RAW POWER – Other Iguana Chronicles Albums
Still, Kill City – and the other albums in The Iguana Chronicles for that matter – has comparatively low marks from some critics. While the previous two albums by the Stooges, Fun House and Raw Power, as well as the first two solo albums by Iggy Pop, The Idiot and Lust for Life all have 5-star ratings by Allmusic, Kill City is at 3½ stars. Robert Christgau of Village Voice gave the album a B.
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The Iguana Chronicles are by no means the only albums by the Stooges that have been released outside of the five major-label albums: The Stooges (1969), Fun House (1970), Raw Power (1973), The Weirdness (2007), and Ready to Die (2013). Because the music was supplied by a Stooges bandmember, James Williamson with the blessing of frontman Iggy Pop, I would view the albums in The Iguana Chronicles as legitimate releases.
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The picture cover for the Bomp single I Got a Right – “I Got a Right” b/w “Gimme Some Skin”, and marked “The Classic Raw Power Outtakes” – says that the two songs were recorded in the same June 1972 recording sessions as the songs on the earlier Bomp EP, I’m Sick of You: “I’m Sick of You”, “Tight Pants” and “Scene of the Crime”. These are among the first songs laid down for the Stooges album, Raw Power, but none were included on the album. The single is also marked as being Volume X-1 in The Iguana Chronicles. It has been reissued several times, as recently as 2011.
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An expanded album based on the 1977 Bomp! Records EP, I’m Sick of You was released in the same time period. The Discogs listing for the I’m Sick of You CD has a date of 1991, but that is in error; both this CD and the I Got a Right CD came out in 1995.
The songs originally released – “I’m Sick of You”, “Tight Pants” and “Scene of the Crime” – are demo recordings by the Stooges that were made in June 1972. Along with “I Got a Right” and “Gimme Some Skin”, they were summarily rejected by David Bowie’s management company MainMan Management, with only “Tight Pants” considered to have any promise; this song was rewritten and included on the Raw Power album as “Shake Appeal”.
Cub Koda notes in the review of the I’m Sick of You album for Allmusic: “The sound quality is surprising good on these [demos], and any of them would have fit in perfectly with the final sequence on the released version [of Raw Power]. . . . The other five tracks capture an intriguing idea: live versions of the same tunes entering [Iggy] Pop’s solo set list throughout the ’80s and into the ’90s. It isn’t the Stooges, but it’s pretty darn good and well worth a listen.”
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The redo of the 1977 Siamese Records 45, “I Got a Right” b/w “Gimme Some Skin” – and the only one of the Iguana Chronicles albums and EP’s that I don’t have at all, as best I can tell – is like a miniature version of the box set on Rhino Records, 1970: The Complete Fun House Sessions that I have mentioned before. Like the songs on the 1977 EP I’m Sick of You, “I Got a Right” and “Gimme Some Skin” are early demo recordings by the Stooges dating from June 1972 that were rejected by MainMan Management for the Raw Power album.
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For Open Up and Bleed!, which has a subtitle “The Great Lost Stooges Album?”, Bomp! Records collected available recordings of songs that were written and developed by the Stooges after the release of Raw Power in February 1973. The first six songs – “Rubber Legs”, “Open up and Bleed”, “Johanna”, “Cock in My Pocket”, “Head On”, and “Cry for Me” – were made during practice sessions at CBS Records in New York in 1973 and are taken from the only tape that has surfaced from these rehearsals. The liner notes for Open Up and Bleed! by Frank Meyer state that “Head On” is also known as “Head on the Curve”, but not “Head on the Curb”, as the song is called on the Metallic K.O. albums.
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I am not near through with describing The Iguana Chronicles, but it is not hard to tell that this is a mountain of music – much more even than in the six-CD box set by the Stooges, 1970: The Complete Fun House Sessions. While there is some repetition on these albums that is probably unavoidable, as I have played my way through the records, I have gotten to know these songs pretty intimately in a variety of contexts.
And what keeps coming back to me is that the new songs on Open Up and Bleed! (and on other Iguana Chronicles albums; this CD does not have all of them) sound better to me than the songs from the Raw Power era – both the official album and the rejected demos alike. We will never know for sure whether the Stooges would have released an album with all or most of these songs had sales of their first three albums gone better, but there is no question that this is the closest thing to what could have been the fourth Stooges album.
