The group performed to massive generation-spanning audiences at major festivals, and even released a new album, 2013’s Ready to Die. Iggy Pop recognized an opportunity to finally celebrate the posthumous canonization of the Williamson-era Stooges and invited the guitarist back into the band for a whirlwind second life of touring. Sony offered Williamson an early retirement package in 2009, the same year that Ron Asheton-who’d returned to the resuscitated Stooges’ guitar chair-died. However, it’s no secret that the music-performance bug is an affliction few ever truly kill. He was heavily involved in developing Blu-ray data storage. Williamson’s years in the tech world would prove to be tremendously fruitful and led to an executive role at Sony as the vice president of technological standards. In a stranger-than-fiction twist, the former guitarist of one of the most untamable bands of all time returned to the States to study electrical engineering and eventually re-emerged as a fixture in Silicon Valley, where he designed products around microchips when that technology was in its infancy. as a record producer, but after a few years on the other side of the glass, he left the music industry altogether. The Stooges disbanded for the second and final time of their initial run in 1974-destitute, drug-addled, and in a state of obscurity following a failed attempt by David Bowie to help them break out in England. Williamson’s post-Stooges tale is nearly as compelling as that of the band’s own debauched early-’70s trip. From the visceral guitar assault of tracks like “Search and Destroy” to the moody riffs of “Gimme Danger” to the psychedelic meanderings of “I Need Somebody,” Williamson’s 6-string is the true bedrock of Raw Power, and there is no doubt that his contributions to that highly influential album will continue to echo through the lexicon of guitar music for decades to come. Williamson was tasked with guitar and co-songwriting duties in the Stooges after the band’s original guitarist, Ron Asheton, was relegated from guitar to bass amid the incredible turbulence that characterized the Stooges’ world in the early ’70s. Williamson’s guitar work on Raw Power is imprinted within punk rock’s very DNA, from the records coming out of New York City in the early ’70s to the British class of ’77. James Williamson’s simple, violent rhythm work, searing leads, and iconic raunchy distortion on “Search and Destroy”-and all of the Stooges’ Raw Power-helped light the fuse and inform the sound of the punk rock revolution as it was ripe to explode.
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