the back of rumours that this may be the final time Iggy & The Stooges tour Down Under, the guitarist also alluded to the band's retirement.

“I don't know,” he says. “The fact is, we're not getting any younger. For quite some time we've been doing a year at a time but at some point we're gonna have to stop, because we just won't be able to go on. It's gonna be Iggy's call, because he's the one who's taken the most beating out there doing what he does; imagine yourself doing what he does out there at his age? It's really unbelievable that he's even doing it.”

Read the full interview.