James Williamson
part two

K: You guys used Bob Scheff from the Prime Movers on keyboards for some of the demo stuff, and then Scotty Thurston joined the band. How'd that come about?

J: When we first flew back to the U.S., we wanted to tour off the "Raw Power" album. So we did a date at Cobo Hall in Detroit, and it was a big deal. Typical Tony DeFries production, so it was limos and a lot of hype and so on, and it was a big gig. We did well there, I think everybody enjoyed the gig and in order to get ready for that, in all the preparation for that, we played in Ann Arbor and we rehearsed, and as a result, I started telling Iggy I thought we needed keyboards and I remembered Bob from the Prime Movers and we got in touch with him because Iggy knew him. We started using him on our subsequent tour. We didn't do anything for a long time after that first one gig in the U.S. I think, for whatever reasons, I can't speculate on what Tony DeFries' reasons were, but at that point, the relationship soured, and we didn't play any more gigs with him. In fact, I wasn't even in the band in three months, for a short period of time. In fact, in FOUR months, there WASN'T any band for awhile.

We played at Cobo Hall one night when we came back from England, and then that was it. We came back to Los Angeles and about six weeks later, we were informed that something had to give, and where it ended up was I had to leave the band, so I left the band, because I was supposedly a bad influence. In reality, that was not truly the case, but anyway, I had to leave the band, so I left the band and was on my own for awhile, and they tried a couple of different guitar players. I think they did one job somewhere, and then eventually they just said, "Screw it, this isn't going to work," and they all left DeFries. So everybody left and we changed management. They called me back up and said, "Look, sorry, let's put the band back together," so we did, and we went with Helen Reddy's husband, Jeff Wald, who was a management company, and started doing gigs again, and that's where Bob Scheff came in.

K: What about Scott Thurston?

J: Bob played a couple of gigs, but this was just too weird for him. In the meantime, while I had been gone from the band, I was playing with a couple of other local bands, not really playing, but sorta thinking about playing with them, and one day, I was over at Capitol Records and as I was going out, I was watching this guy recording, and it was Scott Thurston with this other band. He was cool, I could hear that he was a great piano player, so I got his contact info and I said, "You wanna play with us?" When we put the band back together, I asked him if he wanted to play with us, and he said, "Sure," and the rest is history.

K: You guys didn't do a tremendous amount of live work over in England, either, did you?

J: One job. That was it.

K: There's a lot of live recordings around from '73 and '74 that seem to document a very violent and confrontational performance style. How do you remember those days?

J: The Stooges were ALWAYS confrontational from day one. Iggy was always an in-your-face kind of guy, and that's his style; it's part of his act. But I would never call it violent, necessarily. When I think of violent, I think of something that has CONSEQUENCES, and up until that one day at the Rock Farm, where he got punched out by a biker, I would NEVER call it violent. Even the blood and all that stuff is mostly...it's not hollow theatrics or anything, but it's not violent. It was AGGRESSIVE, is how I characterize it.

K: A lot of the material you guys cut in '73 and '74 sounds as if you were pushing the band in a more mainstream, almost Stones-like direction. What were your musical goals at the time?

J: I just was trying to become a better musician, and trying to get the band to be better musicians, what I considered to be better songwriting. It's just an evolution of things, and after all, we're trying to make a LIVING at this, so trying to get the band to do stuff that would appeal to people. You've gotta remember that in the environment we were in, in 1973 or 1974, our music was like, forget it! NOBODY could relate to our music! It was really different.

K: How did the final dissolution of the Stooges come about?

J: It was a funny thing. I just think that frankly, it was a combination of things: the sort of relentless touring that we were doing...there are some aspects of just sort of being together through too much, and also an aspect of the thing I mentioned to you, the Rock and Roll Farm, which I think was a big defining moment for the Stooges. When somebody actually stepped up and coldcocked Iggy, that sorta said, "Hey, you're not playing for teenagers anymore. There's these other guys out there, too, and they're NOT NICE like that." The Michigan Palace thing was kinda ugly, but it wasn't really all that. I think the band was pretty much ready to give it up at that point, and that was just the last straw.

K: If I could get your impressions of the guys in the Stooges...

J: Those guys are my buddies. I like those guys. I don't hang out with them anymore, and we're very different people now, but I think highly of them. I still talk to them. You wouldn't be talking to me now if Ron hadn't suggested that I call you, so obviously I respect his wishes. His brother I think very highly of as a drummer, at least at one time. Like I say, I like all those guys. I like Iggy...he is what he is; there's no ill will there.

K: So you're still in touch with Iggy?

J: Occasionally. If I wanna be. (Laughs)

K: So what did you do right after the Stooges split?

J: I worked in a recording studio for awhile, did various things, and eventually I got very interested in the technology itself, and I think that's what really changed my whole life, in that I got interested in electronics as a result of that, and got into going to school and becoming a real electronics engineer, and was fortunate enough to be in the right place and time to sort of take advantage of the whole PC thing that started coming along, so just completely changed focus. But I think the things that I've done since then are very similar, in a lot of ways.

K: How do you mean?

J: Just the whole excitement and the novelty and the newness of a complete wave of things that are happening.

K: How did that "Kill City" album come about?

J: There's another kind of misunderstood thing, from my perspective. At the very end of the Stooges, that second wave, Iggy was really screwed up. He was...mentally not good. He ultimately went into the hospital for awhile. But right about that time, before then, he and I had been working up some demos for John Cale, to see if he actually would produce a new album for us. A lot of those songs were worked up for that demo, and that never panned out, but Ben Edmonds said he knew a couple of guys, he knew Jimmy Webb and so forth who had a studio up at his house, and he could get us a demo. So we started doing that, and right in the middle of that, Iggy went into the hospital, so it was pretty tough. I'd go over there every day and pick him up and drive him over and do his vocals and take him back over there, so that's how it came about.

