SEARCH AND DESTROY
“Search and Destroy” is a song by American rock band The Stooges, recorded for the group’s third album Raw Power (1973). Lead singer Iggy Pop said that the title was derived from a column heading in a Time article about the Vietnam War. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked it No. 468 on their list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”. In 2009 it was named the 49th best hard rock song of all time by VH1. (More from Wikipedia)
Raw Power features other classic Stooges songs, among them “Search and Destroy” (featured earlier this year in a series of ads for an Audi car), “Raw Power”, and a cocksure favorite of mine, “Penetration”. Like the other two Stooges albums, Raw Power flopped, and that was the end of the Stooges – at least until an acclaimed reunion tour in the 21st Century.
(December 2016)
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Even more than the delightful portrayal of a rock groupie by a young Kate Hudson (she won a Golden Globe), the best part of the 2000 film Almost Famous – about the early exploits of Cameron Crowe as a rock journalist for Rolling Stone magazine – is the gonzo performance of Philip Seymour Hoffman as legendary rockcrit Lester Bangs, the editor of Creem magazine. As he and the Cameron Crowe stand-in William Miller (played by Patrick Fugit) are beginning to bond, Bangs starts raving during an interview with a hapless radio station DJ: “What is this hippie station?! Where’s Iggy Pop? Don’t you have a copy of Raw Power?!” He paws through some albums, calling out after awhile, “Found it!”, and then starts playing “Search and Destroy” as the DJ mumbles: “Lester, isn’t it a little early for this?”
In his September 2000 appreciation for the Chicago Sun-Times of this film and the rest of the Cameron Crowe oeuvre – Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Jerry Maguire, and Say Anything – Jim DeRogatis allows that his favorite “music-movie pairing” in Almost Famous is: “Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs doing the chicken dance to ‘Search and Destroy’ by the Stooges.” While not taking away anything from the excellent music choices made during the film Almost Famous, the contrast could hardly be more stark between this thunderous song and the genteel sounds by the more popular 1970’s bands. This was true not just in the film but in the time period when Raw Power was released in 1973. Jim DeRogatis also wrote a biography in 2000 called Let it Blurt: The Life and Times of Lester Bangs, America’s Greatest Rock Critic.
(March 2017)
