Williamson collaborated with Pop in 1975 on tumultuous demo sessions for a proposed new album to possibly be produced by John Cale, which were released (despite Pop's objections) in 1977 as "Kill City". During this period, Pop was briefly institutionalized of his own volition and Williamson was arrested for possessing heroin by the LAPD. After sustaining a finger injury during a drunken altercation at an Alice Cooper listening party, he gave up playing music professionally to work as a record producer and pursue a higher education as an electronics engineer, initially enrolling in classes at Los Angeles City College: "The Stooges was maybe my only real band and kind of a family and so when that fell apart it was difficult to go on." Looking back in 2010, Williamson said, "I gave up being a Stooge to study calculus." He noted, "It was a rather large existential gap, but I did it."