The Stooges |
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Released: August 5, 1969 Peak: 106 US, -- UK, -- CN, -- AU Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Genre: proto-punk |
Tracks:Song Title [time] (date of single release, chart peaks)
All songs written by the Stooges. Total Running Time: 34:33 The Players:
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Rating: 4.171 out of 5.00 (average of 25 ratings)
Quotable:“One listen [to the Stooges’ debut album] reveals why they became clarion calls in the punk rock revolution.” – Mark Deming, AllMusic.comAwards:(Click on award to learn more).
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Rocking the Detroit Scene“A town with a proud musical heritage, by the late 1960s Detroit was synonymous with the sweet soul pioneered by Berry Gordy’s Motown label. This all changed in 1969 with the Stooges’ eponymous debut, a corrosive swell of skirling guitars and primeval howls.” RDThe band was signed to Elektra as an afterthought. A&R man Danny Fields came to Detroit intending to sign “garage-rockers MC5, but was so impressed by the Stooges’ live performances that he took a chance on them as well.” RD The Album’s Influence“One listen [to the Stooges’ debut album] reveals why they became clarion calls in the punk rock revolution.” AM “Part of the fun of The Stooges is, then as now, the band managed the difficult feat of sounding ahead of their time and entirely out of their time, all at once.” AM They were “punk before punk. Grunge before grunge. Burying trashy, psychedelic guitar solos underneath a laundry pile of fuzz-toned, keep-it-simple rock riffs, The Stooges stinks. In the really, really good way.” VB “It’s hard to say if…[The Stooges] were capable of making anything more sophisticated than this, but if they were, they weren’t letting on, and the best moments of this record document the blithering inarticulate fury of the post-adolescent id.” AMInspiration for the Stooges“While the Stooges had a few obvious points of influence – the swagger of the early Rolling Stones, the horny pound of the Troggs, the fuzztone sneer of a thousand teenage garage bands, and the Velvet Underground’s experimental eagerness to leap into the void – they didn’t really sound like anyone else around when their first album hit the streets in 1969.” AMThe Band“Ron Asheton’s guitar runs (fortified with bracing use of fuzztone and wah-wah) are so brutal and concise they achieve a naïve genius, while Scott Asheton’s proto-Bo Diddley drums and Dave Alexander’s solid bass stomp these tunes into submission with a force that inspires awe. And Iggy’s vividly blank vocals fill the ‘so what?’ shrug of a thousand teenagers with a wealth of palpable arrogance and wondrous confusion.” AM He “sounds bored to distraction on every song he sings. And thank God for it.” VBJohn CaleThe band’s first album was produced by John Cale, who’d made his name with Velvet Underground. While he “seemed sympathetic to what the band was doing, he didn’t appear to quite get it, and as a result he made a physically powerful band sound a bit sluggish on tape.” AM The songs “were neither full-on garage rock, nor out-and-out dirge.” RDThe Songs1969 “threatens to explode but is shepherded away from wig-out territory.” RD I Wanna Be Your Dog features a “powerful guitar assault.” RD Those as well as Real Cool Time and No Fun are “classic rippers.” AMCale plays viola on We Will Fall, “a ten-minute slab of druggy stupor straight from the Velvets’ canon, for Iggy’s unmistakable voice.” RD
Notes:The album was reissued in 2005 and again in 2010, both times with original and alternate mixes included. |
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First posted 4/22/2011; last updated 8/29/2026. |
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