James Williamson Went From Creating Punk Rock to Designing Chips in Silicon Valley
Guitarist, songwriter, and record producer, James Williamson (1949 – ) was a member of Iggy and the Stooges, a 1960s to 1970s band whose primitive and raw rock and roll, coupled with confrontational performances, would pave the way for punk rock. In 2004, Rolling Stone included them in their list of 100 Greatest Artists of All Time, and in 2010, they were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. As to Williamson, he went from revolutionizing rock and roll to developing computer chips in Silicon Valley.
Born in Texas before moving to Oklahoma as a child, Williamson began playing guitar in 7th grade. Without instruction, however, he did not go beyond basic chords, and it did not seem he would progress much beyond that. Luckily for him, his family moved to Detroit, and young Williamson ended up living next door to a family of musicians. He spent much of his free time hanging out with his neighbors and improving his skills.
By 9th grade, Williams had formed his own rock band, and it was during this period that he first came into contact with Iggy Pop and other members of the future Stooges. In 1970, he was invited to join the band as a second guitarist, but The Stooges were wracked by drug problems. Between that and a lack of commercial success, they dissolved soon thereafter.
The Stooges reformed in 1972, after David Bowie offered Iggy Pop a chance to record in London, and he called in Williamson and other band members to join him. Williamson co-wrote all the songs with Iggy, and played an explosive and raunchy guitar in the ensuing album, Raw Power. That guitar style, which was likened to how Darth Vader would play if he was in a band, became a major influence on the emerging punk scene. The Stooges had a turbulent couple of years touring, marked by copious amounts of booze, drugs, and craziness, before dissolving again in 1974. Iggy Pop went on to pursue a solo career.
Williamson quit playing after hurting his finger in a drunken brawl at an Alice Cooper party, and began working as a record producer, while pursuing a degree in electronics engineering. He did disco work as a staff engineer at Paramount Recorders in Los Angeles, and in 1979, worked with Iggy Pop as a songwriter and producer on his third solo album, New Values. However, personality clashes with Iggy’s new colleagues and other frustrations led Williamson to quit music for good and focus on getting his electronics degree, which he did in 1982.
He moved to Silicon Valley and got a job working for chip and semiconductor manufacturer Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), designing products around its chips. He kept mum about his former career as a musician, which was made easy by his colleagues being, as Williamson put it, “nerds and geeks … they don’t listen to The Stooges much“. He was hired by Sony in 1997 as VP for technical standards, in which capacity he helped codify industry standards for emerging products such as Blu-Ray Discs, before accepting an early buyout and retiring in 2009.