Back in May, news about a Stooges reunion sprung up. Iggy Pop had mentioned to The Australian that he had been in touch with former Stooges guitarist James Williamson about revisiting 1973’s now-legendary Raw Power to some extent. Mark your calendar folks, cause in the words of a one Young Joc “It’s Going Down”. According to Rolling Stone, the original Stooges lineup, sans a recently deceased Ron Asheton, will reunite on May 2nd and 3rd of next year, to perform Raw Power in all its raw and powerful glory at London’s All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival.
Back in 2003 when the Stooges first reunited, Asheton, who originally played bass on Raw Power, was invited back to play guitar, leaving Williamson absent from the lineup. Sadly, Asheton died of a heart attack in January. The reunited Stooges had been playing with Asheton on the axe until his untimely death. Williamson and Pop had lost all communication since things fell apart in 1980, while the group was working on the Soldier LP.
Now, almost 30 years later, things are looking up for the once defunct relationship. Williamson, who left rock altogether to pursue a career in personal computers and head the “Technology Standards office at Sony” (Rolling Stone) in Silicon Valley, claims he hadn’t touched a guitar until a few years ago when he took up Hawaiian slack-key guitar as a hobby. Since then, Williamson has begun rehearsing for a reunion by sequestering himself in a rehearsal studio, going through the eight songs on Raw Power on electric guitar repeatedly. Via RS: “I wrote a lot of those songs and it’s my style of guitar playing,” he says. “It kind of naturally came back to me. Local San Jose band Careless Hearts aided him in these rehearsals and Williamson will take to the stage of San Jose’s the Bank Club with them in a few days for his first public performance in over three decades.
Williamson will begin rehearsing with Iggy in LA on September 20th. According to Rolling Stone, they will be rehearsing songs from Raw Power, The Stooges, Fun House and Kill City, mostly material which hasn’t been touched in quite some time. At this point, the only scheduled dates are those aforementioned in May at ATP, but more are sure to come. We may also be in for some new Stooges tunes. Via RS: “The two of us have a long history of writing new tunes . . . It’s probably a safe bet we will at some point.” Can we get ready for Raw Power Part Deux: Rawer Power? Maybe, but we’ll probably get an Iggy Pop Christmas album first.