It was kind of a hardship thing, and the tapes really don't sound that good, honestly. I think there's some good material in there, but we never did work it up right. The riffs are good, that's for sure, but had there ever been a real record, I think we could have done a lot better.

K: Tell us about your "contract" with Iggy. The story I heard was that towards the end of the Stooges, you presented Iggy with a contract which stipulated that only you and he could write songs together.

J: It was never really like it's been portrayed. It was actually after the "end" of the Stooges, while Iggy and I were recording "Kill City." As I mentioned, I was taking him back and forth to the hospital while putting together the musicians and material and backup singers, etc., i.e., producing the record.

I don't remember if there was a clause in the contract saying that only he and I could write songs, but that's beside the point. The contract was simply a way to insure that I wasn't wasting my time on this project. At that point, Iggy was progressively unstable, so I needed something to hang onto. I wasn't sure what was going to happen next. So, just as in any business relationship, I simply wanted something in writing saying that all this was going to be worth my while. After all, I'd been screwed in various activities involving Iggy in the past.

In any event, it was already an unwritten, but often-mentioned "code" of that incarnation of the Stooges and later that only we wrote the tunes for the Stooges. In fact, one time while in New York at Max's Kansas City (during the infamous martini glass cutting gig), Lou Reed sat with us one evening and asked if we'd like to record one of his songs. Both Iggy and I told him that we only did our own original material. So, I'm not really sure where all this stuff comes from, but it's nonsense.

K: So what did you do after that?

J: Well, after that, that's when Iggy went over to Europe, and that's when I started doing those other things.

K: I really consider "New Values," which you produced, the last good Iggy album. Talk a bit about those sessions.

J: That was much later. I was studying engineering by then, and I'd pretty much given up...for awhile, I was doing recording studio stuff, so I had all the connections, but I had sorta given up that aspect and moved on to more technical stuff. Anyway, one day I get a call from Iggy, saying that he wants me to produce his album for him. I think what had happened was he went over to Europe and recorded a couple of albums, by then, and I think he was quite popular at that time, what was it, 1978? So several years had gone by, and I think he was very popular in Europe as a result of "Raw Power," and also "Kill City" was quite popular, despite his objections, 'cos he didn't want that album to be released at all, he fought it tooth and nail. So I think he was surprised by the reaction, 'cos he was off doing all these Bowie things and I think his real strength was in the earlier stuff, and in my guitar playing and so on and so forth. So he was trying to sort of exploit the connection, I guess. Honestly speaking, and that's fine with me. So he called me up, and I said I'd do it, 'cos I thought it would be kinda fun. So we went in the studio and did it.

K: Did you play all the guitar on that?

J: No. Actually, I only played guitar on a couple of things. Scott Thurston played almost all the guitar. He's a very talented guy. He plays with Tom Petty's band now, and he plays guitar for those guys too. He's a very good guitar player, and a very good keyboard guy. He's just a very good musician.

K: So all the leads on the "New Values" album...that's Scott Thurston?

J: Yeah. He was in our band. He knows how I used to play. He just kinda took that style and just did it. I played on "Don't Look Down" and a couple of other rhythm things, but those are all HIS things.

K: Can you shed any light on the sessions for "Soldier"? You and Bowie were both on board to produce; rumors have it that you both walked out of the sessions. What really went down?

J: Interesting that you should ask. Actually, I was the original producer on that album. Bowie just showed up to check it out and visit. He ended up doing background on one song, so he was never really involved other than to stir up Iggy. Jim and I had a falling out over the approach I was taking (very high tech, with 48 track recorders, etc.) and the control I was commanding in the sessions, and I left after the basic tracks were done. That was the last time I really talked with Jim prior to around five years ago.

K: What have you been doing since then?

J: I've moved on. From an engineering degree, I sorta moved into the electronics industry. I've been in the Silicon Valley now for twenty years. A lot of different things. I travel extensively and do a lot of things with electronics.

K: How do you account for the continuing influence of the Stooges?

J: Maybe it's just 'cos NOBODY LIKES IT. Teenage music is all about people not likin' it, right? Maybe that's it. I don't know.

K: It's getting harder to play "Shock the Grownups."

J: That's right. I honestly don't know. It's an interesting thing for me, too, to see that something I did twenty years ago...or MORE than twenty years ago...is still actually more viable than it was at that time. That's a very strange phenomenon, and I don't have any answers about that. It does seem to be very relevant to the music that's going on now.

K: Do you ever think of yourself as a pioneer?

J: I always thought of myself as a pioneer, but I guess no one else did at the time. Now I guess I would have to say it sounds like I was.

K: How does it feel to have fans/writers (uh, including this one) alternately vilifying and glorifying you for what you brought to the Stooges?

J: If you're referring to the "Legs Diamond" or whatever he's called interviews....I'd say that there's alot of misinformation in that reporting and alot of "revisionist history" along with some "wishful thinking". Otherwise, the info that these writers get is very third, forth or fifth hand in most cases.

Frankly, ether way, I don't really care. I did what I did...I do what I do. That's the only way I know or knew. I never was interested in the media side of the music or any other business, but I guess that shows. Anyway, think what you will, write what you will, I'll go on being who I am.

K: Since we're in a Bar, what do you like to drink?

J: I like to drink all kinds of things, but sake mainly. I love sake!

K: You've been out in California too long, James!

J: Actually in Tokyo too long!

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