Editing Raw Power (section)

== Recording ==
Initial demo sessions were held at [[RG Jones Recording Studios]] in Wimbledon with sound engineer Gerry Kitchingham<ref>{{cite magazine|last=Buskin|first=Richard|title=A-ha, 'Take On Me': Classic Tracks|magazine=[[Sound on Sound]]|date=March 2011}}</ref> and at [[Olympic Studios]] in Barnes with sound engineer [[Keith Harwood]], with most of the songs rejected by the band's management. Pop said that Columbia executives insisted on two [[Ballad (music)|ballads]], one for each side of the album: "Gimme Danger" and "I Need Somebody". The album itself was recorded at CBS Studios in [[London]] with staff engineer Mike Ross-Trevor from September 10 to October 6, 1972. Pop produced and mixed the album by himself; unfortunately, his botched first attempt mixed most of the instruments into one stereo channel and the vocals into the other, with little regard for balance or tone quality. [[Tony Defries]], the head of Bowie's management company MainMan, informed Pop that the album would be remixed by Bowie. Pop agreed to this, saying that "the other choice was I wasn't going to get my album out. I think Defries told me that CBS refused to release it like that, I don't know",<ref name="Liner notes"/> but insisted that his own mix for "[[Search and Destroy (The Stooges song)|Search and Destroy]]" be retained. Due to budgetary constraints, Bowie remixed the other seven songs in a single day at [[Los Angeles]]' [[United Western Recorders|Western Sound Recorders]] in October 1972. Pop said of the production:
{{quote|To the best of my recollection it was done in a day. I don't think it was two days. On a very, very old board, I mean this board was old! An Elvis type of board, old-tech, low-tech, in a poorly lit, cheap old studio with very little time. To David's credit, he listened with his ear to each thing and talked it out with me, I gave him what I thought it should have, he put that in its perspective, added some touches. He's always liked the most recent technology, so there was something called a Time Cube you could feed a signal into -- it looked like a bong, a big plastic tube with a couple of bends in it -- and when the sound came out the other end, it sort of shot at you like an echo effect. He used that on the guitar in "Gimme Danger", a beautiful guitar echo overload that's absolutely beautiful; and on the drums in "Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell". His concept was, "You're so primitive, your drummer should sound like he's [[log drum|beating a log]]!" It's not a bad job that he did...I'm very proud of the eccentric, odd little record that came out.<ref name="Liner notes"/>}}

Bowie later recalled:
{{quote|...the most absurd situation I encountered when I was recording was the first time I worked with Iggy Pop. He wanted me to mix ''Raw Power'', so he brought the 24-track tape in, and he put it up. He had the band on one track, lead guitar on another and him on a third. Out of 24 tracks there were just three tracks that were used. He said 'see what you can do with this'. I said, 'Jim, there's nothing to mix'. So we just pushed the vocal up and down a lot. On at least four or five songs that was the situation, including "Search and Destroy". That's got such a peculiar sound because all we did was occasionally bring the lead guitar up and take it out.<ref>{{cite magazine|last=Horkins|first=Tony|date=December 1991|url=http://www.bowiewonderworld.com/press/press90.htm#IM|title=Tin Machine: Bowie & Gabrels|magazine=International Musician|access-date=9 February 2012}}</ref>}}

When [[Morgan Neville]]'s documentary film on ''Raw Power'' was released in 2010, they demonstrated that each individual instrument was indeed recorded on its own track on the original multi-track tapes, suggesting that Bowie was either mistaken or working with a copy that had mixed down the instruments on to the same track.<ref>Archived at [https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211211/ioYuU9O9Ft8 Ghostarchive]{{cbignore}} and the [https://web.archive.org/web/20170626173103/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioYuU9O9Ft8 Wayback Machine]{{cbignore}}: {{cite AV media|last=Neville|first=Morgan|date=2010|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioYuU9O9Ft8|title=Search and Destroy: Iggy & The Stooges' "Raw Power"|access-date=18 December 2020}}{{cbignore}}</ref>

=== Alternate mixes ===
[[File:Iggy & the Stooges - Rough Power.jpg|right|thumb|''Rough Power'', a collection of Pop's original mixes for ''Raw Power'', was released by [[Bomp Records]] in 1993.]]

