Raw Power: From Iggy and the Stooges to AMD and Blu-ray

January 31, 2016 9:41 PM

The Leap: The Improbable Transformation of a Punk Pioneer (mp3) - "James Williamson is a successful tech executive who's been working in Silicon Valley for decades. But it turns out Williamson had a secret, something that no one working with him knew. He was a pioneer in a type of music that is about as far from the tech world as you can get."

also btw...
Heaviness Is Guaranteed - "The final straw was a surprise appearance by Bowie, whom Wiliamson has never forgiven — he believes the pop artist plainly used the Stooges for his own benefit. After Bowie reportedly attempted to brighten up the sessions with funny stories and egged them to play impromptu in the middle of the night, Williamson had a vicious exchange of words with Pop before leaving the studio, England and the music business altogether."

previously

posted by kliuless (24 comments total)

Huh. Only reading the articles so far but this is pretty fascinating.
posted by SmileyChewtrain at 10:38 PM on January 31, 2016

I might actually drop dead of glee if I found out someone in my tech-industry reporting chain had been in the Stooges.
posted by town of cats at 10:51 PM on January 31, 2016

Why is it so surprising that a musician walked away from music and into the arms of tech? I work with a TON of people like that. I'd venture to say there's a lot of intersectionality there.

That said, it's a fascinating story on its own.
posted by Doleful Creature at 11:00 PM on January 31, 2016 [3 favorites]

Um, how many of them were in THE MOTHERFUCKING GREATEST ROCK BAND OF ALL TIME, though, is the thing.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 11:12 PM on January 31, 2016 [12 favorites]

Great post; thanks for this.

Raw Power literally changed my life. It was the first album I learned to play on guitar. Search and Destroy is a great tune to practice Barre chords on. And I spent many years after that trying to obtain that same ferocious sound.

I had no idea that album was recorded on a Vox AC30. I would have sworn it was a Marshall rig. That totally explains why I've never successfully reproduced it!
posted by mikeand1 at 11:37 PM on January 31, 2016

I went to a meeting in a marketing company a while back and Jon King from Gang of Four was the boss.
posted by colie at 11:44 PM on January 31, 2016 [8 favorites]

If you haven't heard the 1975 Pop/Williamson duo album Kill City, do yourself a favour and put that right today. It's not one of the better-known albums in Iggy's catalogue, but it's definitely one of his best.
posted by Paul Slade at 12:17 AM on February 1, 2016 [6 favorites]

Ian MacKaye agile coached my agile coach!
posted by freebird at 12:52 AM on February 1, 2016 [3 favorites]

I actually knew that the guy who played guitar on Raw Power became an EE but I didn't realize he's been so successful in the industry.
posted by atoxyl at 2:53 AM on February 1, 2016

I've worked in tech, and in tech publishing, with someone who played sax with Shakatak, someone who wrote songs for Fairport Convention, an ex-ELP/Hendrix roadie, a concert pianist and more ex-punk/new-wave/"Peel loved our records" bods than I can reasonably remember. And PR had its own coterie. I also know a couple of composers/producers who came from a tech background (as does, for example, Dave Rowntree).

Tech in the 70s/80s - and marketing/publishing in general - could be very accessible to smart people with unconventional backgrounds and a bit of front. Creative experimentalists with drive. You found the same personalities there and in the music scene.
posted by Devonian at 4:32 AM on February 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

I went to a meeting in a marketing company a while back and Jon King from Gang of Four was the boss.

Did the issue of how:

Down on the disco floor
They make their profit
From the things they sell
To help you cover
all the rubbers you hide
In your top left pocket

come up in strategy meetings?
posted by C.A.S. at 5:41 AM on February 1, 2016 [4 favorites]

Has King’s ultimate destination left him with a sense of cognitive dissonance? Not really. “Always what Gang of Four wanted to do was be at the belly of the beast,” he quipped.
posted by colie at 5:46 AM on February 1, 2016

Also let it be noted that when Big Star bassist Andy Hummel had had enough Alex Chilton and not selling records in his life, he bolstered his english BA with engineering and finance degrees, then worked for Lockheed Martin for 30 years.
posted by C.A.S. at 5:46 AM on February 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

When my wife was a teacher back in the 90s there was another teacher there who was this calm, soft-spoken, real nice guy. My wife would occasionally mention that he was in a band. When I met the guy I asked him what band he was in and it turned out he was the lead singer of a pretty popular (at the time) local hardcore band.

I mentioned this to a guy I worked with who I knew was into hardcore. "Oh man. You know Jet? That guy is fucking SICK!"

"Yeah, I guess. Jesse's a pretty nice guy."

Makes me wonder how many other musicians lead double lives.
posted by bondcliff at 6:15 AM on February 1, 2016

But it turns out Williamson had a secret, something that no one working with him knew.

I can accept that his coworkers didn't kow but that doesn't make it a secret. The gigs he played with the Stooges within the last half decade were not secret gigs and there is an abundance of information on the Internet about him that is not behind password protection.
posted by juiceCake at 6:48 AM on February 1, 2016

The gigs he played with the Stooges within the last half decade were not secret gigs

Wait a minute. This guy knows Mike Watt?
posted by thelonius at 6:52 AM on February 1, 2016 [3 favorites]

> The gigs he played with the Stooges within the last half decade were not secret gigs

The gigs he played in the past half-decade were after his retirement from Sony and a dozen years after leaving AMD.
posted by ardgedee at 6:58 AM on February 1, 2016

A friend told me a great story about realizing that the guy he was hanging out with backstage during a WCW wrestling shoot was THAT Bob Mould.
People travel some strange paths.
posted by rock swoon has no past at 7:31 AM on February 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

Whoa that 2014 JW record is pretty good, especially the Ariel Pink song.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:51 AM on February 1, 2016

> Makes me wonder how many other musicians lead double lives.

Most of them, is my guess. Even among full-time-professional musicians relatively few can make a life-long career of it, and not all of them are cut out to be teachers or work in the performance industry in some other capacity. Even the ones who manage to win the popular music jackpot and earn enough to retire on aren't necessarily content to retire to idleness: if they have the natural ambition to manage an international #1 hit, maybe they're going to want to see what they can accomplish somewhere else.
posted by ardgedee at 7:53 AM on February 1, 2016

He was a pioneer in a type of music that is about as far from the tech world as you can get.

Maybe it's just a result of coming up in the DC scene, but I don't think of punk and tech (or any of a number of other theory-heavy, intellectual professions) as being far from one another at all.
posted by ryanshepard at 10:22 AM on February 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

I don't know how many people I've known in tech who were also serious musicians. None of them very famous but a few of them almost famous. Most of them seemed to have tried to make it in music until they were in their thirties and then realized that they needed a day job and got a CS or IT degree.
posted by octothorpe at 11:21 AM on February 1, 2016

Look out honey 'cause I'm using technology
posted by cazoo at 12:26 PM on February 1, 2016 [3 favorites]

"I've Got a Right" featuring James Williamson (from the Bomp Records EP) is Iggy's best song!
posted by Modest House at 3:18 PM on February 1, 2016 [2 favorites]