Search and Destroy - Iggy Pop Mix

"Search and Destroy" was written by Stooges' frontman Iggy Pop and lead guitarist James Williamson. The name of the song comes from a Time magazine article Iggy Pop saw about the Vietnam War. The lyrics are rife with references to the war, including napalm, nuclear bombs, fire fights, and radiation. The title refers to a military tactic used by the US military in the Vietnam War: to seek out the enemy, destroy them, and withdraw.

In a 2013 Songfacts interview with guitarist James Williamson, he talked about the songwriting process: "Well, I had come up with kind of that 'bum bum bum bum bum bum bum' a little bit, but it was more in regard to imitating a machine gun, if you will. Because this is the era of the Vietnam War. And so we were kind of screwing around with that, and that's where that figure comes from. Then the rest of the song was around that. But I think the beginning, the 'bum bum bum bum bum bum bum, bum bum bum bum bum bum bum,' that part was the thing that really kicked off that song."

Iggy Pop recalled to Clash Magazine the making of the song: "The funny part about it was until I convinced him to step back a little and ease up on the thing, what James brought in was four times as fast and twice as heavy! (Laughs) It was two of the parts in the song, the two fastest parts - there are four basic building blocks - and when he did it there were just the two, and when he did it they just went over and over, faster and faster. I sort of said, 'Look, can we make a new part that's just like part two but in half time?' So he went, 'Okay', and that became our chorus. Then I asked him for something which you'll never hear on another Stooges record, something that approximates what professional song writers call a 'pre-chorus'. That's the part where I'm singing 'Love in a middle of a fire fight' and after that, the buildup where I say "Somebody's got to save my soul / Baby penetrate my mind" - that's a pre-chorus where you actually downshift and then you heighten the tension through building the chords so that there is a release. So that was about the closest I got to getting any of these guys to Rock School. (Laughs) That one has more typical song writing structure in it, which is probably why it gets the most attention."