But the visceral effect of the overly prominent guitars and distorted vocals struggling to be heard create a hard edge on "Search and Destroy" that has been emulated in punk and post-punk recordings. ![]() ![]() Widely regarded as a production disaster, Pop and the record's producer, David Bowie, blame Raw Power's poor mix on the ultra-low recording budget. One can hear the influence of the song in a myriad of bands that followed: the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, Motörhead, the Dead Boys (who covered it), and Nirvana. The song teeters on the edge of nihilistic self-destruction, lurching at a breakneck pace. The band has the urgency of musicians playing as if it would be the last song they ever got to perform. With "Search and Destroy," the Stooges lay down an archetype for punk rock: James Williamson blistering through a bastardized and pumped-up Keith Richards guitar riff Ron Asheton, having been relegated from guitar to bass, pounds the instrument with ferocity, while his brother, Scott Asheton, pummels the drum set like Keith Moon - all fills and cymbals. Daringly using Vietnam War terminology ripped from the era's headlines, like "heart full of napalm" and "love in the middle of a firefight," Iggy Pop urgently appeals for love as the "world's forgotten boy/The one who searches only to destroy." These seeming tossed-off, cocky lyrics and the raw energy of the Stooges on their 1973 landmark Raw Power LP obfuscate the narrator's true desperation in "Search and Destroy": "Honey gotta strike me blind/Somebody's gotta save my soul." Pop sounds like a man who has nothing to lose he doesn't just leave relationships wrecked on his shoals, he seems to fear some real evil within himself that disallows any real human contact.
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