Knowing James Williamson’s reticence, I had first approached him to be interviewed for a Guitar Heroes special edition of Q I was due to edit; when we met, he seemed to find me tolerable company, so I mentioned the book and asked if I could interview him in more detail in the future, and we agreed to do so on the phone.
Within a day of talking to James, events made a liar out of me when the Guitar Heroes issue was pulled. I didn’t feel I could go back to him for the book without placing the guitar-based interview, but fortunately Mike Leonard, editor of Guitarist magazine, succumbed to my blandishments. This is a slightly trimmed version of the interview that ran in the magazine. I reinterviewed James on 7 July; that interview, and other elements not included here, give a much fuller picture.
James is always seen as a dark and brooding figure, the Dark Lord of the Stooges - in fact, Kat Johnson, who transcribed many of my interviews, expressed dread at the prospect of encountering him on digital audio. Yet when she came to do so, she found him amenable, intelligent and low-key. Unsurprisingly, James’ aggression was merely a front for his own insecurities, and when he failed, as he saw it, with the Stooges, he decided to turn his back on the music business. His disenchantment was deepened by at least one betrayal by his best friend, Jim. James, along with Ron and a few others, is a key personality in this book, for reasons I don’t have time or space to go into here. But this interview gives an overview of James Williamson, hot shot guitarist.
Iggy Pop describes Stooges guitarist James Williamson as “ambitious, aggressive, and he played guitar like a thug – which perfectly suited where I was going.” In June 1971, shortly after James Williamson first joined the Stooges to play twin lead guitar alongside founder member Ron Asheton, the band were thrown off their label, Elektra; by now all of them, bar Asheton, had developed heroin habits and they disappeared into oblivion. Then David Bowie ran into Iggy in New York, the band was reunited with Ron Asheton demoted to bass, and they cut Raw Power in London before the Stooges’ excesses with drugs and groupies at their swanky rented LA mansion inspired Bowie’s manager, Tony Defries to cut them loose. Label-less, manager-less, they embarked on a crazed, dumb, heroic last tour of the US, before finally splintering in February 1974. Several years after their release, Raw Power and Metallic KO became regarded as classics; Williamson would later work with Iggy on demos eventually released as Kill City, and produced Iggy’s album New Values, by which time he’d given up playing guitar almost completely. After an argument with Iggy during the recording of the latter’s disastrous 1979 album, Soldier, Williamson quit the music business for good, and switched to what would become a successful career in the electronics industry.
Who was your first guitar hero?
I lived in a little town in Oklahoma when I was 12 or so, and I was taking guitar lessons from the only guy in town, Rusty Sparks – he also had a band and a television show so he was a local celebrity. He taught me the basic stuff and eventually when I learnt a song, Good Old Mountain Dew, they had me come on the show.
How did you first come to join The Stooges?
The guy who had been a roadie for them [Bill Cheatham] started playing guitar. We were all buddies, and Iggy wanted somebody that could play a little better. All this drama was going on around us in the meanwhile because Iggy was doing what turned out to be his typical destruction of himself. Elektra’s about had it with us.. I was new to the whole thing so I was anxious to write new music and new material. So I came in and changed the dynamic.
Your guitar style is very intense, almost uniquely aggressive. Where does that aggression come from?
I was a very emotional guitar player so I always played that way… that’s how we felt so that was what it sounded like.
By the time The Stooges were dropped by Elektra, most of the band had succumbed to heroin addiction. Where was your head at during that time?
It’s hard to distinguish my own chaos versus the band’s, but over this period I didn’t have anything else going on in my life. This is the band and these are my buddies and a lot of things happened, not all of which were good. But towards the end of it I was fed up with it as well and also I got sick. I got hepatitis and moved back to Detroit and basically the band completely dissolved.
Yet a few months after it all fell apart, you were on the up again.
Iggy went to New York and it just happened that he lucked out and this guy David Bowie is dying to meet him; David introduced him to [his manager] Tony Defries and I think it was David who took him under his wing. What his reasons were I’m not clear on to this day. The next thing you know I’m on an aeroplane going over to London.
How did you enjoy the lifestyle in London?
It was bizarre. We spent our trying to find chicks. Bowie was high style and Defries and everybody was driving round in Jags and really playing up the part. It was very difficult to relate to this, but who’s to complain? We’re hanging out in Kensington Gardens and we had cash, but eventually we had to do something so we started rehearsing like crazy.
Amazingly, during your whole time with Bowie’s management company, MainMan, you played only two shows.
They were successful shows, too. We did a bunch of things that were new and we started wearing lots of make-up for one thing so that was different. I think we had rehearsed pretty much by that point. We did a lot of stuff in the crowd at [our King’s Cross] show, which was bizarre for the Londoners, but it was typical for us. That’s what we were used to doing.
