James Williamson, for those of you who aren’t up on your proto-punk history, put his three-chord punk guitar jams all over The Stooges' final record, Raw Power. In fact, he wrote a lot of the songs on that record. But after Williamson and Iggy Pop had a falling out in 1980, they hadn't talked in 20 years, and Williamson gave up guitar and became a dentist. That is, until Iggy called him up earlier this year asking him to play guitar with The Stooges again, replacing now deceased Ron Asheton, who died earlier this year.
Williamson, who has now taken up Hawaiian slack key guitar, met up with Mike Watt (The Minutemen) and original Stooges drummer Scott Asheton and saxophonist Steve McKay to start rehearsing. Now that Williamson is back in the game and can finally bring back the “raw power,” the band has confirmed that they will be playing Raw Power in its entirety at next year's All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in London on both May 2nd and 3rd. Though ATP is the only date set for The Stooges, Williamson says more dates are coming. If you're lucky, they just may "Search and Destroy" some dates around your neck of the woods!