Low-fidelity copies of Pop's original mixes circulated among fans for years. In 1993, a selection of these original mixes was released by [[Bomp Records]] as ''Rough Power''. Fans and critics generally agreed that the original mixes were interesting, but not necessarily superior to Bowie's efforts. Of the ''Rough Power'' release, Pop has remarked that "what David and I came up with at these sessions was better than that."<ref name="Liner notes"/>

In 1996, Columbia Records "invited" Pop to remix the entire album for re-release on CD. Pop said in the liner notes that had he declined, the studio would have remixed it without his blessing. Pop cited longtime encouragement from fans and peers, the existence of ''Rough Power'', his distaste for how the original 1989 CD release of ''Raw Power'' sounded, and the fact that Columbia would release the new mix on its subsidiary [[Legacy Recordings]] as factors that led him to go through with the new mix, which was undertaken at New York's [[Sony Music Studios]] in 1996. The remixed edition was released on April 22, 1997. In the album's accompanying liner notes, Pop states the following:
{{quote|In retrospect, I think the little touches Bowie put on the mix helped and I think some of the things MainMan did helped, and more than anything else, what the whole experience did was to get me out of Detroit and onto a world stage. And also I learned a helluva lot being over there in England and I started thinking differently. It led to a very ambitious piece of work, and that's fine. But the fact was that neither Bowie's mix nor my previous mix could do justice to the power of the band or even to the legibility of the vocal&nbsp;... I feel that now I have the {{sic|wherewithall}}, the position, and the expertise at my disposal to give this thing its due sonically, and I didn't have that before. So it's kind of like I'm finishing that off. I don't think you can beat David's mix, it's very creative. But this is just a simple, straight band mix of a powerful band. I feel like there's a closure on it and that's a nice thing.<ref name="Liner notes"/>}}

American music journalist and essayist [[Robert Christgau]] wrote approvingly of Pop's ''Raw Power'' remix. Upon reviewing the 1997 edition of ''Raw Power'', Christgau – who in the past had complained about how Bowie had mixed the original album "down till it's thin as an epicure's wrist" and inflicted "ruinous underbassing" – wrote, 

{{quote|Strict constructionists and lo-fi snobs charge indignantly that by remixing his own album Iggy has made a mockery of history and done irreparable damage to a priceless work of art. This is really stupid. Before it was anointed the Platonic idea of rock and roll by desperate young men who didn't have much else to choose from, first-generation Iggyphiles charged just as indignantly that David Bowie had mixed the real thing way too thin--as Iggy observes, this classic-by-comparison always sounded "weedy" (although, not to insult a valued colleague, "David's" version was also "very creative"). So the pumped bass and vocals Iggy has uncovered on the original tapes, which were supposed to coexist with their high-end screech to begin with, are a quantum improvement. Plus you can finally hear the celeste on "Penetration"--sounds great! Only the slow ones, which like all of Iggy's slow ones are not as good as his fast ones, stand between a statement of principle and a priceless work of art.<ref>{{cite news|title= "Iggy and the Stooges: Raw Power [Columbia/Legacy, 1997"|publisher= [[Village Voice]]|url= https://www.robertchristgau.com/get_artist2.php?id=611|access-date=2023-03-03}}</ref>}}

On the other hand, some fans – among them guitarist [[Robert Quine]] – felt that the new remix was as unfaithful to the material as the original 1973 mix, and further criticized the audible distortion in the new mix. Quine said, "[Iggy's] one of the greats but I wonder about what he did to that record with the new [''Raw Power''] remix, which is atrocious. 'With this remix, I think this can stand up with the latest [[Smashing Pumpkins]].' Wow."<ref>{{cite web|last=Gross|first=Jason|date=November 1997|url=http://www.furious.com/perfect/quine.html|title=Robert Quine|website=[[Perfect Sound Forever (magazine)|Perfect Sound Forever]]|access-date=February 9, 2012}}</ref> In the reissued CD's liner notes, however, Pop points out that one of his intentions in doing the new mix was to keep audio levels in the red (which would deliberately cause such distortion) while at the same time making the music more "powerful and listenable". This new version is arguably the "[[loudness war|loudest album ever]]", reaching [[Root mean square|RMS]] of -4&nbsp;dB, rare even by today's standards.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://chicagomasteringservice.com/loudness.html|title=Loudness|publisher=Chicago Mastering Service|access-date=June 4, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070808082932/http://www.chicagomasteringservice.com/loudness.html|archive-date=August 8, 2007|url-status=dead}}</ref>

