JAMES WILLIAMSON
The Stooges’ guitar on Bob Dylan’s ’64 LP The Times They Are A-Changin”.
“Iwas 14, 15, in Pontiac, Michigan. The Ventures and surf music had been kinda huge for me – you might say that without [Chantays’ hit] Pipeline there’d be no [1973 Stooges LP] Raw Power. And in the Detroit area, you couldn’t help but be surrounded by Motown. We had a basement at home and I’d go down there and play music. It was the time of life when I was at the nexus of all my hormones, emotions and the confusion about things typical of that age. In particular, I didn’t have a very good experience with my army colonel stepfather. He was a West Point guy. He liked Beethoven. My music was always too loud. He was, ‘What is this rock‘n’roll? Bad things are happening!’ The powers that be were not accepting of my approach to life. It was causing problems, my mother didn’t know what to do with me. So she decided to take advantage of the army medical situation, and had me go see an army shrink. He put me into the army hospital. That summer I’d gone to Mexico and I’d picked up a switchblade knife. I showed it to one of the GIs, and the next thing you know, I’m being transferred to a real psych ward. It was like a miniature version of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. You’d see the shrinks, and during ‘recreation’ people would draw and listen to things or whatever. So I had my mom bring in these Bob Dylan albums. So here am I, and I laid that needle down on The Times They Are A-Changin’ and you could just see the horror, and the unsettling effect that it had on the people in there, until eventually they wouldn’t let me play it anymore! That sort of made it crystal clear to me about the impact of this guy, and how much that voice and message would polarise people, and unify people in my age group. There was a kind of a message, that my generation was changing, and it was changing things. Three months later they put me in juvenile hall. I’d already learned to play guitar and I took that and used it as an emotional outlet. I was affected by tons of bands – the Stones, Them, The Yardbirds – but Dylan’s the one who kicked off the stance.” As told to Ian Harrison
“I’D GONE TO MEXICO, PICKED UP A SWITCHBLADE.”
James Williamson And The Pink Hearts’ Behind The Shade is out on June 22, on Leopard Lady.