Predecessor to Punk
“It’s hard to understate the Stooges’ influence on the punk scene that would soon follow.” PM “This grinding gale storm was acid-punk before punk was cool.” EW’93 “The album’s corrosive psychosis directly influenced Richard Hell, The Birthday Party, and Black Flag, and many other dark-hearted punks have begun their musical careers by aping these brutal licks.” RD “Anyway, you slice it – aesthetics or otherwise – Fun House is, was and always will be absolutely essential.” JSH It “is the ideal document of the Stooges at their raw, sweaty, howling peak.” AM
Don Gallucci as Producer
“The Stooges’ first album was produced by a classically trained composer.” AM After it was “widely panned,” RD “Elektra assigned them a slowly staff producer for Fun House.” RD However, Don Gallucci proved an excellent choice. At age 14, he played keyboards on “Louie Louie” by the Kingsmen. He “took the approach that the Stooges were a powerhouse live band, and their best bet was to recreate the band’s live set” AM – “a riot of sinful riffage and frontman Iggy Pop’s drug-addled misadventures with cream-pies and broken glass.” RD
“As a result, the production on Fun House bears some resemblance to the Kingsmen’s version of ‘Louie Louie’ – the sound is smeary and bleeds all over the place, but it packs the low-tech wallop of a concert pumped through a big PA, bursting with energy and immediacy.” AM
The Sound
“Though nothing could fully capture the chaos of the Stooges onstage, Fun House came as close as possible.” PM “Slow and thuddy as it sounds now, almost nobody had ever made rock as primal as this second album.” AZ “Drunk on their own testosterone, Iggy Pop and Co. kept things simple, loud, and brutal.” AM “Of course the Stooges were stupid, that was the whole point.” AZ
Fun House “assembles all the elements.” PM “Iggy howled like a psycho, the band sounded like they could barely play the elementary riffs, and occasionally a moment of bone-headed poetry made it through the glorious muck.” AZ “There are brutish guitars, pounding beats and a general air of mayhem enhanced by the sense that frontman Iggy Pop was just barely keeping himself under control.” PM
The Band Members
“Ron Asheton’s blazing minimalist guitar gained little in the way of technique since The Stooges, but his confidence had grown by a quantum leap as he summoned forth the sounds that would make him the hero of proto-punk guitarists everywhere, and the brutal pound of drummer Scott Asheton and bassist Dave Alexander had grown to heavyweight champion status.” AM
“And Fun House is where Iggy Pop’s mad genius first reached its full flower; what was a sneer on the band’s debut had grown into the roar of a caged animal desperate for release, and his rants were far more passionate and compelling than what he had served up before.” AM He “yelps, mewls, screams, imitates James Brown…every…variation of voice-as-instrument possible, all to the tune of the band’s primal-grinding guttural howl.” JSH
“The addition o’ Ann Arbor/Dark Carnival sax player Steve MacKaye was like an open invitation for punks everywhere to get hipped to the ‘energy’ potential of jazz as well.” JSH
The Songs
The first three songs on Fun House are “a triptych of controlled abandon that's never been equaled.” WR Iggy Pop “sets the tone with a feral whoop at the start of the greasy, strutting opener Down on the Street.” PM
“The Stooges may have had more ‘hits,’ but Fun House has stronger songs, including the garage raver to end all garage ravers in Loose.” AM
On that song and T.V. Eye, in which Iggy “yowls over scabrous guitars,” PM “you can…hear a whole style of rock guitar being born.” JSH Ron Asheton’s use “of the wah-wah is particularly awesome.” JSH “The delirium of subhuman snarls and sucking sounds emitted by Iggy at the climax…is the living end, a nether limit even the Birthday Party (for whom Fun House was bible) underpassed.” WR
Iggy Pop “loses himself in the sprawling psychedelia of the title track, which comes complete with honking saxophone.” PM
Dirt is “a hymn to transcendence thru abjection, with Ron Asheton alternating between piteous blues and silvered cascades.” WR
There’s also “the primal scream of 1970, and the apocalyptic anarchy” AM of “the cacophonous L.A. Blues” AM in which the Stooges showed “three chords were okay, two were even better, one or none…was best of all.” AM
Notes: A 2005 reissue added 14 alternate takes and single mixes to the original track listing.
|