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Writing for Allmusic, Cub Koda says of Year of the Iguana: “This is an interesting collection that’s primarily culled from other Bomp CD collections and 10” vinyl LPs. If you’re into Iggy and the Stooges enough to have made it this far, this collection of alternate mixes (‘Death Trip’), raw rehearsal tapes (‘Rubber Legs’, ‘Head On’, ‘Till the End of the Night’, ‘Wild Love’, and an extended run-through of ‘Raw Power’), and ‘suppressed masters’ from the original Raw Power sessions (‘I Got a Right’, ‘Gimme Some Skin’, and ‘Scene of the Crime’) will almost seem like a greatest-hits package of sorts. And for the new fan who’s just discovered the chaotic magic that was the Stooges – and has heard the rumors that there’s material far more incendiary than their three studio albums – this compilation will serve just that purpose, sifting through the unending maze of unissued Stooges material to make a single-disc package that hits on the spots.”
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When I read the description of The Iguana Chronicles in the liner notes for Destination: Bomp!, the first album that I ordered was Wild Love, since it really sounds like it was taken from “mostly demos and rehearsals from the Raw Power days onward”. In the best bootleg tradition, the other albums that I have not yet mentioned are all or mostly taken from live performances.
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The liner notes for Wild Love, which sound like they were written by Greg Shaw, lay out the process that Bomp! Records went through to sift through the box of tapes that James Williamson gave them. The box included rehearsal tapes from Detroit, CBS Records in New York, and probably Los Angeles that evidently date from 1973, plus others made in 1972 that included demos for some songs that wound up on Kill City. However, there was no way to know for certain when much of the music was recorded, since the tapes were mostly unlabeled or incorrectly labeled. Among the bandmembers in the Stooges, only Ron Asheton was forthcoming with information about the tapes, and he was unclear on many of the details or wasn’t present at all.
After pulling the finished studio masters that provided the songs on the Kill City, I’m Sick of You and I Got a Right albums, and also the live concert performances that make up a third to a half of the Iguana Chronicles releases, the remaining tapes were almost all post-Raw Power rehearsal sessions. Greg Shaw mentioned that songs like “Johanna” and “Head On” were practiced seven or eight times in a row, often with stops and starts. Many of these songs were taken out on the road after Raw Power was released and often show up on the Iguana Chronicles concert albums. The best of these rehearsal performances were pulled out and assembled, along with selected live versions of other songs, for the hypothetical fourth album by the Stooges that was released as Open Up and Bleed!.
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Charles Spano writing for Allmusic says of Wild Love: “Though lacking the teenage venom of cuts like ‘1969’ and ‘I Wanna be Your Dog’ off of The Stooges and the unadulterated raw power of, well, Raw Power, Wild Love is still essential for die-hard fans. The album, culled from rehearsals in Detroit, Los Angeles, and New York for the band’s 1973 tour, runs the gamut from full-fledged, ready-to-record tunes to the types of swampy jams that the band has claimed indicative of their studio songwriting process. Gems like the three minutes of rock & roll bliss dubbed ‘Wild Love’, the rambling, grinding ‘Pinpoint Eyes’, the Stonesy ‘I Came From Nowhere’, and the eerie, sprawling ‘Til the End of the Night’ could have given Iggy Pop the material for a stunning solo debut as early as 1973.”
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Buying Wild Love first is certainly not the route most people would follow if they wanted to start buying albums in The Iguana Chronicles series. I imagine that Rough Power would be the best album to start with for most people, since it features the original mix by the Stooges on the Raw Power album; and/or Open Up and Bleed!, a presentation of a potential fourth album by the Stooges. Then one or more of the live albums – California Bleeding, Double Danger, and Michigan Palace 10/6/73 – would likely follow. As noted above, Year of the Iguana serves as sort of a greatest-hits set of the Iguana Chronicles albums. Perhaps someone whose interest had been piqued would then check out the more in-depth examination of the Stooges demos that were rejected by MainMan Management on I Got a Right and I’m Sick of You. If you already have Kill City, you wouldn’t even need Jesus Loves the Stooges unless you just wanted to hear what a song called “Jesus Loves the Stooges” sounds like.
After all of those purchases or selected ones, only people who would be referred to by rock critics as “Stooges completists” or “diehard fans” would likely go for Wild Love. Unless the idea of getting Stooges songs that have hardly been heard at all by anyone is appealing to you, like it was for me.
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Disc Two is a concert on New Years Eve 1973 at the Academy of Music in New York City. Also on the bill that night, according to the liner notes, are “KISS (supposedly their first gig), Teenage Lust, and Blue Öyster Cult”. While the concert was professionally recorded by Columbia Records, this tape was made by someone in the audience, though the liner notes say: “Although in the world of Stooges live tapes, this is certainly among the best.” The concert is notable for including several comparatively rare post-Raw Power songs – “Rich Bitch”, “Wet My Bed”, “I Got Nothing”, and “Cock in My Pocket”. It should be noted that all of the songs on Disc Two of Double Danger also appear on Disc One.
(December 2017)