James Williamson and Ron Asheton have both stated that they prefer Bowie's original mix of the album over Pop's remixed version. Williamson stated:
{{quote|I personally think [the remixed ''Raw Power''] sucked. I gotta tell ya that I like the IDEA of what [Iggy] tried to do, and I talked to him about it, and there's a lot of factors involved, but at the time, none of us liked Bowie's mix, but given everything, Iggy, when he went in to mix it, he found out that the guy who had recorded it originally had not gotten a lot of level on certain things, like the bass and drums, especially the bass, so he didn't have a lot to work with. Then Iggy, on his mix, he left a bunch of guitar stuff on there that probably shouldn't have been left in, and just odds and ends. Bowie's not my favorite guy, but I have to say that overall, I think he did a pretty good job.<ref>{{cite web|last=Shimamoto|first=Ken|url=http://www.i94bar.com/ints/james1.html|title=James Williamson talks: Raw Power 30 years on|publisher=The I-94 Bar|access-date=February 9, 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051228203950/http://www.i94bar.com/ints/james1.html|archive-date=December 28, 2005|url-status=dead}}</ref>}}

Asheton stated:
{{quote|[[Don Fleming (musician)|Don Fleming]] goes, "You know what? When Iggy's ''Raw Power'' mix comes out, I'll bet you're gonna go – we always used to say how bad the original David Bowie mix of ''Raw Power'' was – Fleming's going, "When you hear Iggy's mix, I guarantee you're gonna say, 'Man, remember that great mix that David Bowie did?'" So I heard it, I got the advance copy from his manager, and listened to it. Then I called Fleming and I'm going, "Gee, Don, I just listened to Iggy's mix of ''Raw Power.'' Man, I sure loved that old David Bowie mix. Was it ever great."

Basically, all that Iggy did was take all the smoothness and all the effects off James [Williamson]'s guitar, so his leads sound really abrupt and stilty and almost clumsy, and he just put back every single grunt, groan, and word he ever said on the whole fuckin' soundtrack. He just totally restored everything that was cut out of him in the first mix, and I thought, Damn, I really did like the old mix better.<ref>{{cite web|last=Shimamoto|first=Ken|date=November 2, 1998|url=http://www.i94bar.com/interviews/calling-from-the-fun-house-stooges-guitarist-ron-asheton/all-pages|title=Calling From The Fun House: Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton|publisher=The I-94 Bar|access-date=February 9, 2012}}</ref>}}

In 2002, Bowie said that his original mix of ''Raw Power'' is "the version I still prefer over the later remix – it has more wound-up ferocity and chaos and, in my humble opinion, is a hallmark roots sound for what was later to become [[punk rock|punk]]."{{sfn|Bowie|2005|p=61}} 

In 2010, Pop remarked,

{{quote|I did my [''Raw Power''] remix...which I knew at the time in the '90s there was a muscle-bound rock metal thing going around, and I knew that people couldn't hear the record as it was originally mixed and mastered in that environment. So I thought if I make it unbearably loud, it would sell, and it did!

[The original ''Raw Power'']'s a good mix of a particular taste. It was very similar to the way David had his own records mixed around that era. It's peculiarly English. What I didn't know at the time was that it was disastrously mastered (after Bowie mixed it). By that time, we had no communication with management, who had decided to let us go.

It doesn't fall into the contemporary standards of records today that explode with a sonic flood all over your car, until you feel like you want to retch. But when you turn it up, the treble is really good. It's got a good character. There were certain production touches that come across; the overdubbed guitar treatment to "Gimme Danger" was Bowie's doing, and it's beautiful.<ref>{{cite news|title= "Iggy Pop keeps Stooges raw, real"|publisher= [[Chicago Tribune]]|url= https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/ct-xpm-2010-08-27-ct-ott-0827-iggy-pop-20100827-story.html|access-date=2023-03-03}}</ref>}}

Pop and Bowie's mixes were both remastered in 2012 for a [[Record Store Day]] double LP by Kevin Gray and Mark Wilder, respectively; this remastering was free of [[clipping (audio)|clipping]].

In 2023, both mixes of the album were once again remastered, free of clipping, along with the release of a new edition of the album to commemorate its fiftieth anniversary.