Iggy and the Stooges to Reform

John Lydon isn’t the only one feeling sentimental for his old band mates of late… Rock 'n' roll legend and peanut butter aficionado Iggy Pop is planning to reform Iggy and the Stooges to perform their powerfully influential album Raw Power, 36 years after it was released.

The news will no doubt please Stooges fans around the world, who, for a variety of reasons, have not seen the group play some of its most famous songs, such as Search and Destroy, Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell and Shake Appeal during previous band reformations.

Three of the four original members of the Michigan band re-formed as the Stooges in 2003 and toured regularly for five years, but neglected songs from Raw Power because the band's line-up changed after its first two albums, the Stooges and Funhouse.

When the band became Iggy and the Stooges to make their third album in 1973, guitarist Ron Asheton was replaced by James Williamson and relegated to handling bass duties. (You may recall Ron Asheton, whose brother Scott is the Stooges drummer, died of a heart attack in January this year.)

The legendary Michigan group would split soon after the album came out after a less than stellar charting and disappointing sales figures. Iggy’s heavy drug use at the time was also cited as a reason for the split

62 year old Pop said that while the original Stooges ended with Asheton's death, “there is always Iggy and the Stooges, the second growth of the band''. This time out Mike Watt will again be handling bass duties

The reconstituted Iggy and the Stooges will play their first shows as part of ATP's Don't Look Back series, in which bands perform classic albums in their entirety. These shows will take place at Hammersmith Apollo on May 2 and 3 of 2010 in London, England.

The landmark Raw Power album, famously mixed by Pop's good friend David Bowie, has been cited by Nirvana's Kurt Cobain and many other musicians as their favourite album and is considered one of the most influential in rock history, despite the fact that it sold so poorly when it was released.

Iggy Pop, who has had a largely successful solo career for the past 30 years, has just released a left-field, jazz-influenced album, Preliminaires, inspired by French writer Michel Houellebecq's novel, The Possibility of an Island.