How would you deal with the music, while Iggy was walking into the audience, getting in their faces?
It was part of the show, but we had to really cover a lot for him because he was very improvisational, as was the whole band. We knew, but if you weren’t used to it you didn’t know when he was going to start a song or when it was going to stop or what to do in the middle because it wasn’t exactly the way you’d recorded it. He was very unpredictable.
Raw Power, your only album for MainMan and Columbia, has an incredible selection of landmark riffs. How did you come up with them?
I wrote a lot of them in my room in Seymour Walk. I had a little Gibson B25 natural, which I still have, and I wrote a lot of the riffs on that guitar.
You seem to have had a very aggressive attitude about your music, that it was tougher than English music, which was made by a bunch of pussies.
We’ve said that over the years, but the fact is that we didn’t know any better or different and it wasn’t very popular what we were doing. It never was and so in some ways we were probably foolish at the same time because you could never make any money doing what we were doing. But we did it anyway.
David Bowie ended up mixing Raw Power for you. Do you think he really understood the Stooges?
I think it was totally alien to him. I really don’t think he could relate to it at all. Even when he mixed that record I think he was thinking, ‘Oh my God!’ We just weren’t musical enough for him because he liked that tuney kind of stuff.
Just around the time Raw Power came out, MainMan and Tony Defries dropped you. Why?
To this day I don’t know if it was just that Tony Defries still didn’t get it and he thought that it was a hopeless cause to try to promote this group of people making all this noise, or if it was competition to his main cash cow Bowie, or if he just didn’t like our work ethic or our personal habits. I don’t know.
Your last tour, after you were dropped, was legendary both for the extreme music and the excess going on behind the scenes, with Iggy being thrown on the stage unconscious, or cutting himself with broken glass. How was it for you?
It was cyclical. I had seen it before and the other guys in the band had seen it a couple of times before. So we all said, ‘Screw this!’ at the end there. But there were a special series of gigs from when we started the first Whisky gig until the band dissolved. All of those tour gigs were awesome.
Elton John raided the stage on one of your later shows in a gorilla suit, didn’t he?
He almost got his ass kicked. He was in the audience and I didn’t know he was in the audience and this gorilla shows up on stage and normally we don’t tolerate that. He lucked out because I don’t know why one of us, probably me didn’t take him out. We didn’t, but I was very annoyed . He was smart enough to know that and took his head off to let people know who he was.
How was it working with Iggy at the time he was becoming legendary both for inspirationally great performances, and pitifully disastrous ones?
He’s his own worst enemy. He’s a very unusual guy in his psychological make-up. I think probably all people who do art or music have some angst about them because I think that’s what creates the art or the music. Anyway I think that also led to this cyclical destructive behaviour, which we experienced so many times.
On your next to last show with the Stooges, Iggy was knocked out by a biker. For the final show, which was immortalised on Metallic KO, you sat out an entire set while the crowd were throwing bottles, eggs, even cameras. How did that feel at the time?
When those bikers cold cocked Iggy it basically shattered our world. Think about all the gigs we played and Iggy always did this crowd interaction thing and for the very first time somebody just walked up and knocked him down. So it changed - the invincibility of the band was shattered. It was scary. In those days nothing like that happened… but all of a sudden I’ve got cameras shattering around my head, bottles are hitting the stage. Surprisingly we were crazy enough that we didn’t stop, we kept playing.
And then you all decided you’d had enough.
I think everybody felt pretty bad after the previous night because everybody was pretty upset and felt threatened. Besides, we were all fed up with the rock’n’roll thing. We’d been on the road for months and months, hand to mouth and it wasn’t working. I think for everybody that was it.
You stayed in LA, made some tapes with Iggy which were later released as the album Kill City, then you more or less stopped playing guitar. Why?
I used to have fun playing the guitar, but it was always an emotional outlet for me and there was some baggage associated with that. The Stooges was maybe my only real band and kind of a family and so when that fell apart it was difficult to go on. Then it happened to be a very interesting period where electronics was just starting. I got involved in all that and that’s where I’ve gone in my life.
The early line-up of the Stooges are touring with Iggy, but without you? Would you play with them again if they asked you?
The Stooges have been up for Hall of Fame a number of different times and they never made it and we probably will never make it, but if they did and they wanted me to I would do that for them. I would rehearse it. I can still play, I’m a bit rusty. But I don’t think I would do a Stooges reunion. There were some great days and it’s good to be young, but other than that it was pretty tough. Although there were good memories too. We were young and wild and unfettered by anything, skipping out on hotel bills and doing nutty stuff.
Yet, despite what you’ve described as your failure, you’ve inspired a lot of people.
I guess maybe that’s the legacy. Showing people that there are no rules. That’s what we did, we broke the rules.
Monday, 3 July 2006
Straight James