Photo: Michael Ochs Archive/Getty
Former Stooges guitarist James Williamson was in the parking lot of his dentist’s office earlier this year when he heard a familiar voice on his cellphone: Iggy Pop. “He asked me if I wanted to play guitar again,” says Williamson, who hasn’t performed a single gig since the Stooges dissolved in 1974. “I was about to take an early retirement from my job in Silicon Valley, so I figured ‘What the hell, let’s do it.’ ” Williamson spent time last month in Los Angeles rehearsing with the Stooges (minus Pop) — bassist Mike Watt, drummer Scott Asheton and saxophonist Steve McKay — and they just booked their first gig: on May 2nd and 3rd of next year they’re going to perform Raw Power in its entirety at the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in London.
Williamson joined the Stooges for the recording of their 1973 masterpiece Raw Power, while original guitarist Ron Asheton switched to the bass. When the Stooges reformed in 2003 Asheton — who died of a heart attack in January — returned to the guitar and Williamson wasn’t invited back. After the Stooges folded, Williamson and Iggy briefly continued recording together, but during the early stages of production on Pop’s 1980 Soldier LP things fell apart.
“We had a blowout,” Williamson says. “We wound up not talking for 20 years.” Williamson moved to the Bay Area in 1982 and began working in the rapidly growing field of personal computers. For the past 12 years he ran the Technology Standards office at Sony. Until a few years ago he never even touched a guitar, but he recently took up Hawaiian slack-key guitar as a hobby. “That’s a whole different style of music,” he says. “It’s been quite a job to dust off my rock & roll chops.”...
Article Source: Rolling Stone : Rock and Roll Daily