THE STOOGES - Ready to Die

The context in which Ready to Die is released is not too fortunate. Iggy Pop seems to have switched to easy listening - he hasn’t released a rock album in 10 years - and his attempt to revive The Stooges ended with a failure called The Weirdness (2007) and with the death of guitarist Ron Asheton, co-founder of the band and lifelong friend.

In these conditions, Iggy did exactly what he had done 40 years before, i.e. called James Williamson, with whom he had released Raw Power in 1973. A few words about this record: written in London, under David Bowie guidance, Raw Power is a manifest of visceral force and at the same time disarming simplicity, which came perhaps too early for its time; it is as important for rock music as, for instance, Dark Side of the Moon or Houses of the Holy, released the same year. And I say this because Raw Power has inspired both the punk revolution at the end of the 70s and the grunge generation of the 80s and 90s (see Green River or Mudhoney).

So, it seems crazy to try, 40 years later, to make a sequel to that album, given that the band’s average age is somewhere around 63 and the guitarist had long retired from music (and his job as an electronist engineer).

And still...

Ready to Die is a true Stooges album, proof that these people are for real! The new songs seem instantly familiar because they have the same ingredients, are written and performed by the same people, who manage to sound as intense and aggressive as they used to! The absurd and provocative lyrics (“If I had a fucking gun / I could shoot at everyone / Freaking out in the USA”), simple but strong rhythms, metallic screeching riffs and even the sax, all are here on the new album! The main hero seems to be James Williamson, whose solos elevate each song–Johnny Marr of The Smiths said about him that he sounded less pretentious than Jimmy Page and more disciplined than Keith Richards, exactly as Darth Vader would sound if he were in a band: demonic and intellectual!

Most pieces on Ready to Die, while not quite on the same level as the ones on Raw Power (1973), can hold their own to any song written during the Kill City period (another Pop/Williamson collaboration of 1975) - Lust for Life (1977), and even come ahead due to better sound. At least the starting sequence of Burn/Sex and Money, and Job, Gun and DD’s are worth becoming classic Stooges songs.  

Only Unfriendly World and The Departed sound discordant, not because they are slower, but because they are a bit far from Ann, I’m Sick of You, Johanna, not to mention the LSD anthem We Will Fall; they sound more like solo Iggy releases, which normally wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

Ready to Die does not in any case give the listener the feeling that they’re listening to a band of geezers, but to a rock band ready to jump at your throat at the next concert.

Gedi Nota: 8.5